Snowed In: Like The Shining with Play-Doh

You've seen the Facebook posts:

"I can't wait to get snowed in with my sweet little people!"

"I'm so excited to spend the next couple days snuggling my kiddos in the warm house while the snow piles up outside!"

"Getting everyone bundled up to go play in the snow! Fun, fun, fun!"

I, too, may have posted something similar when we had our first big snow forecasted at the beginning of the season.

Year after year I get excited about that first big snow. In my head, despite years of experience with Ohio winters, it is going to be a couple days of shear domestic bliss. My kids and I will snuggle in our jammies, bake some delicious treats, make crafts, make snow angels, take naps and make a scrumptious, hot dinner to enjoy with Daddy when he gets home from work and out of the cold. Yes, in my head this is going to be an amazing time.  It looks a little something like a scene from...I don't know...some kind of idyllic domestic winter catalog.

Day one is fine. Day two I start getting the itch to get out. Day three it becomes more dangerous for everyone to stay in the house for another day than to brave the negative temperatures and slippery roads. Nothing is working out like my winter dreams. Let's start with the snuggling in pajamas, shall we?

Yes, we are in our pajamas. As a matter of fact we've BEEN in our pajamas for the better part of a week now. Sounds great, right? Wrong. There is something about wearing real clothing that makes us feel human. Wearing pajamas for more than three consecutive days makes us nothing more than bears or alligators with cable. I feel it and my two toddlers feel it. And like bears and alligators, my toddlers, wearing now crusted-on pajamas, are not much for the cuddling I had imagined we would do. They much prefer to spend their time turning toy grocery carts on their sides and using them as a chair, climbing on their plastic table and chairs, pulling cords out of the electrical sockets and creating overall mayhem. As I type this, I can see my one year old daughter sneaking behind the chair toward said electrical outlet to unplug said cord. If I attempt to hold one of them and cuddle in the rocking chair, it is only moments before she arches her back and slides herself off my lap like an Acme cartoon character who flattens himself to sneak under a door.

Alright, the cuddling didn't work, so let's move on to those crafts! Let me just check my Pinterest boards for "crafts for 1 and 2 year olds." Lots of results. I'll see if I have the things I need for them to do any of these crafts: Pipe cleaners, pom poms, popsicle sticks (colored and plain), a strangely large supply of empty toilet paper rolls? No, no, no (no and no), no. That's okay. I'm resourceful. Let's do stickers. I offer this up and my two year old goes crazy with excitement! Yay! This should keep her happy, busy and not watching TV for a while. And it does if by "a while" you mean seven minutes. I spend those seven minutes pulling the stickers off the sheets because she can't do it herself. She becomes impatient as I am not removing the stickers fast enough for her. My one year old is eating the stickers. We'll move on to coloring. This occupies the two year old for 3 minutes. The one year old is eating the crayons. Play-Doh. This works to keep the 2 year old happy for a near 15 minutes! The one year old is eating the Play-Doh. I figure she's hungry and give her a string cheese. She is angry I am not allowing her to eat the Play-Doh. The two year old is now finished with the Play-Doh portion of today's itinerary and we move on to lunch.

Lunch. Nap. Clean up lunch, complete miscellaneous tasks that surprisingly still have to be done even though we are snowed in. Nap is over. Snack. Hey, let's go outside and play in the snow! Genius. I pat myself on the back for being an amazing mom.

I'm tired before I even begin describe the debacle that is taking two toddlers outside to play in the snow. But playing in the snow is like a rite of passage and great joy for children so I do it.

I go to the closet to get: warm pants, warm shirts, winter coats, winter hats, mittens, and snow boots. Better change diapers before we get outside. Change diapers. Begin dressing/wrestling one child, (my oldest is so excited that she tries to go out naked), grab second child who has now pooped in her clean diaper. Change diaper again. Dress/wrestle her. Now I'm sweaty but I will need to put on my coat, gloves, hat and shoes. Children impatiently whine to go outside while I take entirely too long to put on my shoes. Now we are out the door.

The girls ooh and ahh at the snow but don't dare touch it. They stand looking at it and poking the toe of their boots in the snow but refuse to touch it. I try to encourage them to feel it or make a snow ball or anything. Other than my youngest bending down to lick one small patch of ice on our salted drive way, its no dice. I think they must not be interested so I suggest going in but I get an immediate and emphatic "No!" Okay, we'll just stand here. But after a while I notice my hands and feet are tingling and I figure I better get the girls inside before frostbite settles in. I tell them it is time to go in and the melt down ensues. My two year old begins screaming 'no' with frozen tears running down her face which is now as red as Satan's and she has sprouted horns. I am certain my neighbors are looking out their frosted windows and wondering why I am such an awful mother. Probably a bad childhood or maybe a chemical imbalance but either way they are going to call Child Protective Services on me. I grab my youngest and she uses her baby superpowers to turn her body into a garbage bag filled with jelly wearing a puffy pink coat. I put her under my left arm, take her sister by the hand with my right and miraculously and calmly wrangle them inside. The fun and crying continue as I proceed to undress them inside. My oldest repeatedly yelling through snot and tears that she wants to "stay here! stay here!" The youngest has thrown her body to the ground in protest of the warmth of the house.

Remember that baking and cooking I had planned? FOR.GET.IT. I turn on the TV, handout sippy cups and Goldfish Crackers. Sandwiches for dinner. Sorry, honey.

Repeat it all tomorrow.

Is it Spring yet?

Five Things I Should Do Before 8 am and What I Actually Do

This morning around ten o'clock, I finally got around to getting my laptop out of the pantry where I keep it, (yes, the pantry...the one in the kitchen. Shut up). I needed to pay bills online I kept forgetting to pay. So in order to keep from having our cable and cell phones shut off and thus keep our family's oxygen flowing, I left the dirty dishes in the sink and logged on and paid those bills! Then my undiagnosed adult ADD brain was distracted by an article on the hard-hitting news outlet, Yahoo! called "5 Things Super Successful People do Before 8 am." I opened it because I'm a person and I want to be SUPER successful--not just regular successful--S-U-P-E-R successful!

Not surprisingly, these were not five things I'd never heard before. I think I secretly hope that when I open these articles it’s going to say something like, "new research says to NOT exercise in the morning because your heart may explode. It is best to first eat a donut and have a cup of coffee before getting around to mild cardio around 4 pm, if at all." But alas, it doesn't. It says:

1. Exercise. Ugh...I KNOOOOWWWWW!! Enough already. Believe me, I would love to have the gumption to exercise before my kids get up, take a shower and get my day going. I have even tried recently. I made a plan to wake up at 6 am and do a workout DVD and get showered and dressed before my kids got up. But wouldn't you know it, halfway through my 20 minute DVD my youngest woke up screaming. I continued with my workout and assumed Daddy would just get up and take care of her but that was a negative. I walk upstairs all sweaty from trying to "shred" my two year old baby fat off to see Daddy still lying in bed. To his credit, when he heard me walk upstairs he did jump out of bed and follow my into the baby’s room and stand over me while I changed her diaper. I handed her over long enough to get a shower and decided this probably wasn't going to work. There is simply no predictability to how late she will sleep or if she will allow me to sleep all night. Some children under one actually become possessed by demons between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am and get a sick, sadistic pleasure from waking up their mother through the night and then up for the day around 6 am. My child is one such demon possessed baby. Adorable, but possessed. The best is when she is up so early that by 7 am she is ready for a morning nap...exactly when her older sister gets up. The best I can do for exercise these days might be a walk around the neighborhood at some point in the day when everyone is awake, fed, kind of dressed and not sitting in a poopy diaper. Some days that point never comes but some days it does...VICTORY!

2. Plan your day.  This one I sort of do but my plans are more like a list of things I must do for survival, like feed the children, change diapers, pay bills, keep the counters and floors free of scum enough to avoid a call from child protective services. And lofty aspirations like fold laundry, vacuum the stairs and go to Target (that last one can sometimes be moved to the 'survival' list). At any moment something can be added or taken away with or without my permission or knowledge. The ultimate goal is to have everyone fed, sort of clean and peacefully asleep by 8 pm.

3. Eat a healthy breakfast. This one is not super duper hard for me because I really do LOVE to eat. And I love healthy breakfast food like eggs and oatmeal. But before 8 am? No. I can just see me sitting down to eat my beautiful egg whites and oatmeal while my children stand at my feet crying for "moy and moy," (what my oldest calls food sometimes). No, Mr. Yahoo Article Writer, I have to get the girls seated, fed, cleaned up and the baby to get a bottle before I sit down to eat. Oh, what's that? You no longer want the oatmeal you asked for? You now want a baby food pouch like your 11 month old sister? Sure, let me get that for you! I am lucky enough to get the coffee going and a cup poured while they eat. I may have to microwave it 73 times before I finish it but it’s there, like a hot, steaming hug. I often get to scarf down what is left over on their plates like a ravenous wolf without a pack. Then around 10 or 11, I get a "real" breakfast. I'm not whining...I'm just stating facts.

4. Visualization. Shut up. Just stop it. In the words of a wise woman: Ain't nobody got time for that!

5.  Make your day top heavy. They mean to do your hardest or most dreaded tasks early in the day. See number 2 on this list. My day is like my post-baby body...its heavy ALLLL OOOVVERRR!

Maybe one day I will be able to do the things on this list and be as successful as Margaret Thatcher or Frank Lloyd Wright (whoever that is), like the article mentions but it’s probably not going to be while I have two under two...or three...or four. Okay, I'm probably never going to be Margaret Thatcher. I'm fine with that.

This Work-at-Home-Mom's Living Room "Office"

I am extremely fortunate to work from home. I can't even take credit or claim my own ingenuity for the reason why I can do it. My mom owns her own company and she utilizes my years of banking experience and business degree to keep things running smoothly on the financial end of things while she does the hard work of running a small business. She claims my services are invaluable but  really I'm not so sure. 

Working at home has unique challenges.  Like two year olds climbing me mountaineer style while yelling to look at Google images of elephants and YouTube videos as I attempt to create spreadsheets or run payroll. There is also the challenge of keeping a working office in my home. We don't have an extra bedroom for a dedicated office and though we have a basement, it's unfinished and not great for working. Lastly, since I'm often working while my kids are home I need to be in a central location like our open living room/kitchen area. This means my "office" was actually half of our closet-like pantry with sliding doors. It's not a bad-sized pantry but it also had to house arts and craft supplies, cleaning supplies, medicine, paper towels, etc. 

It wasn't ideal but it kept it all close at hand, out of the reach of the girls and out of sight when the door was closed. I would have loved to get it all out of there but I wasn't about to have an open work station in my living room. I wouldn't like it aesthetically and it would be impractical to have it where curious little gremlin hands could get to it all! I had seen secretary desks and I thought they would work but I'm super cheap and didn't want to spend the amount of money I would need to on the good ones I'd seen. 

Then one miraculous day I was scrolling through Facebook as I tend to do 90% of my days when I saw this beautiful lady! 

She was being sold for cheap in a local buy/sell/trade group so I snatched it up. The seller even knocked a few bucks off the price when I offered her my old unused wooden desk as a partial trade. And her husband delivered the new one and hauled the old one away! Pretty sweet deal. 

The next day I got to work moving things from the pantry to the secretary desk. The challenge was making things behind the glass look pretty and living roomy, rather cluttered, boring and officey. 

I picked up just a few things at Target like wire mesh hanging folder baskets, pretty printed file folders, and a white plastic basket weave-looking basket for some small items. Other things fit nicely on the inside of the desk. I added some small finishing touches like photos and a vase and I am SO happy with the result! I've already annoyed everyone on my personal Facebook page with pictures of my "baby," so now it's your turn! 

Most of the drawers are empty for now, but I did use the bottom drawer to put my girls' little figurine toys in. 

What do you think? Could you make something like this work for you? 

Get Cooking Utensils Off the Counter

I can't stand cluttered kitchen counters. While I can't avoid some things being out on the counter I do what I can to keep them clear. 

One of my favorite declutterer and one of my more genius ideas was grabbing the magnetic curtain rods off my front and back doors and sticking them on the side of my fridge with some S hooks from Ikea. All my most used cooking utensils fit nicely, they are off the counter and close by when cooking! Ah...my OCD is calmed and I can't go another day outside the looney bin. That's a pretty good day! 

The Most Annoying Trend in Blogs

I know a few things about human beings but here are just two: they generally mean well and they also sometimes say very stupid things. These are just facts of life and I personally think that the former makes the latter a lot more tolerable. When someone says something many people consider insensitive or just plain dumb to me like, "oh, I could never be a stay at home mom. I would be so bored!" I just consider the source and if they aren't wearing an 'I Hate SAHMs Club," t-shirt I assume they are a person like me who means well but doesn't always think before speaking. I have said a number of stupid things in my life including but not limited to:

"Wow! You're HUGE!! Are you sure you aren't having twins?" 

"Oh you are having twins? Did you conceive naturally?"

"You're having another baby already?! You guys need cable!" This particular one came back to haunt me when I had two babies 12 months apart and I heard similar sentiments for...well I still hear them two years later! 

"Your kids go to their dad's every other weekend? That's a nice break!" 

"Sometimes I wish I went to a quiet office everyday like you!"

"You guys have been married a while, when are you planning on having kids?"

And these are just the things I'm willing to openly admit! I'm sure I have said many more things that were unintentionally insensitive to number of different people groups. And fortunately for me, to date, no one has decked me or even given me a firm talking to! I think it's the freckles. No one wants to make a girl with chubby cheeks and freckles cry. It's not cute.

So all of this is what makes the SLEW of blog posts warning against such stupid questions the most annoying trend in blogging. They are usually titled something like, "10 Things Never to Say to a Working/Stay at Home Mom," "5 Questions Not to Ask a Breastfeeding/Formula Feeding Mom," "What to Never Say to a Soduko/Cat Lover." These posts are about as unoriginal and unentertaining as every viral parody of a pop song on YouTube, (can we just stop making those? Please?). But they are also just not nice. Do we really need to be that way? Do we need to shut down conversations before they even begin? Sure, some people say terrible things from a hateful or truly distasteful place and those people need our swiftest and hardest verbal junk-punch we can muster up! But otherwise let's all just calm down, don't take it all so seriously, and be kind and understanding of one another. You'll get your turn to say something dumb soon enough!

It's Naughty Time

The kids are in bed and it's just me and my husband in the quiet house. It's been a long day of work and kids and now it time to just let loose and indulge in the pleasure that has been allusive all day long. I want something hot and satisfying. I get ready and shimmy off my pants and toss my bra across the room. Give me the good stuff, daddy!

Seriously, bring me a hot burrito and a diet coke. Oh yeah. Right there...next to my iPhone. Do we have tortilla chips? 

Have you ever enjoyed a meal with toddlers?  No. Of course you haven't. They do not allow that. It's against toddler law. If you're with them all day you get the pleasure of not enjoying all of your "meals," with them when dinner would be enough torture. But dinner is special. Dinner is when my husband is home too and I actually set a table, serve things that are hot (usually) and not in the shape of dinosaurs (usually). It's a time when I think we are going to all sit down to eat and talk about the day despite my three-plus years of experience telling me otherwise. I know it will go miserably. There is yelling, crying, running, negotiation, and protests. It's a regular suburban war zone run by 26-pound war lords. If you, the parent, are hungry you better scarf down enough of that cold plate of tacos to get through the next two hours until bed time and be happy with that.

It's clean up, story and bath time. Then you watch the clock and rationalize that your half a taco has worn off and 7:39 is close enough to 8:00.You turn off Jeopardy (educational family television) and announce, "alright! Bedtime! March upstairs!" You get everyone tucked in, read to, prayed with and hydrated with another "glass of wa-wer." Close the door and you're HOME FREEEE! 

You skip happily downstairs and walk into your kitchen which magically transformed into Willy Wonka's room of candy while you were upstairs. Oh the possibilities! There's the dinner's left overs aka Second dinner! Peanut butter and jelly or sugary cereal you won't have to share with anyone! Cheese and crackers! Ice cream? Is there ice cream in the freezer? No. Damn it! Maybe You'll eat a healthy snack like yogurt and a banana. "You don't know, I could do that one day! YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE!" Maybe you'll just vacilate between standing in front of the pantry and refrigerator shoving alternate handfuls of dry cereal and shredded cheese in your face. But whatever you choose, you are in charge of this moment and not any three foot tall wannabe spoiled rock star demanding fruit snacks minus the green ones or demanding a drink of your water and then leaving floaters in it. You're a grown up. Own it. Live.it.up. 

By the time you have polished off that bag of tortilla chips, (it was almost empty anyway, don't beat yourself up), and checked in with all your friends on Facebook who are also shoveling sweet freedom into their pie holes after bedtime, it's almost 9:30. What are you doing up this late anyway? Be responsible! So you clean up the kitchen and the evidence of your nightly bender and go to bed. Make sure to brush your teeth. The dictators will be up in 8 hours and will be able to smell the tortilla chips on your breath. 

The Definition of Insanity

I have a three bedroom house, two toddlers and one husband who snores like a freight train. My youngest child has taken the better part of her two years to sleep in what I would consider a somewhat acceptable manner. Between the snoring husband and the gremlin child I haven't slept in over two years.

To keep the gremlin from waking her three year old sister, we have kept them in separate rooms, which only left me with our slowly dying sectional couch or the floor to escape to when the buzz-saw-of-a-husband's snoring chased me out of our warm, comfortable bed. In my desperation, I have made two failed attempts at putting my darling angels in the same bedroom. Both times saw the same result: complete and utter chaos. Disassemble the crib, move it to the other room, reassemble, put the children to bed, turn out the lights, screaming, crying, and no one falling asleep until past 11:00; wake up at 3:00, 4:00, 4:30, and 7:00. The next day we again disassemble the crib, move it back and reassemble. And I go back to fitfully sleeping in any number of locations throughout the house but in relatively reliable peace while everyone else sleeps in their respective nests of warmth and slumber. 

Obviously, after these two unsuccessful trials, the only logical move is to try it again. So in the past week, in my infinite wisdom and sanity, we repeated the whole process. But you say, "the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over expecting different results!" Well, you, my friend clearly do not have children in your life, otherwise you would know that there is a caveat to this rule for dealing with these miniature haters of logic. In the world of child rearing, repeating an action and expecting a different result is called "consistency." 

Yes, consistency. Consistency is apparently the key component for making sure your sweet darling doesn't turn into a full-fledged serial killer later in life. 

Is your child still crapping their pants daily despite sitting on the toilet every two hours for 30 minutes at a time? Just keep doing it. Eventually they will do what you want them to. Don't fall victim to the "she won't go to college in diapers" mentality. Yes she will. 

Does your little precious seemingly refuse to sleep in their own bed at night despite your nightly bedtime routine and the promise of reward stickers on a chart each morning? Just keep banging your head up against that wall, mama! Eventually he'll see that his toddler bed filled with Legos and toy trains is way more awesome and comfortable than your king size bed with 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. 

Keep pinning and cooking those "kid friendly" broccoli recipes because one day soon they will see the wisdom of eating green vegetables and question why they ever asked for fruit snacks for every.meal.of.the.day. Just keep at it. Don't you dare give in!

Of course this thing we call consistency is actually insanity after all because children and the people who have them are crazy! So by some mystery of modern psychology it works...or it doesn't really...I don't know. But I can't get into it any further right now; I have to go get my kids their fruit snacks again.