A (small) Tale of Woe

Last week, I did the unthinkable. I dropped our digital camera. And it broke. I know, this kind of thing happens once in a while, but I feel we as a family have paid our due. In the last six years we've gone through five cameras. Five. Count them with me:

1. We left the first one on a hike (along with a pair of binoculars) in the Trinity Alps wilderness. Darn good pictures on it too...
   
2. Dragged off the table, down the stairs, and whapped against the basement door by Biscuit the Cat.
3. Dropped down two different mountainsides by hubby, this camera slowly died over several months.
   
4. Thrown from the top of the dining room table by a rambunctious twin.
   
5. Dropped (by me) for no apparent reason in the living room.
   

So I was ranting and raving at myself for being such a bungling fool when I knew I had just bought the last replacement camera last fall. I sat down and made a quite futile attempt to take it apart and 'fix' it. The twins came up to me and I explained that mommy had broken the camera and I was very sad about it. Patrick thought about this for a second, then came up to me and grabbed my knee. "Big Hug," he stated solemnly. Wow. Sometimes that does make it all better.

McMuffin!

...eating is so exiting when you're a toddler ;)

Uh oh.

We love pizza at our house, and since it's a fairly cheap meal I usually end up making homemade pizza about once a week. We also have the Learning Tower (which we absolutely love) and so the twins "help" with dinner more often than not. I usually start with the dough, and while that's rising we make pizza sauce. They love to pour ingredients in and taste each ingredient and are so excited by the prospect they will literally try anything: salt? "Tastes good!" flour? "Tastes good!" raw dough? "Tastes good!" I had just put the plain tomato paste in the bowl when baby Sam started to cry. Silly me...I told the kids, "Sure, you can go ahead and taste that," and then I went into the adjoining living room and sat down to feed a hungry baby. Folks, this was less than five minutes, really! Sam didn't want much and I was hearing way too much giggling coming from the other room. This is what I found:

"UH. OH." I said slowly, trying to process the scene. I couldn't believe the mess. It was packed into Isaac's ear. The back of Patrick's head. All over their sweaters. Eyebrows? Up both noses. Wow. I gotta get a picture. So while they were still shocked and knew they were in trouble, I snapped this. Priceless. Then I started laughing. :)

The two-year-old and the penny

During a recent camping trip to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in Utah, we realized what made all those cool sandstone arches and sculpted canyons. Wind. Duh! But when the wind kicked up on our last day and we had to pack up the tents, the twins did not want to get out. "Too windy! too windy," they yelled every time we tried to plunk them out of the tent. So they got plunked in the Expedition's spacious front seats instead to cause trouble in there for a while.

I checked on them several times; each time as I opened the huge door they scrambled to NOT touch whatever it was they were touching, I verified the relative safety of the button/lever/object, and closed the door again. However, on one of my trips to the car I noticed Isaac's big eyes dropping those crocodile tears and thought I'd better investigate.

Opening the door I noticed Isaac looked like he was goobering. "What happened?!" I asked. "I eat penny," Isaac stated. Uh oh. This could be trouble. "Where is the penny?" I asked carefully, really hoping he wouldn't point to his tummy. "Mine barf penny! Right there!" Ah. Sure enough, right in the center cupholder, was a puddle of barf with a slimy penny in the middle. At least the car is a rental. As I cleaned the cupholder out, we talked about how we shouldn't eat pennies and how you need to ask mommy whenever you want to eat something new. "Why in the world did he eat a penny!?!" I complained. Aunt Karen, of course, provided the perfect answer, "He had a penny. And he's two."

Laundry the Montessori Way

If you're a parent, you've tuned them out. If not, you've at least seen it- parents have an uncanny ability to tune out their kid's incessant chatter, not because they don't care, but because they are always chatting about something. Toddlers in particular seem to repeat the same thing over and over and over until you acknowledge it, "Yes, there are people outside. I see the people. Are you watching the people?"

I had to put the washed clothes in the dryer and so I asked for help from the twins. I immediately received an answer from Patrick, "Help laundry! Help laundry! Help laundry!" So I opened the front-loading washer and dryer and told him to put all the wet clothes in the dryer. It looked like he was really getting into it so I simply let him go at it and wandered over to the computer. A while later I realized that Patrick had been yelling something at me for the last five minutes, "Pants too Big! Pants too Big! Pants too Big!" I came over and started laughing as Patrick was tugging futilely at one leg of Mike's pants, the other leg stuck deep in the washer...

Paddy was sitting on my lap this morning "helping" read the grocery ads. All of the sudden, "It is it! It is it! It is it!" (Paddy's version of 'that is'), "DOG poop!" Mmmm...tasty...

Minty Fresh!

I had stopped letting the twins play in the car as they kept getting into stuff, but on this morning I had just cleaned out the whole car so I gave the go-ahead to climb in and 'drive'. Meanwhile, I was running around the house frantically trying to get everything ready to 'go somewhere'. Bottle? Check. Sippy cups? Check. Mom's water bottle? Check. Snacks? Check. Sam? Hmmmm....maybe I should check on the twins...

Sliding doors were open, looks like they figured out how to work those buttons now. As usual, when I got close to the car they scrambled to distance themselves from whatever they were doing that was surely a big no-no. But there was something in their mouths. And on their faces. White tablets- everywhere. Pieces of tablets- everywhere. Luckily my nose told me exactly what they were furiously trying to eat...I smelled curiously stong mints. They obviously figured out how to open the glove box. I had them pick them up and put them back in the tin and removed it. As I was cleaning the floor of tiny goobered pieces I noticed something white wedged in a vent. Uh oh. The vents were chock full of Altoids! That ought to make it smell minty fresh in here...

The plumbers

Two little boys, just less than a year old. Learning to explore on their own, they teach each other as they find new things...

My husband peeks in from working to chat, "Did you decide to clean the drains today?" Hmmm...now that's a strange question. Me, I'm an organizer. I love to organize. To put away. To clean out and find a brand new storage solution. I don't like the 'boring' cleaning that never changes: mopping, laundry, dishes, vacuuming, *ughhh* deep cleaning. "Not me," I said, "I haven't scheduled drain cleaning yet." "Well, you'd better look in the shower then," he replied.

O.k., we'll look-see in the shower. Probably just some dirt, huh? I walked to our bathroom and found the shower door open, the small grate covering the drain off, and a nasty, black, gooey hair ball the size of a hamster next to the drain. Ewwww....

I watched this story unfold again the next day. Patrick and Isaac crawl to the bathroom. Patrick shows Isaac how to open the sliding glass doors. Isaac shows Patrick how to stick your really little fingers in the drain cover and pry it off. And Patrick shows Isaac how to reach in to your elbow and pull out all the goo and hair inside. Wow. Now you know why I brush the shower drain with a toothbrush once a week.

We should hire these guys out. Two short plumbers, bargain rates.

Goofybots, Stinkerdoodles, and me...

"Wow they really grow fast, don't they?" How many times have we heard that, said that, passed that on? Only because it's true. After thinking "Boy, I really should write that down" about a thousand times, I decided to make at least a temporary attempt at recording the cool stuff before it sifts from my brain and is replaced by yet another recipe. Here goes from a generally good-humored, stupidly optimistic, crazy, lazy mom who wants to "do it all" and, at the same time, sit under a tree and read a book while eating ice cream bon bons...