People always tells me how busy I must be, how hard my life certainly is, etc. Well, they're mostly right. I manage to find time to constantly post on mommy forums and to watch 12 episodes of a single show in about a week. But I am rather busy. One of the benefits of having kids so close in age is that, developmentally, they are close to on the same level, so they enjoy the same games. My children will sit in the living room and play Peek a Boo with each other for 30 minutes at a time. Bliss. And somedays are better than others. It depends a lot on how much sleep we got, what Luke ate the day before, whether or not I remembered my various medications.. This is the lay out of a typical day in these parts. I will add pictures later, but it's kind of late now.
7:00ish. Wake up in the morning. Luke comes into our bedroom to wake us, and usually wakes Heidi, who would probably sleep later. One parent gets out of bed, and a sheer move of parenting brilliance, goes out and turns on the TV. Heidi's diaper is changed, and she and Luke watch TV in the living room while we go back to sleep. Do I regret this decisions? Not a bit. My TV is a babysitter. That's why we have it.
around 8:00 Lauren wakes up. Inevitably, she has peed through her diaper yet again. She is soaked in pee, and so is her bed. one of us, usually Andy, gingerly and quickly carries Lauren to the diaper station, strips her down, and changes her diaper. Pants are put on over her diaper to delay the removal of said diaper at a later time.
Lauren gets ice.
All the kids run around the living like banshees for about 30 minutes while Andy and I lay in bed and cover our heads, hoping they will forget we exist. We are tired, because our Starfish Baby kept us up all night, and most likely Luke had a night terror at some point, and Lauren woke up demanding a drink.
Finally the kids remember they have parents, and it's time to use those parents as trampolines. They begin to do cannonballs on the bed, dangerously close to our faces, prompting us to finally drag ourselves out of bed and put some caffeinated sodas in the freezer to get cold fast.
Lauren gets some ice.
I make breakfast, and sometimes it's pancakes or waffles, and sometimes it's bowls of cereal that inevitably end up spilled on the floor. I mop up the milk with a bath towel, and vow to deal with the stickiness later. I never get to it.
Lauren demands ice.
By now it's time for Andy to leave for work, and I'm on my own. I say a prayer. Someone needs a diaper right as he walks out the door. The dishes need doing, and the mountain of laundry by the washer is trying to develop sentience. Soon it will succeed and take over the house. I lament how tired I am already.
I finally get around to loading the dishes, which takes about an hour because I have to repeatedly pull the baby out of the dishwasher, interrupt my task to get ice, make peanut butter and jelly for Luke, fill his sippy cup, and remind him to put on some clothes. He won't put on clothes for at least two more hours.
It is now nearing to lunch time, my house is still a mess, and my children are getting cranky. And hungry. I fix something for lunch (if I'm felling super I make something with the oven, but usually iy's mac and cheese, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly.. you get the idea). Lauren generally eats ice for lunch because she's anorexic.
After lunch, I attempt to clean something. I sweep the floor, usually. This takes forever, because I constantly have to remove Heidi from my dirt pile, shift the position of the dogs, resweep over there because someone walked on it, and stop Lauren from trying to "help" by taking the mop to my dirt pile. After 20 minutes of not really getting it done, I give up, and vow to sweep it later. The floor is still sticky over there from the milk this morning. Eh, whatever.
Lauren demands more ice, and this is the second time she's stripped naked and peed on the floor. Now I REALLY need to mop, but I settle for another towel and some Clorox. Good enough, right? Luke is still naked. He had underwear on at some point, but took it off to go potty. I reapply underwear and send him on his way.
Luke demands another sandwich. Lauren takes it, and a fight ensues. This would be the fifth or tenth time that I pried my children off each other lest they draw blood. They are sent to their opposite corners, but are back at it again within minutes. The dog has stolen Luke's discarded sandwich, and I will now make him a new one.
On some days, a nap goes here. Either Lauren or Heidi or both, but almost never Luke, and never ever me, no matter how much I want to. At this point I've had several cans of mountain dew, and still feel like a walking zombie, and everything hurts. Sometimes my hands are numb. Keep on trucking.
Finally, Andy is home from work. Now I can finish cleaning my house, get a nap, cook dinner. The day is mostly over. Dinner is made, dinner is consumed (Lauren has ice for dinner, of course). The kids watch some TV before bed, and finally there is peace.
Oh wait. Heidi is still awake. The TV plays Leap Frog while I try and relax with some inappropriate television programming via the computer. Heidi wanders around here and there, does her own thing. Then it's time to take her to bed, where I nurse her and let her climb on me for about an hour before she finally passes out. After sneaking from the bedroom, I make myself comfortable on the couch with some TV.
Cue crying. I pry myself from the couch, stretch, and enter the room that belongs to my two older children. Lauren is sitting up in bed, thrusting her bottle at me, and Luke is writhing on his mattress, not really awake, but loud enough that he woke his sister. Finally we get them back to sleep, and NOW I can enjoy the television or a good book right?
Ugh, but it's midnight. I'm just going to bed. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to read more than two pages of my book while I hide from my children in the bathroom! A girl can dream, yeah?
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