Child Labor Or Smart Parenting?

Yesterday Sterling and her daddy had a differing of opinions.

Sterling felt it was a cool to throw her macaroni and cheese all over the place in a fit of temper. Daddy disagreed with her assessment of just how "cool" it was. Homeboy came pretty close to losing his shit, and that takes a LOT.

So I was impressed when he dialed things down a notch and rather than banishing her to her room or punting her little hiney out the back door (both valid options in my opinion), he decided to make her clean it all up.

And clean she did.

First she picked up every piece of macaroni and happily piled them all back on a plate.

Then I gave her a wet rag to wipe the floor up with, and this is when the cleaning shifted into high gear.

First, she scrubbed all around the floor of where she had been sitting. And I do mean ALL around. I don't think the floor has been this clean since we moved in.

Next she scrubbed down the chairs and the underside of the table. I don't think the finial under the table has EVER been washed, but it was yesterday.

Then she decided to scrub under Bennett's highchair. Which was a pretty freakin awesome choice because homeboy regularly splatters that area with insane amounts crap.

Her final step was to give Bennett himself a thorough scrub down. Thankfully I had a clean rag handy and was able to trade out the one she had been using to scrub the floor.

But he was about exactly as appreciative as you would expect a toddler boy to be when he is having his face forcefully scrubbed by his sister.

I was thoroughly impressed with how determined and detail oriented she was with the cleaning. At this rate, she might be ready to replace our cleaning lady within a few weeks.

And just in case CPS happens to read this post, it was all voluntary. Well, after the initial picking up of the macaroni.

But I don't think it is considered child labor if its done by choice. And it's totally cool if she polishes shoes as long it's voluntary and we aren't withholding food or anything to force her to do it, right???

I ask that last question for a friend, not because I am going to start having my almost 3 year old start polishing shoes or anything. Even if her tiny little hands would be perfect for getting into the nooks and crannies of daddy's shoes...

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The Most Miserable Game In The World

So right now Ben is 2 feet away from me, screaming in my face. He's been doing this for about 15 minutes now.

We have a new fun game at our house.

In this game, B climbs the top of the steamer trunk, and stands up there screaming until I get him down.

Which is awesome and all, except he's been getting himself off of that trunk for several months now, so it's not an issue of his inability to get himself down, it's purely a game to bend me to his will.

And for a while there, I was willing to play along. Because I have the mother of all headaches and it was better to peel him off than listen to him scream. But I'm bored of the game, so today the monkey can stay up there until he gets sick of it and climbs down.

*Note: It took us about 35 minutes before one of us, him, caved in disgust. He climbed off that thing like a disgruntled little chimpanzee, throwing baleful glares over his shoulder at me every few seconds. I feel bad, totally do. Oh no, wait, that's not it. I feel relieved that this game is done. Yep, definitely relieved.

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Bed Slide Beastie

Last night after I put Sterling to bed, I heard her yelling "WHEEEEEEEE, fun!" at the top of her lungs. Like any good spoilsport parent, I went in to investigate.

I cautiously snuck up to her room and oh so slowly eased the door open. This is what I found.

Evidently, she had popped the slats out from under her bed yet AGAIN, removed all her bedclothes, and then pushed the matress up enough to make it into an incline.

When I asked what she was doing, she jumped about a mile, then smiled big at me and brightly responded "I make slide Momma. It FUN! You wanna try it?"

Uh, sure kid. Looks like a safe choice for both of us.

After about 40 minutes of me grunting, groaning, and straining to put the bed back together while I lectured her on the bad choice of jacking with her bed, I finally had it fixed. I scraped my knuckles up in the process though and was pretty irritated.

So taking a stand for all that is holy in the world of parenting, I decided that there was no way in hell I was going to make her bed again and explained that her punishment for messing the bed up was making it herself. She happily complied.

It wasn't nearly the punishment I had hoped for it to be.

As I shut the door to leave her for the night, I reiterated my stance on the whole bed/slide situation. I said "Sterling, it makes Momma very angry when you mess with your bed like that. No more bed slides, right?"

She cheerfully responded "OK Momma. No more bed slide... tonight."

Pretty sure I won that round. And by pretty sure, I mean not a chance in hell.

In case you are keeping score, it is:

     Toddler: 1,254,355,345
     Momma: .03

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Haircut Horror

Today Bennett had his first haircut.

Think you've had an awful haircut? Then I've got a story for you, my friend.

See, I had gotten tired of all the "mullet" jokes, and B's hair had officially reached the length where I could braid and put beads in it. Not that I had done that. Not once. Even if it did give him a rakish "professor that you smoke pot with" kind of look.

In theory.

Anyway, after talking with girlfriends who cut their kids' hair, and reading a few online resources, it seemed super easy.

Or at least easier than taking two toddlers to a salon and wrangling them while some poor stylist tried to cut his hair.

Over the weekend I had tried to convince his daddy to take him to a place that specializes in kid's cuts. But John felt that hair was something best left up to a mommy's discretion, and it seemed like more effort than it was worth.

So thus, today I whipped out my handy haircutting scissors and decided to give it a go.

I mean, how hard could it be?

I flipped the TV on and put on some nauseatingly annoying children's show, gave B a pile of enticing snacks, and wet his hair down.

The back came out okay, slightly less crooked than a politician. Which means its far from ideal, but he was not nearly as patient as those online resources would lead you to believe. Big shocker, I know.

The final step they advised was trimming around his ears to give it a "clean look". And this lead us to the mayhem of the day.

I had cut around about 75% of his right ear, and was getting ready to finish it up when he suddenly jerked his head towards me.

Of course I was in mid cut, and somehow managed to take a nice chunk out of the top of his ear in one fell swoop.

He screamed loudly, it bled profusely. Everyone was miserable with the outcome.

After that, there was no way in hell I was going to try trimming around the other ear. Primarily because I was scared shitless of cutting him again, but also because he jumped about a mile every time he saw the scissors.

Which means, I now have a baby boy with one ear neatly trimmed around (mostly), the other ear hidden behind a screen of hair, and the back a good bit crooked.

Oh yeah, and a baby who closely resembles Vincent van Gogh.

If I wasn't P.O.T.Y. (Parent Of The Year) before, I definitely am now...

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Good Grief...

You ever have one of those days were everything makes you want to cry?

Sterling is having one of those today. Only instead of just wanting to cry, she's actually crying.

She cried when at breakfast, she asked for the big kid bowl. So I gave her the big kid bowl. Then she cried for Bennett's little bowl. So I traded bowls. At which point in time she cried for the big kid bowl again.

She cried when she pinched her own finger in the edge of her sun glasses. She cried harder when she threw those glasses across the room, and they didn't stand up and walk back to her.

She cried after Bennett put his finger in her mouth, she bit it, and then he cried.

She cried because she didn't like the way I was doing the voices when I read a book to her.

She cried because she couldn't fit all the toys that she wanted to into her purse.

She cried when she hit me and I put her purse in timeout.

She cried when she want to hear the ABC song, so I put the ABC song on the radio, but it wasn't the version that she wanted to hear.

Holy hell did she cry at lunch when she wanted the pink spoon, I gave her the pink spoon, and then she realized it wasn't the blue spoon.

And when I tried to get a picture of all this crying? That's when she melted down, which is why I only have this single blurry photo of her crying.

When she went down for nap she cried because she wanted the butterfly jammies, which this morning she dumped her cereal down the front of in a fit of crying.

I'm just hoping she wakes up from nap a totally different animal. Because otherwise, there's gonna be three of us crying...

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Angry Little Gargoyle

Yesterday, Bennett woke up on the wrong side of the crib. From the moment he got out of bed, he was livid with the world.

He cried through snack, he cried through clean up, and he cried as I took his sister into the family room and changed her out of her jammies. So when there was a shift in the screaming, I somehow missed it.

Indeed, it wasn't until I walked back into the kitchen and found this that I realized that his screaming had taken on a nearly apoplectic pitch.

Somehow, while I was distracted he managed to unhook his seatbelt, climbed out of his seat, and scrambled up onto the tray of his high chair.

And there he perched, like a pissed off little gargoyle, screaming at me in fury.

I'm not sure whether I should be impressed by how nimble he is, or terrified because so far, he has beaten his sister in coordination and sheer orneriness already at this age...

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Splinters Evidently Aren't A Deterrent

So yeah, this picture? This is when I went to get Sterling up from bed this morning.

Directly behind her is one of her wooden bed slats. Leaning conveniently in the doorway are two others that I've collected in the last 24 hours.

This is hardly the first time Sterling has jacked with the slats of her bed.

And likely it won't be the last.

But it seems now that we have removed EVERY piece of furniture from her room except for her bed, she is hell bent on getting that puppy apart.

One. Piece. At. A. Time.

Every single nap time, every single bed time, every single time she spends more than three seconds alone in that room, she takes the slats out.

Which is impressive because I have put those damn slats back in enough times now that I know how freakin hard it is to move them.

I'm STILL not certain how the hell she is getting them out, but I've removed enough splinters from her hands and feet lately that I'm pretty confident it takes a fair amount of effort.

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Goth Baby Mayhem

Today I took the monkeys to the botanical gardens to play. We met up with friends, walked for several hours, good times were had by all. And by good times, I mean no one fell until a water fountain or accidentally got maimed in any way.

We were all redfaced and tired at the end of the walk, so it was a success in my book.

At the end of our walk, my friend L and I were in the middle of a important discussion and so we decided to stand in the parking lot and talk little bit more. Our two girls climbed into my car to play.

I made the mistake of thinking "how much trouble could they really get into while we are standing here"... also known as the stupidest assumption in the world.

After a few minutes, my girlfriend L happened to notice that Sterling was covered in some kind of black goo. I still have absolutely no clue what it was, but I do know it was damn hard to get off of both her and the inside of my car.

She had it on her lips, her hands, her arms, her shirt, and when I undressed her for nap, I discovered it was all over her stomach and legs. She looked like the world's youngest Emo/Punk baby.

Then, as I continued to unpack Bennett and the multitudes of crap from our simple outing, Sterling happened to find one of my protein bars and bit through the packaging to get to its gooey, melty goodness.

And spread that bastard EVERYWHERE.

The interior of my car is black so it wasn't until I really started looking that I discovered how much chocolate she had managed to smear. It was a total chocolate wreck.

When I turned the car on, my windshield wipers started flapping frantically and I realized that perhaps the girls played with a few buttons. And as I was driving home, I kept noticing little fun things like that my high beams were on, or that my seat settings were off, or that my radio presets were jacked.

Luckily, I already drink heavily. Because otherwise, this would have driven me to...

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