Oh, I have pictures.

Well, of one incident anyway.

 

Oh, yeah. Get it all in there.

Unrated

While spending another entire day at the Millers, I made a routine visit to Trey's bedroom to check on the kids.

And nearly exploded in disbelieving laughter.

Trey was hanging, upside down, from his top bunk, wearing his Spiderman suit. Except for his mask. And to this Grace loudly objected.

"Trey, you're supposed to have the mask on for kissing!!"

The scene sounds too familiar to be mistaken as merely coincidental. And yet Grace has not been allowed to watch adult-ish films (including Spiderman) since her last incident.

And so I am baffled.

Bored

There's very little to do at our house these days. Every room is empty except for the living room which contains a mattress, a couch, a two-foot high child's table, and a TV. The toys are waiting in Dallas, and our backyard has been conquered by our neighbor's cats.

So it probably shouldn't surprise me that for entertainment, my girls make messes. What else is there to do? Grace scribbles on the walls, eats handfuls of plain oatmeal (spilling tablespoonsful on the floor), and dribbles laundry detergent on the carpet (albeit in a very well-meaning attempt to help me cart the laundry out the door). Claire has coated my floors in cereal and applesauce (a result of her happy discovery that she can reach our tabletop).

Yesterday Grace was eating some chocolate cookies--remnants of our roadtrip from Dallas. She fed pieces to Claire while holding the ziploc bag. And somewhere in the middle of this feeding, I fell asleep for a much needed two minute nap.

I woke up to a suspicious sound and opened my eyes just in time to see Claire lying down, shaking chocolate cookie crumbs all over herself. And all over our bed.

She started to cry at the cookie crumbs stuffed in her eye. And while flushing her face with water, I found chocolate in the folds of her neck. And in her ears.

In a helpful effort, Grace emptied a full bag of baby wipes to scrub Claire clean. An entire bag.

And so I loaded everybody in the car and headed to Trey's house. They have a backyard. And air conditioning. And no chocolate cookies!

Empty Cupboards Make Excellent Hiding Places

We came home from swimming, I unloaded the car, came back in the house and couldn't find Claire. It was Brad who found her--making the most of moving.

I Wasn't Kidding.

Vacuum

Claire puts a lot of things in her mouth. I realize this is typical. But it is also disgusting.

In the last week she has put the following things in her mouth:

1. Dove soap
2. Bubbles from the bath
3. Dirt
4. Rocks
5. Hair
6. Dust
7. A beetle (the body of which I found on her cheek, the head of which was in her fingers)
8. And you should see her cram an entire ping-pong ball in there.

Yuck.

Like Mother, like daughter

The other evening Brad was leading the youth in an outdoors Church activity [that is, if your definition of 'leading' entails tipping the Scouts and Mia Maids out of their canoes], so it fell to me to fill his routine role of putting Grace to bed. I am not good at this role. Which is why Brad does it: he can be firm. I am sort of wishy-washy when it comes to bedtime [although I really prefer the term compassionate]. Grace senses this. 

That is a nice way of saying that she takes advantage of me. 

So I spent most of the evening getting drinks and snacks and extra blankets. I also sang many songs. And I repeated, "Good night, I love you; see you in the morning; see you when you wake up" over and over and over. [That is from Grace's self-written bedtime script. I get in trouble when I forget a part or say it out of order.] 

I left her room after each errand only to come back two minutes later. Leave, come back. Leave. Come back. Leave, come back, come back, come back.

That's annoying.

So after an hour of obedience to my three-year-old, I stopped listening to her and started doing the dishes. [Which is to say that I put an end to one form of self-torture and started a new one.] 

But Grace was not giving up. Her whining got impossibly louder and louder, until she realized I wasn't responding. Then she was silent. And that is when I noticed a bulging blanket inching down the hall toward me.

And suddenly, I had a very vivid recollection of pulling an identical stunt on my own mother. My mom was sitting on the cold tile floor of our hallway, reading her scriptures, keeping watch. I was plotting escape. I figured that if I put my blanket over my head and moved at an imperceptible pace, she wouldn't notice me. She would of course look up to see my blanket eventually, but would believe it had been there the whole time, since it was obviously not moving and I was obviously not under it. 

It may surprise you to learn that this plan didn't work. It failed miserably. I got spanked and carried to bed.

But my punishment is not the important thing here. What is important is that Grace might be like me. And that makes me nervous. Very nervous.

But not nervous enough to let Grace get away with her prank entirely. So, I responded the only way I knew she wouldn't expect: I ignored her. I ignored her when she reached the end of the hall. I ignored her when she crawled onto my feet. I ignored her when she pulled the blanket off of her head and bragged "Mom! I'm out of bed." I ignored her when she tugged at my pajamas and angrily insisted, "Mom! Listen to me!" I ignored her until her dad came in the front door, sopping wet. And then I made him put her to bed.

He loves me.

TGIF

Today:

Grace somehow found a pair of scissors in the car and on our way to somewhere silently cut up her brand new pair of pants.

Grace was sent to her room for kicking Claire in the face and poured that "tall glass of water" from last night all over... everything.

I asked Grace to get a diaper so I could change her and in the two minutes she was gone she turned on the bathroom sink, emptied the bottle of handsoap, and soaked our toothbrushes and my makeup in soapiness.

Grace demanded a full meal about every half hour.

Claire and Grace drenched our new carpet in baby sweet potatoes.

My mastitis returned.

Happy Friday.