Doodle

Yesterday morning I was completely busted. Busted in a way that I haven’t been busted since I was 17 and snuck out of my best friend’s house to go to a party, which should really be a post for another time.

Anyway, Caroline had a friend coming over to play and our playroom was a complete disaster. I realize that it is in fact a playroom, which means it will never be a clean room, but even by playroom standards it was disreputable.

So, I began my stealth approach of casually throwing things into a bag to be thrown away. Broken pieces and parts, dried out playdough, Happy Meal toys, and a few Barbie shoes were quickly disposed of and some semblance of order was returned to the room. I was pleased.

But sadly, I made a flaw worthy of a mere rookie, not a seasoned OCD veteran.

I threw everything away in a Disney Princess bag.

I then placed the Disney Princess bag in my kitchen trash and pulled the whole thing out for P to take to the curb. However, he was doing something really important like buying ammo online and didn’t get the trash out before Old Eagle Eyes spotted the Disney Princess bag through the semi-transparent kitchen trash bag and she had a complete shall we say freak out.

“MAMA, why is my princess bag in the trash? WHY? Get it Mama, get my princess bag. Daddy threw it away! He threw it away!”

And so I let him take the blame.

No, I didn’t, but I thought about it, especially because he was watching this whole exchange with a smug grin on his face.

I said “Oh Mama must have made a mistake, let me get it for you” and I pulled it out of the trash while discreetly dumping out its contents.

She took the treasured bag from me and with her hands on her hips looked at me and said, “Mama, you are always throwing my best stuff away”

She isn’t the first person in this house to accuse me of this offense, but I’m sad that she’s on to me so early. I need to brush up on my stealth moves and remember the first rule of any good spy, always destroy the evidence immediately.

Oh my word have we had a week around here. The whining, the crying, the fit throwing have been legendary and Caroline has been even worse.

Nothing like combining a long weekend road trip with a sinus infection and lack of sleep to come up with one bad cocktail. Speaking of which, I could really use one.

Our day started this morning at the most ungodly hour of 5:20 a.m. and I am not kidding when I say that I started crying. Caroline has been such a bear this week that I was hoping for a reprieve until at least 6:30, but no such luck.

So at 5:30, I put her in my bed and spent the next hour listening to her say that she’s thirsty, she needs Ernie, she needs her blanket. These are all things that she would have had access to had she been in her own bed by the way. Finally at 6:30, I turned on Higglytown Heroes and prayed those little Weeble Wobble wannabes would buy me at least another 30 minutes of sleep. Apparently, I was being a huge optimist.

I had agreed to keep Gulley’s boys this morning because she had to take her husband to a doctor’s appointment. Of course I had agreed to this last week when my own child was still a delight to be around the majority of the time and I didn’t have a lingering cold. But that Gulley, she is dependable and showed up bearing donuts, homemade chocolate chip cookies and a gift certificate for a pedicure. For that, I would’ve kept her boys for the whole week or well you know, the day.

Jacks and Will were perfectly pleasant. Will even let me hold him and kiss his little baby fat cheeks which isn’t common for him and just thrilled me.

About mid-morning, Caroline was in full meltdown mode. I sent her to timeout which then caused Will to start crying and then I looked at Jacks and his lip started to tremble as he said, “I just want to go to my house”. And I wanted to say “Yes, please let’s go to your house and leave this crazed, sleep deprived 3 year old here”.

But I didn’t because that would be wrong.

Instead I calmed everybody down and gave them each one of my precious homemade chocolate chip cookies that Gulley brought this morning. I even managed to hold in my rage when I noticed later that one of those cookies had been dropped on the floor with just one bite taken out of it by an unknown perpetrator.

Hopefully we will all get some much needed rest this weekend and life will return to some semblance of normal. I’m hoping this is just the result of Caroline being a tired, sick little girl and not some new personality that is here to stay. She even told me at one point yesterday, “I don’t want God to live in my heart”. I looked at P and said, “Well, congratulations. We’ve raised a 3 year old blasphemer”.

I am in day 3 of being under siege. Caroline has been sick and like all good germ carrying monkeys, she has spread her sore throat and congestion to her mama. There is really nothing less fun than being a mama with a cold.

Remember in the pre-child days when being sick meant getting on the couch with a warm blanket and watching movies all day? Now being sick just means that I have to chase a whining, runny nosed toddler all over the house while my energy level is below half capacity and amazingly in spite of the sickness, she is still running at full steam. She can outwit me, outlast me, and outwhine me.

In fact, she is so desperate to get us out of the house that she is in her room getting herself dressed. She actually just yelled to me that she needs to put her makeup on and I’m so worn down that all I did was walk in her playroom and open a compact of blue eyeshadow for her. I didn’t even say anything about the fact that she has on two pairs of underwear, a sundress, red sparkly shoes with mismatched socks and has completely soaked her hair down with the no-tangles spray.

By the end of the day, we’ll probably be eating pixie sticks, drinking coke straight from the bottle and using my good linens as a tent. She has worn me down.

And did I mention it is pouring down rain so we couldn’t go anywhere even if I was desperate enough to attempt it? I guess I’ll just go ahead and get out my good wedding china for her to play with since it’s only a matter of time at this point anyway.