It will change your life

Remember that viral email that went around about how motherhood will change your life? If not, here's a link. Well, I had a few of those moments last night.

Let me preface this story with the fact that my husband has been out of town since very early Monday morning. He's been travelling a lot lately. Almost every other week. We will not go into the fact that these trips are carefully planned to take him out of town for all trash days, large snowfalls, and my nights out with the girls. Luckily, I have finally found a babysitter who is not scared of my dog, so the nights out with the girls are very doable now.

... unless the weather is horrible, which it has been this week.

So it is Thursday night and I'm running on empty after a whole week of single parenting and two snow days stuck in the house and the night out with the girls cancelled because southern Ohio doesn't know how to manage snow and ice. I've left my older son home alone because the state says he is old enough now and I suppose, I sort of agree. I'm taking my younger son to swim lessons. It's my first time taking him, so I'm sort of nervous. Do I have the right class time? Does he really know how to change himself in the men's locker room? We are asking him to shower before he changes to get the chlorine off. Will he be able to use the showers in the men's room?

I stand outside the men's room waiting, and waiting, and waiting. One by one, the boys with their fathers come out. As the crowd in the locker room dwindles, I notice that I can hear Lastborn's voice. He's goofing off with someone in there. Now Lastborn is sort of a slow child. His entire life is on his time. It drives his teachers nuts and drives his father even nuttier. But he lives in his own world. I usually handle him with humor. Why go crazy over something I will never be able to change.

So, I start calling into the men's room. "Hurry up! What's taking so long?"
10 minutes later, "I'm putting on my shirt." 15 minutes after that, I have to call in again. Finally, he strolls out of the men's room 28 minutes after class let out. It was a half hour class. His hair is wet, his pants have large wet spots. Knowing I'm dealing with dreamy here, I check his bag for his belongings. Goggles? Check. Towel? Check. Bathing suit? Nope.

"Where's your bathing suit?"
"Under my pants."
"Why? I thought the idea was to change."
"Oh. I was wondering why you sent me in there."
"So, you are sopping wet and it's three degrees outside. Did you at least try to dry off?"
"Well... I did, but my towel was wet. I kind of put it on the floor in the shower and it got all wet."
"Generally, things on the floor in the shower tend to do that. I kinda knew you would do that."
"How did you know?"
"This may be hard for you to believe, but when I was a child, I was kind of spacey like you and I did things like putting my towel on the floor of the shower. I had to learn from my mistakes."
Lastborn thinks this is funny. We make our way to the car with Lastborn complaining about how cold he is.

On the way home, I ask him how he would feel if I joined all the old people doing water aerobics in the pool next to where he has class.
"No way," he says making a vomiting sound.
In the mood to bait my wise-alec son, I press him. "Why not?"
"You would have to wear a bikini and that's just gross."
This makes me laugh. Where does he get these ideas.
Calming him, I reply, "No, I wouldn't wear a bikini. Do you know what a bikini is?"
"Of course I do. I see them on cartoons all the time."
"Well, I couldn't wear a bikini, there would be nothing to control my stomach and I'd be jumping around in the water, I might knock out another person in the class with that big belly."
To which he responds, (and this quote must be the best ever) "Mom, you are not as fat as you look!"

I feel so much better now. Let's all go out for pizza and ice cream sundaes.

The really cute part about it is that he really wanted to make me feel better. He's a doll.

The night doesn't end there. We got home and I sent Lastborn on to bed with only 15 minutes left to deal with Firstborn's math issues.

But before we could do that, I noticed that there were only 2 plates in the sink. I opened the microwave where I had left the burritos that were to be his dinner and, sure enough, they were still there! Even though I had told him on our way out that dinner was in the microwave for him. (didn't want the dog eating his burritos. She has bad enough gas without giving her beans.)

So, he eats his burritos and we start to go over his math. He has a test today and he is unsure of how to study. After school, I had him go over the questions at the end of the section, and now we were going to go over them together. In the end, it's 8:15 by the time we are done and he has to get to bed.

He thanked me nicely, which was a great turnaround from the screaming he had given me earlier because I made him do the problems before going out to play in the snow with his friends after school.

I pointed out that it was even better because he got to stay up 15 minutes extra.

"Oh boy. Fifteen minutes." He replied in his best pre-teen snark.
"Yes, but it was 15 minutes spent with your wonderful mother," I countered.
"It would have been better if it was 15 minutes on the computer." He continued to snark.

I guess I should have just taken the thank you and run with it. However, from now on, I will remind him about how he would rather spend 15 minutes with the computer than with his mother every time he wants something from me. "Just go ask the computer to take you to the pool with your friends," I'll say. He knew as he walked up the stairs to bed that he had certainly stuck his size 8s firmly into his mouth on that one.

But he said thank you. And that's enough.

Destructo

After 2 snow days stuck at home, I finally got the chance to slip out of the house to get my brake light fixed. While Ohio does not do inspections every year to catch this kind of stuff, I kinda feel like the local constabulary might have a bit too much fun writing a ticket for this east coast snob were I to be caught with my tail light out.

This past week, I had decided to widen Nova's territory for her alone times. I was moving the gate to cover the front hallway and closing my office door. This effectively gives her the kitchen, dining room and family room.

Only three rooms for me to scour for edibles before I leave and if I keep on top of things, it should only take a couple of minutes.

That is, if I remember to close my office door.

Which I did not do today. So she got out through my office into the living room.

From the living room, she got to the front hall and collected the family's boots into a pile in the living room. Then upstairs to Firstborn's room to collect different pieces of K'nex. I wonder how many trips upstairs it took to collect this pile.

Then she went up to Lastborn's room and got his new slinky. It's not a slinky anymore.

I just love the look of disgust on Georgia's face in this picture.

While in Lastborn's room, she decided to destroy this cat toy.

Sigh.