Owen broke the wall.

The kids were being loud playing upstairs then we heard a really loud THUNK and soon Miss Tattletale was running down to us to tell us Owen put a hole in the wall. Okay, whatever, let me go see.

HOLY SHIT.

Yeah…. He was doing gymnastic front rolls in the tiny hallway space upstairs and managed to kick his heel through the wall.

This was after a stressful morning during which both kids were amazingly annoying.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I was assured this is a normal kid bathroom.

This is what I walked into today in the kids’ bathroom. What the—? A sock, pencil, random pieces of tissue, hand towel, toilet cleaning sponges, cleaning cloth, and a piece of homework. UGH.

The counter wasn’t much better.

I took to Facebook to make sure it was normal. I was assured it is.

Needless to say we will be working on this.

Whoever came up with slime needs to be shot.

Whoever came up with slime needs to be shot. 🔫 Whoever came up with GLITTER slime needs to be burned at the stake. 🔥

I told the kids we’d do it once. On a rainy day. And I already regret it. I’ve told them it’s going in the garbage in a few days. IT JUST STICKS TO EVERYTHING. How are you supposed to play with it without it getting all over every damn thing?! (I thought if you kneaded it more it would become less sticky. Nope. It doesn’t even come off your hands nicely when you wash them. #neveragain

Note: Just so you don’t think I’m a horrible parent, I did get some troubleshooting advice from friends… And it helped, but I’m still never making it again. A 5yo plays with it much differently than I touch it, and it still gets ALL over and is too sticky. I just don’t have the patience. Plus she plays with it for about 45 seconds and she’s done.

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Yes, that’s slime on the ceiling.

Welcome to my morning. 

Owen threw it too high then tried to clean it with… Are you ready??… A nerf gun, a folder, and a coloring book.

#thishappenedfiveminutesafterwarninghimnottogetslimeanywhere
#thatboyhasnocommonsense
#thisthursdayismymonday
#slimeisnolongerallowedinourhouse
#isittooearlyforwine

I left it all day so he could clean it when he got home. Thankfully it came right off with a magic eraser. 

Pumpkin Day

I volunteered to help with Pumpkin Day in Katie’s classroom. I had no idea what would be involved but then I got the email saying we’d be carving pumpkins so bring a knife and bowl if we could. Hoo boy—I hadn’t carved a pumpkin in years…

The classroom was a bit insane (I don’t know how she does it without an assistant—we were spoiled with Owen’s class having one) but overall it went well. There were four moms total so we each had a group of six. We had to measure the pumpkin with blocks and chain lengths, write what the pumpkin felt and smelled like, weigh the pumpkin, see if it sank or floated…and then design and carve the pumpkin. In an hour.

As you can imagine it was pretty much like herding cats. It started with the teacher switching Katie’s seat with someone so we could be at the same table…and the kid completely lost his shit and was a crying hot mess because “he wanted his seat.” Really, kid? You lose it over moving seats for an hour? And then some kids couldn’t pay attention for more than three seconds. One had no idea how to draw an H (“we haven’t done that letter yet”). A few wrote their numbers backwards (71 for 17) but fixed it after I told them—except one kid who literally kept writing it 71 no matter how many times I told him it was 1-7 not 7-1. One kid wrote all his letters on top of one another. You get the idea. I’m not bragging when I say that Katie seemed among the most advanced in her group (able to pay attention, answer questions, write her letters and numbers correctly, and follow instructions).

This is a snapshot of mass chaos before we even started.

 

I didn’t take many pictures because I was very involved in every step of the way—plus I didn’t have pockets, remember. 

   
    

Katie was the badge collector.

  

And then it was time to go home so Katie got to ride home with me. She had a good time and was happy I came. 

The syrup incident.

It had been a day. You know the days that you have every so often where the kids aren’t necessarily being awful, but they are being slightly annoying about lots of little things all day so that it all adds up, so that when something like this happens…you lose your shit?

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Yeah. That was my day today. 😐

The short story is that the kids were messing around on the table and the syrup was in their way (left out from breakfast, but it had been there all day—and Katie tried to tell me the spill was MY fault!) and somehow the syrup “slipped” out of his hands and crashed to the floor while spilling syrup as you see above (I’ve had Owen tell the story three times and still am not clear). To be fair, I did end up apologizing after all was said and done (my reaction really was a bit extreme).

Finger painting at school!

When we got back from the field trip, Katie got to create her artwork folder…which necessitated finger painting. She had a blast! And I’m glad she gets to do it at school because the thought of that mess at home makes me cry. 🙂

Then we saw Owen coming back from recess:

And just because there wasn’t already enough paint…another color!

And then I made the mistake of telling her to make a handprint. Well, she smacked her hand down and this happened (except about four times as many dots):

Anne (our friend who works in Katie’s class) assured me it was washable, but when a baby wipe—generally known to clean most anything—didn’t work, I got concerned. I found the label:

You see that? Washes out of most surfaces and fabrics. Egads. Of course that would be my luck with my brand new coat. (That said, I washed it as soon as I got home and thankfully it did come out.)

And the final product! I can’t wait to see the finished (dried) folder they make out of it!

Katie lost bath privileges for awhile.

After her gardening experience, she was a mess…so she had to get a bath. I had stuff to do upstairs so let her play for a loooong time. The only bath rule is keep the water in the tub. So, needless to say when I walked in and saw this…

…I was NOT happy.

There was water everywhere. All around the outside ledge of the tub, in puddles on the floor, splashed on the wall… So I gave her a towel and she had to dry it all off. Plus she lost bath time for at least a week—she’ll get 5-minute showers only. 

All the pics from my day at once.

She always wants to comb my hair but I only let her on days that I wash and condition it.

He said it was costume day so we did this (he can’t get in/out of his costumes by himself).

ABCs while shopping.

This is what she was busy doing while I wasn’t watching. And this is her pout when I tell her she needs to pick them all up. 

She tried a ham and cheese (no condiment) sandwich—and actually ate most of it!

I decided to make my all-time favorite garlic toast today because the bread was on sale B1G1 at the store.

“Mama, I want to put the water in please.” Except 98% of it didn’t make it in.

 

Outdoor lap selfie!

The little stink beat me!!

Painting in the bath!

Owen likes showers better these days, but I convinced him to take a bath with Katie this morning…by promising a new treat: fingerpaint soap (gotta love the dollar bins at Target!). They had a blast.

   
I had each one fill their hand with their respective colors (pink and blue) and then had them rub hands…to get a light purple! Owen knew about mixing colors but he still thought it was super cool. Katie was amazed! Some days it’s the little things. 🙂

 

Katie’s 3rd Birthday Party!

Daddy and Owen went to pick up the cupcake cake and the pizza before the party!

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We surprised the kids with a bounce house borrowed from friends!

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Owen testing out the Frozen stick-on earrings!

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Everyone had a good time and the bounce house was a success!! I’m losing my mind, though—I didn’t take a picture of the decorated table OR the food table! 🙂

Puddle Jumper!

I promised Katie she could jump in the puddles when we came out of the store. She was having sooooo much fun I just let her keep jumping and jumping and jumping. My quick run to the dollar store morphed into over an hour once the jumping was done (she was jumping for almost half an hour!)!

I couldn’t decide on the best in-flight pics—it’s amazing how high she actually jumps (which you can’t tell just watching in real time)—so I included all of them. 🙂

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If you just want the slow motion jumps in one video:

And if you want them as individual gifs you can copy and paste elsewhere:

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Sidewalk chalk paint, Day 2

They weren’t nearly as excited as they were the first day, and I’m not sure why. (They were eager enough to WANT to do it, but once we were outside and painted for 10 minutes, they were about done.) And of course, since they stayed perfectly clean the first day, I didn’t make them change into different clothes…and it’s the day Katie got paint all over her.

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So I pretty much did all the painting just so it wouldn’t be wasted.

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Not a surprise we wanted.

Owen had said his belly hurt after dinner but we didn’t think much of it since he says that now and again and it’s never anything.

So I forgot all about it and went to bed excited (though late), thinking there’s nothing like falling asleep at midnight planning on your first, nice, deep, uninterrupted sleep in nine days (post-vacation)…only to be awoken at 12:30 by a kid crying in your doorway saying they’ve puked and need help cleaning up.

Holy hell.

It was everywhere. And it was some of the worst I’ve smelled. I knew right away there was no way I could handle it all by myself, so I had him wait there while I quickly went to wake up Tom. Between the two of us, it still took a good 30 minutes to clean up.

We had put a huge bowl next to his bed (“just in case”) but there was no point as he had obviously just puked and then rolled over the edge of the bed and puked again. There was puke covering about a 4′ square section of carpet, he was covered (hair, PJs, face), all of his bedding (including bed skirt!) had to be removed…and it had even started soaking through the mattress protector. We had to clean the carpet as best we could without getting out the Rug Doctor (which would surely have woken Katie up) and we had to get out (and blow up) the air mattress (since I wasn’t going to put him back in bed without a barf-proof mattress pad cover). Then we covered the floor with towels and started a load of laundry. And hoped that would be our only wakeup call.

The only thing I could think was “At least we were at home and not at the condo or in a hotel or in the car.”