Date Night

Have you ever taken a 3 year old to any sort of Sesame Street/Disney/Ice Capades type event? I have. Just did it tonight, in fact. Tate and I had a night out at the social event of the...hour. It went surprisingly smoothly, for the most part...pretty much, kinda.

As soon as I sat down, I felt like we were living on borrowed time. You know, where you just kinda sit and watch the kid, observing the initial excitement starting to wane and boredom and tiredness slowly creep in. Now, we had front row seats (yeah, I got an in with Elmo. What can I say) so at least we were RIGHT THERE. The problem was, we were RIGHT THERE at the very far side of the stage, so for much of the performance we had a nice view of furry blue and red and yellow...asses.

The characters did come out on the floor quite a bit though, so Tate got a lot of high fives and hair ruffles. I got a lot of ginormous, rock-hard, freaking 500 lb Muppet feet kicking me in the instep and clomping on my toes. I usually managed to bite my tongue before letting a profanity slip out. No reason to be teaching random kidlets something new besides the alphabet that evening.

Basically, the evening could be broken down like so:

FIRST 20 MINUTES: Tate: "Ooooh! Elmo! Cookie Monster! Let's get up and dance and sing and wave and freak out with general unabashed three-year-old joyfulness!" Me: "Aww, it's so fun to watch Tate enjoy himself. Such a joyous experience for mother and son."

SECOND 20 MINUTES: Tate: "Mommy, that little boy has an Elmo toy. Can I get an Elmo toy? Where are the Elmo toys? I think I need to go potty. Ooh, Cookie Monster just gave me a high five! I love Grover! Where are the Elmo toys?" Me: "Let's wait til the break, honey. There is a break, right? Shouldn't there be a break right about now? How long can these furry beings sing about sharing and the ocean and imagining crap??"

BREAK: Tate: "ELLLMOOOOOOO TOY!!! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!! I HAVE TO GO POTTY AGAIN! CAN I HAVE SOME POPCORN? THAT KID HAS POPCORN!" Me: "Oh my God, where are the stupid Elmo toys? Here, lady, here's your $4000 dollars for a cheap piece of plastic with Elmo's face on it. Oh look, and there's a guy walking around with Elmo balloons throughout the audience, 2 inches away from each kid. Hey pal, where's your sign saying 'Parents, if you make me walk right by your kid without buying them a balloon, you're telling them that you don't love them' ?? Awesome. Let's buy a balloon."

THIRD 20 MINUTES: Tate, as he wonks himself absentmindedly in the head with the freaking Elmo toy: "Soooo...Mom. What are you doing? Should I brush my teeth when I get home? Where's my popcorn? I think I have to go potty again. POO. I have to go POO. Does Abby Cadabby go poo? She doesn't have a pee-pee." Me: "Why don't they sell wine at these things? How can they sing 30 songs about the letter K?" Tate again: "Where's my drink made out of red dye and sugar? YOU THREW IT AWAY??? I WANT MY RED DRINK! Watch as I shimmy out of my chair and flop around desperately on the floor trying to suck up any puddles of red!"

All in all, it was a success. I kept myself occupied by snickering each time one of the characters wiped out on stage, which happened surprisingly often. Or maybe not all that surprisingly. Those feet are freaking heavy. I know. I still can't feel my toe from when Cookie Monster flattened it with his colossal paw. Big blue bastard. I also kept busy dreaming up ways to silence the brat behind me wailing "BEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT!!!! I ONLY WANT TO SEE BEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT!! NO ERNIE! NO BIG BIRD!! SHUT UP, GRANDMA YOU'RE STUPID!!!" Yeah, that kid was really pleasing to be around.

Nora and I had a little time together this morning, as well. She and I went to my friend's house for a little knitting and chatting time. Let's just say I'm a hell of a lot better at chatting than knitting. I would get to a certain point and then completely lose all coordination, patience, and even a minuscule sense of something resembling skill. Pretty much, I suck. I got to the point where I just put the needles down and declared I was done. Funny thing was, nobody really argued with me at that point. I think I may be a knitting failure. Oh well. There are other things I'm good at. Shut up, I'm serious.

Sweet Cheez-its.

Tate's becoming a pro at this whole preschool thing. Every morning as we drive there, he exclaims "I'm SO excited, Mom!" and every afternoon as we drive home, he gives me a garbled rundown of all his activities that day. Usually it's how they learned about dinosaurs or apples or owls, but last week was something rather...unexpected. This was the scene in the car ride home:

Me: "So, what did you learn about today, Tate?"
Tate: "Cheez-its."
Me: "...Cheez-its?"
Tate: "Yep. Cheez-its."
Me: "You mean you had Cheez-its at snack time?"
Tate: "NO! WE TALKED ABOUT CHEEZ-ITS!!"

Now, at this point I'm wondering if the teacher just plain ran out ideas of what to talk about that day and conducted an impromptu lecture on the joys of unnaturally orange snack crackers. Perhaps she had had a ferocious craving for them for one reason or another. Maybe she just wanted to make sure all the little children were able to revel in the wonder of...Cheez-its. I don't know.

Me: "Well, uh, what did you learn about Cheez-its? Are they yummy?"
Tate: "Mom. NO. Don't be silly."
Me: "O...K..."
Tate: "Cheez-its is our friend. Cheezi-its lives up in the sky."
Me: "Tate. Do you maybe, by chance, mean JESUS?"
Tate: "YES. CHEEZ-ITS."

Therrrrre we go. Tate will now be saying his evening prayers to a gigantic box of cheese-flavored squares floating merrily in the sky, looking down on all the little children telling them to do unto others as they would do unto them.

And if anyone knows the patron saint of missing shoes and socks, hit me up with their digits or something. Because I have like no foot coverings of any sort for any person in my house at this point. Now, things are even more cluttered and disorganized around here than usual. Eric's working 14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week so I'm pretty much Single Mommy these days. The kids aren't much for washing windows or scrubbing down baseboards, and also aren't really fans of letting me out of their sight for more than 3 minutes before pushing each other down the stairs or off the couch. Or out of the laundry hamper, toy shopping cart or clothes dryer. Therefore, I do not get much done. Well, really, anything done. It ain't pretty.

So today, I was in the usual chaos of trying to pin down both kidlets long enough to wrestle them into their clothes. I took a clean pair of matched socks off the kitchen table (yes, we have clean laundry on the kitchen table. It's usually only there for about 5 or 6 days. Then we'll have a different load of clean laundry on the kitchen table.) and put them on the couch. I left for 20 seconds, came back, and there was only one sock on the couch. The other sock apparently got so fed up with the disarray around here it staged a protest and stormed off. I made a quick check to ensure it wasn't stashed in Nora's cheek, and asked Tate if he took the sock.

Tate: "I'll help you look, Mommy. It's ok"
Me: "Gee, thanks. Why don't you tell me where you put it?"
Tate: "Um....your name is Nemo."
Me: "Awesome. That's the next place I was gonna look anyway."

I still haven't found it. I seriously think it made a desperate dash for freedom, to find a world where socks can run free without being stuffed into random cupboards or left in the car under one of the seats for years at a time or chewed on by little girls. A world where Tate's shoe doesn't end up in the clothes hamper, where mittens are no longer hidden inside the broom closet, where my hairbrush doesn't find itself buried under a foot of sand in the sandbox outside. It just unfolded itself, bid it's mate adieu and ran. Goodbye, sock. It's ok. There are days where it's simply easier to run to the store and buy new socks rather than wash and try to match up the ones you already have. There are always more socks out there.

But maybe it's just me and my stance on cleaning. Like the average person out there and I most likely have different views on what exactly "just do it" means in terms of cleaning. For most people, it might mean setting aside an entire day to to clean the hell out of your house: scraping old food off the oven, shoveling the dust out from behind the couches, sweeping out mummified carrots from behind the fridge. For me, "just do it" means finally bending down and picking up that piece of paper towel on the floor instead of just kicking it out of my way 100 times a day. Hey, every little bit helps.

Ok, for any of you who are A) not parents and therefore not used to dealing with this kind of stuff or B) extremely grossed out by gooey things, let's just save you major discomfort right now by saying this: SLIMY GREEN EYE BOOGERS. Oh, and EYELIDS CRUSTED TOGETHER WITH GOOPY, STRINGY, MUCOUS-Y EYE MATTER. And what the hell...DIARRHEA. Yep, you can leave now. I understand.



Yeah, the kids have pinkeye. I started to suspect something when Tate woke up this morning unable to open his right eye due to it being glued together with slimy yellowish glop. Oh, and when Nora's eyes both started looking kinda swollen and, uh...pink. Well, pink aside from the neon-green slime slithering out of the corners of her eyes and instantly hardening on her cheek, dying a quick and painful death. Pretty. Oh, yeah, and the diarrhea. That was fun too. Especially when it got embedded under my fingernails and splattered up onto my neck. I have to say though, you know you're a mom when you can strip your kid naked. scrub the poo off them and you, and wedge them between your knees and wrestle them back into clean clothes, all while keeping the phone firmly wedged against your ear, chattering a mile a minute with your friend, not missing a beat.



After taking both kids to the walk-in clinic where Tate managed to make the nurse almost fall off the stool when he snuck up behind her and lifted the little lever that makes the stool go "pphhhhffft" and drop like a rock, we headed to Target to get the prescriptions.


Holy Hell.


Normally I'm a fan of Target. However, I've realized that this is because I'm normally smart enough to not take both of my kids there at 5:15 pm. But since I needed to get eye drops I really had no choice. So we went. And waited for 45 minutes for eyedrops. Forty. Five. Minutes. I mean, really. Watching Tate hit Nora over the head with a plastic hanger gets old after like 8 minutes, people. So that left a whole 37 minutes to kill. And this is how I killed it.

"Tate, please stop doing that. Tate, I said stop. Seriously, STOP. Ok, really. Will you please stop. Just DON'T. OK??? WILL YOU NOT DO THAT?? COME BACK HERE. Look at me. I'm walking away. Really. No, Tate, I am. Walking. Away. Ok, this is supposed to make you FOLLOW ME. No, follow ME. Not the smelly 500 lb man with toilet paper hanging off his shoe. ME. Ok, where are you. Seriously not funny! WHAT CLOTHES RACK ARE YOU HIDING UNDER?? STOP PULLING ALL THE CARDS OFF THE SHELF. STOP LICKING THE DVD CASES. STOP OPENING THE HOME PREGNANCY TEST BOXES. STOP TRYING TO CRAWL INTO THE PHARMACY. SANTA WILL NOT BRING YOU ANY TOYS IF YOU KEEP SQUIRTING ME WITH KY JELLY"

Yeah. Just imagine 37 minutes of that. And 37 minutes of Tate going:

"No. No! NO! NONONONONONONONONO!!! I want to! I want Nora to cry! I HAVE TO! BYE BYE MOMMY!!! NO! NO! NO!NO!NO!NO! Are you very happy with me, Mommy?"

And Nora going:

"NUM NUM!! MAMAMAMA!!! NUM NUM!! MORE!!! MAMAMAMA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

By the time we left the store I was down to saying three words. It's all my brain could process. "Don't. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Don't." I do believe it was a glimpse into the 8th circle of hell. Just remember, kids, Mommy is always 2 seconds away from Crazy.

But we got home. I think I got the drops in Tate's eye. It's kind of hard to tell when they're thrashing around like a demented, possessed Jack Russell terrier on crack. I know I got them in Nora's because she just laid there and looked at me like "well, what the fresh hell is this, you crazy woman?" while I dripped them in there. Then she trotted away with her Dum-dum and proceeded to drop it in the dog's water bowl.

Yep, good day. I know experiences like these are a huge part of the job description of being a mommy, but sheesh. This job is so freaking hard, and I have a feeling my performance review is not going to set me up for a promotion. Although, really, what do you get promoted to from Mother? God?

Candy? What Candy?

I'm pretty convinced that toddler ears are tuned to a certain frequency that allows them to hear candy being opened from anywhere in the house. Seriously. I have the Halloween goods stashed away in a corner of the house we're rarely in to discourage the kids (and myself...who am I kidding) from going through it in a mad, sugar-crazed frenzy more than a couple times a day. I swear, whenever I notice the kids are upstairs without me and probably smearing Vaseline all over the dogs, rugs and toilet seats, and creep over to the stash of candy to snag something, it always ends the same way. I open the wrapper. I hear: Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthudthudthudthud. Pitter patter pitter patter. Then I turn around and my two little angels will be standing before me, bent over with their hands on their knees, panting madly and gasping for breath as they hold a hand up in the air and force out "Ma..ma....candy?"

Every. Time.

But I figure, the more they eat, the less I do. And since my body apparently hates me and refuses to acknowledge that I've been hitting the gym almost EVERY FREAKING DAY, it's probably best I don't stuff my face with chocolate all that often. I swear these days it's like I can gain weight by osmosis. I have to sprint through the chip aisle in the grocery store for fear my fat cells will start expanding just from breathing too deeply near the Doritos. Seriously, it's like my metabolism is sitting in a corner rocking back and forth with it's hands over it's ears going "I can't heeeeeeear you! I don't belieeeeeeeve that you're on a treadmill!!! I've decided to totally screwwwwwwww you!!" And, on that note, why does 30 minutes on the treadmill feel like two and a half hours, while the two and a half hours that Tate's in preschool go by in a 30 minute blink? Just wondering.

Anyway. Back to the original subject. Halloween was pretty low-key this year. Eric worked, as he has like practically every single other day this year, so it was just me and the kidlets hitting the streets. How cute are they?

Uh...good evening folks. This is your Tater speaking.


Heeeere, kitty kitty.

And then there's me, the Friday before Halloween, doing shots at a party with Kate Gosselin and Jessica Simpson. I may have to go platinum blonde on a permanent basis. On account of my sassiness and all. And yes, we're doing Jell-O shots, simply because we are classy in that way.

It was good times...from what I remember, anyway.