If I Hide it Back Here...

I thought that my furniture had escaped the artistic hand of my son. Not so much. When I tipped the left back cushion on my couch forward yesterday afternoon there were long black lines slashed across it. Considering the fact that he could have chosen a much worse spot to doodle I tried to keep my wits about me and stay calm. I am proud to say that I didn’t shout. Much.

Of course the first thing to do was to call my mom and see if she could suggest any way in which to eradicate the marker from the cushion. It would seem that none of her children had ever done such a thing, so she wasn’t sure what to recommend. After mom, I find the Internet to be a great source for information on such matters. Apparently other people’s children have done things like destroy furniture through art.

The two most popular suggestions for my dilemma were to apply hairspray or Oxy Clean carpet cleaner. Since I don’t own hairspray I thought I’d try the Oxy Clean. After one treatment the lines are still visible, but greatly diminished in darkness. I realize that I should have taken before and after pictures, however I was in too much of a rush to see if it would actually work.

I scrubbed that couch so hard that I’m surprised I didn’t burn a hole through the fabric with the friction of my elbow grease. The young man received quite a brutal scrubbing as well. Permanent marker isn’t super easy to remove from flesh. And I thought that if the consequence of drawing on oneself was a fierce and brutal washing the child would be less likely to repeat such behavior in the near future.

Inappropriate Artwork

This is what happens when Daddy teaches that it's fun to draw smiley faces on to fingers.




















Daddy better thank his lucky stars that his Mini-Me didn't decide to permanent marker the furniture while he was at it.




















He choose to color his sister instead.















At least she's washable.

Cars, Food, and Bathroom Water

I’m not sure what chromosome carries it, but my daughter got my predisposition for food-love. I really, really love food. A lot. Meal times make me happy (especially when I get to cook in peace without a screaming child attached to my leg). When I taste a bite of something that is particularly yummy I have been known to do a little dance right there in my chair. Just thinking about it makes me salivate.

My sweet sixteen-month-old child has not made too much of an effort at speech yet. She has a smattering of vocabulary under her belt, but she has made it quite clear that she has no intention of doing the repeat-after-me thing (the thing where the parent exaggerates facial expressions and says, “w-w-w-w-a-a-a-t-t-t-t-e-e-r-r-r-r”). And then, in the last week, she pops out with three new words. Three. New words.

The thing that has me totally cracking up is that all three words are food items. “Chicken.” “Pancake.” “Cookie.” The last one being her favorite. When she is not in the kitchen tossing cat food around like confetti, she can often be found in front of the pantry shelf playing store. Today she plucked a package of graham crackers from the shelf and lobbed it into the toilet. Unopened packages of graham crackers float in toilet water.

There appears to be an unusual fascination with bathrooms today. While putting the baby to bed this evening I heard the noise of gushing water in the bathroom sink. When I arrived on scene to investigate I found that my son had about half a dozen of his cars lined up in the sink and fully submerged. He was washing them down with a moist wipe. I guess they were dirty. At least their paint will be sparkly when their undercarriage rusts out.

Those Fatal Accidents Can Kill You

I think I should make it a goal to watch my husband more carefully when he is out cutting and hacking away at the lawn. After having conquered the yard this past weekend he informed me that there was a moment during the process when he thought his life to be over. He showed me his wounded neck and commenced with a story so funny that I gave up trying to maintain a grave expression and laughed feverishly until I thought I would lose consciousness.

While handling the weed whacker a stone or small chip of something was hurled at Sean’s neck by the spinning-line-trimmer-of-doom. One moment he was somewhat happily flaying the jungle grasses in the back yard (I say “somewhat” because he loathes this chore) and listening to his iPod, the next he felt something pierce his throat at the speed of sound and, he believed, lodge itself into his esophageal passage. Being the calm and conscientious person that he is, my husband was instantly convinced that the hour for his passing had come.

Though half demented from the excruciating pain he was able to formulate a plan of action in his mind to up the odds of his survival. Immediately dropping the trimmer he purposed to make his way toward the house in order to collapse in front of a window, thereby increasing the chance that I would look out and see him lying, gravely wounded, in the grass. (As he hadn’t actually mowed the grass yet, this probably wouldn’t have done him any good because I feel quite sure that if the baby had gotten away from me back there, with the grass as high as it was, I wouldn’t have been able to spot her upright body over the top of the grass let alone his prone form).

As he stumbled through the tangle of crab grasses and fescue and dandelion weeds, he recalled to himself the annals of fatal weed whacking accidents and found little consolation that his name would soon be added to this elite list. Because, he informed me later, people generally die from fatal weed whacker accidents. Who knew?

This is where I get a smidgen fuzzy on the details. I think Sean must have found the courage to actually feel his neck and subsequently realized that not only was there no gaping gash, but there wasn’t really even any blood, because he just turned around and finished up the yard work before coming in to regale me with tales of near-death and further excuses to forgo mowing the grass completely. I do think that the blow to the neck may have caused some temporary impairment though since he didn’t come directly to Nurse Mommy for a pat and a kiss and Band-Aid. The poor brave soul. Maybe it’s because I’m not a very good nurse; with me it’s more like a “you’re fine” and a shake of the head and a Band-Aid. Better to keep on mowing.

A Walk in the Woods

Well Hello Garbage!

All of this time I have been worried about my daughter throwing things of importance into the trash can when it would seem that it was myself that I should have been worried about. At this point it seems unclear how much longer I will be in possession of my full mental capacities. Since the birth of my second child my memory grows faultier by the hour; my to-do lists are becoming more detailed and the little blocks on my calendar are more crowded with monotonous points and reminders.

I awoke this morning and had hardly started my day when I realized that I had meant to mail in payment for my wonderful new gas range. Glancing in the letter slot where bills-in-waiting are stored in order of their due dates, I quickly ascertained that said appliance bill was not where it belonged.

Swell. I then recalled having seen it mixed in with some bills I had paid earlier in the week. I checked the filing cabinet and the computer desk. No luck. In my mind’s eye I could see mailing envelopes and superfluous bill inserts floating down, down, down into the depths of the kitchen trash can, and I wondered if, somehow, the unpaid Sears bill had gotten mixed in with the wrong crowd and headed into the dumps.

In the past I have peered into the scary wasteland of kitchen garbages and wondered if there was anything important enough to warrant plunging an arm into its depths. Well, today I took that plunge. While holding my breath of course.

I halfheartedly poked around in the mess that seemed to consist mostly of coffee grinds. Everything was slimy and mixed up together and saturated in coffee grind juice. It was gross. It really wasn’t fun, so I thought I would look around the house again in an effort to locate the bill before I had to do some serious riffling. Unfortunately the envelope hadn’t magically appeared anywhere that I could see.

Further postponing my morning sustenance and life-giving java, I trudged back to the garbage can convinced that in order to find my statement I was going to have to take that refuse by surprise and force it to hand over my bill. I gingerly hung a plastic bag on the kitchen chair and sorted the yuck from the kitchen can into it. Still no bill.

But wait! The garbage from earlier in the week was tied up and sitting at the curb waiting to be picked up and hauled away to a huge rambling dump never to be seen or heard from again! There was no time to lose. Still in my pajamas, I peeked out of the front door. I looked up the street. I looked down the street. I wondered if I should riffle through the can while it sat on the curb or if I should drag it into the back yard before dumping it and scrabbling through it like a rabid raccoon.

I opted for leaving the can on the curb and just looking through it really, really fast. As Providence would have it, I untied the top bag and there was the long lost envelope with my bill statement lying right on the top and soaking in coffee grinds (of course). From now on maybe a grown-up should follow me around the house and make sure I’m not sticking stuff in the garbage can that doesn’t belong there.

Perchance Her Next Word Will Be Yo-Ho

My readers may remember my husband started a new job about two months ago, which rendered us insurance-less for a short period of time. He is a month out from the end of his probationary period, so we are still in that “short period of time” time. I knew that it would be practically useless to hope that we could make it through without a visit or two to the doctor. I’m quite sure that there is a terrible sort of chuckle coming from the final resting place of Mr. Murphy at the prospect of so much fun to be had at my expense.

A few weeks ago, my daughter awoke with a suspicious looking bump on each of her eyelids. I have been keeping one of my eyes on them, and while they haven’t gotten any larger they haven’t disappeared either. Being overcome with tiredness yesterday afternoon, the little munchkin stretched out upon a pillow and succumbed to what is known in mommydom as the wonderful “nap.” With smiling eyes I gazed down upon my lovely little bug.

It startled me to notice that her right eyelid was swollen and covered in a purplish-bruisy sort of color. Not being a panicky sort of mommy, but a cautious one nonetheless when it comes to eyes and things of that nature, I called up the pediatrician’s office to see what could be done. Of course, with it being an eye and all, they wanted to see her.

I wasn’t ready to have my pocketbook plundered over what was likely an allergy related problem, and I thought it would be nice to be able to purchase some other necessities, like food, this week, so I purposed to put off the visit for a day and see how things were looking in the morning.

It was a nice sort of morning. The kids slept until the unheard of hour of 8:30am and I was feeling pretty cozy in my pajamas. I plucked the baby from the bed and was about to plant a smooch on her cheek when I noticed that she was looking out of her right eye through a slit. I considered the fact that she could be practicing her pirate impression, but given the redness and the swelling I thought this was unlikely.

At this point there was a smidgen of alarm present in my visage. That’s it! I’ve blinded my poor baby for life because I didn’t call for an ambulance to rush her and her puffy eyelid to the doctor yesterday! She’ll grow up only being able to enjoy the turning of the leaves with one eye and we’ll have to buy her an eye patch and a parrot for Christmas!

The swelling quickly abated to a more manageable degree of inflammation, but I feared that putting off a visit to the doctor for one more day might prove to be imprudent. It just wouldn’t do for a teeny little girl to have an eyelid as big as her whole face, so I called up the office and flew into warp speed to get everybody ready and out of the house in time to make the appointment.

A very wise woman once told me that sometimes peace of mind is worth paying for. Actually, she tells me that a lot. She’s my mom. And not being able to see the afflicted eyelid herself, she settled for giving me that nugget of wisdom again. She’s right. Even though it can be expensive at times, peace of mind is really priceless.

The doctor couldn’t say for sure why the eyelid is swollen, but it’s not infected and it doesn’t look to be causing any harm or discomfort. Now that a professional has examined it, I am positive the eyelid will be back to its normal size by morning. If I’m wrong and the baby wakes up with a monstrosity of a lid tomorrow then at least I know it’s nothing to worry about and I can get to work on that eye patch with a clear conscious.