You will never guess what the boys did this time!

Well it has been quite a while since I wrote my last blog, but raising two little boys is a crazy and very busy undertaking. With that said the boys did something this week that really must be shared! This week I had a crazy headache so I put a movie on for the boys and went to lie down in my bed till the medicine kicked in. Now putting a movie on for the boys, after a busy day at school, normally buys me at least an hour of peace, however, not this time. So I am lying down waiting for my horrible headache to go away when I hear a set of keys jingle. This sound normally heralds Zane getting home, but then I heard the door open. It took my pain befuddled mind a few moments to put together that the two noises had happened in the wrong order for someone coming into the house. Eek the order of those noises meant that someone had left the house……two someones!!! I jumped up and went downstairs to find the two little tricksters. After a few panicked moments looking for them I heard the car start!!!! Those two little rats were in my car! I ran over to the car ripped open the door and yelled: “What are you doing?” Calm as can be Andrew says: “We were hungry mommy so we were going to drive to McDonalds!” The funny thing was he said it so calmly and in such a reasonable voice, for a second I thought that I was overreacting. Then I came to my senses and the boys and I had a very intense discussion about their use of my car! My students keep telling me to say this so here goes: If you liked what you just read please like, share or comment. Thanks a bundles.

Snowing in My Living Room

Have you ever walked into a situation and it’s so crazy that your brain cannot process it at first. Well, since having kids this experience has become a common occurrence in my life. One night I had gone out to pick up Swiss Chalet and while I was bringing it into the house I slipped and fell on the driveway. If you know me at all this level of klutziness will not surprise you..... make you chuckle a bit, but not surprise you. Anyways, my husband saw me go down and came out to help me leaving the “monsters” I mean the boys in the house alone....for all of 1.5 freaking minutes. I mean how much trouble could the boys cause in 1 minute and thirty seconds? With us right outside the house on the driveway? A WHOLE LOT OF TROUBLE!!! As my husband and I came into the house we were greeted by a sight that still gives me chills when I think about it. It was snowing....SNOWING!!!! in my living room. The boys were twirling around in the living room staring up at the SNOW falling from the ceiling with giant grins on their faces. It took me about a full thirty seconds to figure out what the hell was going on. I mean had the laws of physics been temporarily suspended in my house? Was a magical snowman going to pop up and grant us a winter wonderland wish? When I finally figured it out, the only thing that went through my mind was Oh My God!!!! How in the #$^%^*&%^*$%^&*#%^*&#@@@#$^% am I going to clean this up? That was quickly followed by I am going to #$^%^&*^(*$%^*#%^$#@^ kill them! The boys had opened the wood fire place, scooped up handfuls of cold ashes, and thrown them in the air!!!!!!!! There was a coating of ash on everything. My house literally looked like Pompeii, after the volcano blew and the boys looked like two little diapered chimney sweeps. For those of you who have no experience with ash, it looks like pretty snow in the air but the second it touches anything it leaves a black greasy smear that is a pain in the ass to wipe clean. Needles to say it took us hours and hours to clean up the mess but I learned a really important lesson: “Don’t get mad, get pictures!”

I Don't Buy Snowpants in August!

        Recently (the dead of February) both of my children ran out of mittens and neck warmers. For those of you who don’t know what a neck warmer is, it’s a nifty invention that is basically a scarf, made into a tube that fits around your neck and lacks the potential to hang yourself. This is a particular benefit in my house where my children embark upon daily quests to kill one another.

Ok back to my original point, no neck warmers or mittens. Now you may be wondering where the mittens and neck warmers went, because we had to have needed them before the middle of February, well to be honest I have no idea. I mean I have some theories, but nothing concrete. I believe in Andrew’s case he eats them. I mean every time I look at the kid he is chewing on some kind of fabric like a demented goat.  In fact we have a little rhyme at our house to remind him to stop doing it: “You’re not a goat, so don’t chew your coat.” As for Jaxson, I think he is selling them to get money to fund his evil plans to take over the world.

So yesterday I went out to buy some replacement winter gear, which you wouldn’t think would be such a difficult task in the middle of winter; however, I was sadly mistaken.  Every store I went into was completely devoid of all winter supplies. In fact in more than one store the associates were setting up displays of sandals, shorts and t-shirts. What the #%*$@! We are in the middle of one of the worst winters in a long time and they are setting up racks of summer clothing??? Are these people crazy? I mean in Wal-Mart they had an entire section filled with garden accessories, decorations and seeds for vegetable gardens. Hey Wal-Mart, FYI my garden is under 10 feet of snow! I am pretty sure gardening is NOT in any of my immediate plans.

Now for those of you who know me, I am not the shyest or quietist individual, so I asked one of the associates why they were doing this? With a look of embarrassment the person told me that this is how the retail industry operates. She said it had something to do with when they had to order stuff and when it had to be delivered. This does not make sense.  I mean I can order from almost any of these stores websites and get the stuff the next day, or within a week at the latest, so how can their stores not do the same. By the way these are rhetorical questions, I really do not care, so please do not try and interrupt my rant against the retail establishment.

After giving me this sad explanation about the inner workings of the retail industry the lady actually told me that the best time to buy winter clothing is in August. IN AUGUST!!!!! So if during the winter your kids grow out of their snowpants, loose their mittens or eat their hats, you are out of luck because the retail industry has deemed August the time when you should need to buy this stuff.

On a different note, if you guys likes this post please share it, like it or comment. :)

Prunes are powerful! (Use sparingly)

Most kids at one point or another get constipated. It is a stinky, painful fact of life. Constipation turns normally happy, fun loving kids into cranky, screaming, whiny, anal-retentive, poop-holders. When Andrew was about 6 months old he got really, really constipated. As a new mom I had no idea what to do to help the process along, so when a friend of mine suggested giving him some prunes, I was all over the idea. I just wanted my happy kid back. So I went to the store and purchased a jar of baby food prunes and the fun began……..

Once we got back home I set Andrew up in his baby-seat and with spoon in one hand and prunes in the other I was ready to get the poop a-flowing. However, being new to this whole situation I didn’t understand one really important fact: Prunes are powerful. I truly believe that they should come with a warning label for newbie parents who do not understand the pure poop ejecting power that is contained in a container of pureed prunes. In my extremely ignorant state I fed Andrew the ENTIRE jar of prunes!!! 

Once I was finished feeding Andrew his prunes I put him in his exerscausor and waited for the prunes to do their job. A couple of minutes later my Mom called on the phone wanting to chit chat. She asked how everything was going and I told her about Andrew’s little problem and that I had given him a jar of prunes. At this point she told me in a VERY panicked voice to go and get some plastic and put it under Andrew because things were about to get really messy. I laughed at her, because I thought she was just joking around………and then I looked over at Andrew………in his formerly cream coloured sleeper……which was no longer cream coloured!

THERE WAS SHIT EVERYWHERE!!!!!! There was so much poop it had filled up the entire sleeper and was squirting out the arms, neck and the little button holes. Every time Andrew jumped in his exerscausor it would squirt everywhere. Jump, squirt, jump, squirt, jump, squirt. There was poop all over Andrew, all over the floor, all over our fire place, EVERYWHERE!!!! I just stood there in shock, looking at my son in horror while great globs of feces sprayed out from my son like he was some kind of obscene poop sprinkler.

Now what I did next was probably one of the stupidest things I have ever done in my life and all I can say in my defense is that I was in poop induced shock. Instead of taking my feces coated child directly into the nearest bath tub and hosing him down, I took him into his room. His Room!!!! There I tried to take off his sleeper and onesie while cleaning him up with some wipes. Like that was going to help, I mean we were so far past wipes it was not even funny. All I managed to do was get crap everywhere! By the time I realized my horrendous, newbie mom mistake (because veteran moms know in case of poosplosion you immediately go to the closest hose and drain), there was poo everywhere! It was all over me, all over Andrew, all over the walls, all over the window, all over the change table and even all over the floor.

At this point my beautiful, wonderful, non-poop covered husband walked in from work. He calmly helped me clean up our child and then our poop covered house. I learned many important lessons that day:

1.     Prunes are powerful. Never give more than 1/3 of a jar to a child at a time.

2.    Poop happens, so does barf, snot, pee and other gross stuff so get used to it.

3.    If a child is covered in anything gross (poop, barf, etc.) take child immediately to the nearest hose and drain and clean up there. If it is summer time feel free to do this outside. (accept if you have a newborn, some people frown upon using a garden hose on infants)

4.    Exerscausers are excellent at getting kids to poop. Our kids pooped in theirs so often we called it the pooperscauser.

If you want your house to stay nice and clean NEVER have kids.

I was talking to my sister the other day. She was telling me about how many messes her one year old daughter can make in record time. I had told her to enjoy the time before her daughter became mobile....but she didn't understand. In fact my cardinal rule about kids is that they will learn how to talk and walk all by themselves so you don't need to teach them to do it. So don't! The faster they learn how to walk and talk the faster your life of leisure is over...unless you already have kids. If so your work load just goes up exponentially with every walking, talking, energy sucking, animal. I mean kid you have. After we were done talking I started to reminisce about some of the first major messes my kids made. 

At some point my husband and I thought it would be a great idea to let the boys share a bedroom. Andrew was over two years and Jaxson was just over one. We had just put the boys to bed and went downstairs.  Now normally when we put the boys to bed an hour long event would ensue wherein the boys would do their best to avoid going to sleep, and we would do are best (short of drugging them, I swear) to try and get them to go to sleep. However tonight was different. There was no noise coming from the room, no children sneaking out, no requests for one more glass of water or one more story. Had a miracle occurred?

Zane and I were now in an unfortunate and extremely stressful situation that many parents will relate to. The situation that I refer to is needing to check on the kids because you are sure they are up to something and fearing that if a miracle has occurred and the kids are asleep you will wake them up.

When we finally opened up the door, we wished that we had not. There was Penaten diaper cream EVERYWHERE! Andrew had found a can of Penaten and had proceeded to paint everything with it: the carpet, the walls, his bed, his bed sheets, his brother’s crib. When we walked in he was meticulously painting the rungs of Jaxson's crib. I mean who does that? What kind of sick mind thinks this stuff up? Well here is a news cast for those of you without kids or with infants, kids are sick and twisted.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get zinc oxide diaper cream off of stuff? The stuff is designed to not come off so that it protects the delicate little tushies of our toilet challenged offspring. It took us forever to clean the mess up. Oh and for the record baby wipes gets Penaten off of most surfaces. Nothing else will, believe me we tried.

After we were done cleaning we scoured the room to make sure that there were no more sources of potential mess making and went to bed falsely secure in the knowledge that we had averted any future mess disasters. However, the mess making masterminds had other plans.

About a week later at about 9:30pm I noticed that the light was on in the boy’s room. They had supposedly been asleep for about an hour at this point. I went to check on them and the moment I opened the door I started to scream for my husband Zane.

Andrew had escaped from his bed and found a rogue can of Vaseline that somehow we had missed during the Penaten incident. Either that or he is even smarted then we had previously thought and had stolen if from the diaper bag during the day and squirreled it away in his room to use later for his nefarious plans. He had then covered and I mean COVERED his brother in Vaseline from head to toe. Jaxson was so slick that we could have put him on the road and slid him all the way to Newfoundland.

I'm not proud of this but I did contemplate a few unsavoury options at this point. In my defense homicide only crossed my mind for a split second....or maybe two.....however the only thing that saved the kids from being dropped off at an orphanage was they weren't open at that time of the night so I couldn't get directions and I was too mad to operate the GPS on my phone.      

For those of you who ever find yourself in this situation take note, you can shampoo that kids hair till the cows come home and use a variety of soap options, but Vaseline will not come out with soap. What you need is baking soda. Take a huge handful of baking soda and rub it in the Vaseline affected area. Then shampoo, rinse, and repeat.

Well two hours later we finally had the kids all tucked into bed and ready to rest and recharge for the new day on the horizon.  A new day where they would no doubt cause more madness and mayhem.

Everybody drops their baby!

Ok so this is one of those topics that people NEVER talk about. I think it’s because we are all afraid that CAS has special listening devices everywhere and at the slightest mention of any transgression or questionable decision is going to result in their swooping down and taking your kids. This my friends will not happen. Trust me on numerous occasions I have begged the supposed CAS listeners in my walls to take my kids because I just can’t take them anymore. No one ever comes.

 Now back to the topic at hand.  Most of us have all dropped our babies, or made a questionable decision that led to the injury of said baby. I mean it is inevitable if you think about it. You give a couple this little tiny being in the hospital after both parents have gone through labour which as far as I am concerned has probably caused them to have some kind of PTSD, because no one really thinks that giant baby is going to fit until they see or experience it and then after wished there was an MIB agent standing at the front doors of the hospital with a neuralizor . I mean giving birth is a seriously traumatic event…..but that is a topic for another time.

 So you give this poor couple who may or may not be suffering from PTSD this little tiny baby and then you send them home with no manual. Seriously???? I actually asked my obstetrician to go back in and look for it. I mean if my toaster came with a textbook size manual to make two lousy pieces of toast than surely a tiny human being should come with like a set of encyclopaedias. 

So you have two people who may or may not have PTSD, who have no manual on how to operate this tiny baby and you send them home where they will be kept up by said baby for like the next 2o years or so. How could bad things not happen????When my son was about 7 months old, I was about 2 months pregnant (cannot stress how bad that timing was, but that’s a story for another time), and I was changing my son Andrew and putting him in new clothes. I had stupidly not planned this exercise put well and had left his clothes just out of reach.  So instead of putting the baby down  in his crib, I tried to keep one finger on him and reach for his clothes. Since I am not inspector gadget this did not turn out well. Just as I reached for the clothes Andrew decided to roll over and off of his change table. I ran to him and picked him up and after he finished crying, which was over in like five seconds, he started to laugh at me freaking out.  Several things were happening in my mind at this time.

First I couldn’t believe I had just let my baby fall

Second was a little impressed that he had bounced.

Third I decided that I was the worst parent in the universe

Forth I was waiting for those CAS people in the walls to come and take my baby away.

After sitting on the floor for like ten minutes and rocking Andrew, while hysterically crying I called the doctor’s office. When the doctor heard Andrew laughing at me he asked me to come in so he could give me a checkup and that he was more than sure that Andrew was ok but was not sure about me. This is when the crazy part started. When I got to the doctor’s office all of the doctor’s office staff started to tell me all of these horror stories about accidents that had occurred to their babies in  an attempt to make me feel better.  Almost everyone had  a dropped the baby story; in fact one woman told me about how she did not buckle her son into the car properly and when she went around a corner the car door came open and he flew out of the car and somehow she ended up reversing the car over him. Now before anyone calls CAS he was fine and is now all grown up.

 Their attempts to normalize this event for me made me realize that these things happen all of the time and that no one talks about it.  Shit happens! However, one thing I have learned after parenting two little boys for the last little while is that babies are bouncy and thank god for that.