Girls night out - Revenge

Well its time for "Dad" to add a little drama to the Blog. Thursday night was girl's night out, and Jen needed to leave at 6:15 to go to an event. Thoughtful and well-planned out husband that I am I arrived at 6:14 to take charge of the kids as Jen ran out the door. The rest of my instructions were passed by cell-phone as I had no idea who had eaten at what time and who needed medicine for the night.

It was "Bath Night", and what I didn't know was how detailed the plot to "get back at Dad" had become. I imagine if I had arrived at 6:13 I would have heard Jen completing her last minute pep-talk to the girls: "Okay girls, remember, your Dad doesn't get nearly enough vomit or "poo" (I'll keep this in Kate's terms)at work so you two need to help him out with that." I envision a little high-five just as Dad is pulling into the driveway.

We finish Kate's dinner, clean up and head for the tub with Claire pretending to sleep peacefully on her chair. Naked toddler goes into the tub and instantly the infant goes into blood-curdling mode - on the other side of the house. I sprint to the kitchen trying to calculate how fast a toddler can drown herself and remembering fondly Kate's headfirst trip into the 45 degree pool a few months earlier. The bathroom isn't big enough for me and Kate and the bouncy-chair, so the newly quiet and "pacified" Claire is now sleeping right around the corner.

The bath continues, with a little soap and some playing by Kate and Claire shattering the peace occasionally after dropping her "binky". (Every time Claire starts crying, Kate dutifully looks up at me and exclaims "binky!"--knowing that will fix everything) Two or Three trips around the corner to tend Claire have me thinking about all of the news stories I'd seen with shattered parents telling a random news crew "I only left her alone for a minute!". Kate is happy-as-a-clam, but I decide this isn't working out so well and relocate Claire into the bathroom doorway so I can keep track of both kids at once.

Now, understand that Kate LOVES her bath time. Usually bath night never lasts long enough, and often ends with Daddy saying "Okay we're done, stand up" while trying to wash the soap off the toddler who only wants to keep sitting back down in the tub. Tonight, as I "plug" a pacifier in the infant for the 30th time to stop the crying I glance in the tub and Kate is sitting their with a weird look on her face. "What's wrong Kate?" I ask while making attempt 31 with the pacifier, and then I notice a lot more than toys floating around Kate in the tub. Kate notices too... and promptly stands up, hands waving in the air and exclaiming "Done...Done...Done!".

As if on cue, (part of the pre-arranged plan) Claire spits out the pacifier and joins in. Did I mention Claire's lovely way of regurgitating every time she gets upset? Now Dad is dealing with one crying infant and one toddler trying to crawl out of a shit-bath while dodging yellow-ish green floaters. Somehow I manged to get kid #1 rinsed off and swabbed with baby-wipes while holding screaming kid #2 over my left shoulder.

Kate's nightly tooth-brushing went quick, with the rising stench of the bathtub making life in the bathroom unbearable. A fast "Dora the Explorer" story later and Claire and I showed up back in the bathroom armed with rubber gloves and everything in the house labeled "bleach" or "disinfectant". The cleaning was a story of its own and I'll just say I learned more than I cared to about what Kate had for breakfast and lunch that day, and we ran out of Jack Daniels that night.

I called Jen at the Ladies Night out in the middle of all this, and I only remember laughter...

Random Stuff

I ought to be napping, but I wanted to update my faithful readers before doing so. Be forewarned that I'm working on new-mommy sleep deprivation and therefore this might be not only random but also slightly incoherent. But, you will get photos, so it's all good.



We made it to the park this morning, me, Kate and Claire. Christy is in town from MO, and invited several of us to meet up with her, Taylor and Jack. It's challenging, going to the park with a newborn and a 17-month old. Kate isn't really into taking direction, so it's slow-going. She is into exploration, which is entertaining and messy. Today she decided to try to climb something but fell down and ended up with a mouth- and nose-full of rocks. Seem familiar? This was also accompanied by a scrape on her nose which bled slightly, and a fit of crying. I was attending to Claire at the time, who had started crying. Yee-haw.


This all followed our packing up into the car before heading to the park: I had Kate outside while I unlocked the doors and started the car. Kate wandered down the driveway, like she usually does (except this time she didn't have her push-toy to slow her down). This meant that Kate was at the end of the driveway while I was in the carport watching her. She is very good about not going in the street, but others don't know this (and I'm always, always close by watching just in case) and a car with a woman driving past our house stopped and gawked as she watched this toddler wander aimlessly close to the street without a parent in sight. Somehow this annoyed me. I am sure she was just concerned that I was not aware of Kate's proximity to the street, but I felt the judging eyes: Where is this child's absentee mother?? Why is she letting her child play in traffic? Ah, well. She stopped well-short of the street and after the so-concerned lady left (without doing a thing about Kate), I went and picked Kate up and put her in the car.



Okay, that was a lot of writing and now I need a nap. Y'all enjoy these photos.

I wonder how many things I can get into while Mama changes that baby's diaper.

Woo-hoo! Claire has been evicted and the bouncy seat is now mine!

Yes, she is watching the Today Show.

Mommy's Lil Fighter Pilot. Hey, you never know.

Bath time.

Kate goes swimming

It was an eventful weekend. Not all good events, mind you, but eventful nonetheless.

Saturday was baby shower day. I left Kate home with Tim while I went to Deborah's and Darci's baby showers for several hours. At one point after I had been gone for awhile, I heard Tim calling on my cell and excused myself to answer the phone. He casually asked if I was done and when I might be coming home. I told him that I would be home within the hour, and he mumbled something about there being an 'incident' and that I should be sure to ask him about it when I got back. This piqued my interest, and I wondered what might have happened in my short time away from. Since I was missing the gift-opening and Kate sounded like she was having lunch, we hung up and left it at that.

Upon arriving home, I found both Tim and Kate in different clothing than they had been in when I had left. This is not unusual, but it caused me to ask about this 'incident' that had happened. Apparently, they had gone outside to play. Kate was on the patio with her toys, and Tim decided to do some pool maintenance. He was brushing out the pool when he heard a kerplunk and saw that Kate had snuck in behind him before the gate to the pool had closed. And she had fallen in. To the pool. Fallen in to the deep end of the pool, head first, fully clothed, into that freezing (70*) water. GAH! Now me, I would have freaked out. Maybe Tim did too; I wasn't here to witness it. But I guess he was close enough to her when she fell that he was able to drop the brush and grab a foot. She came out holding her breath, face scrunched up. I bet! That's one cold pool! The temperature probably helped her not breathe in while she was under. He cradled her, trying to warm her up and stop the shrieking that began soon after she was out of the water, and brought her inside to get her into some warm (dry) clothes. After her lips returned to their normal color, she started rubbing her belly telling him that she wanted a bath. Apparently she didn't like the one she had and wanted a real one.

*****

Update: the pool is 60*, not the steamy 70* I had thought. Brrr.

*****

Dropped to save Kate.

Which leads me to the next story....bath time on Friday night. Tim does bath time whenever he's home because it's hard for me to lean over with this big belly and give Kate a bath that she feels is fun enough and long enough. We do things a little differently, Tim and me. Me, I like to remove all of Kate's clothes while we're in her room so they can go right into the hamper. I leave her diaper on until right before she goes into the tub, just in case. Tim, sometimes he varies from this routine. For instance, on Friday night, he thought it would be okay to take Kate's diaper off before the bath was ready. Kate loves this. I think she likes being free from all restraints; no itchy diaper, no clothes, no shoes. Freedom! She went tearing around the corner down the hall (she does move fast, see above) to come show me that she had broken free of all bonds and was naked as a cherub, when wham! splat! wahhhhh! Tim and I both came racing down the hall from opposite ends to find out what had happened. See, we have tile floors, and when they get wet, they get slippery. Baby peeing on floor makes floor slippery. Baby falls. Baby screams. Daddy learns why we don't remove diapers until just before we put baby into tub.

Naked baby makes puddle.