but first, let's give our thanks and admiration shout out to elizabeth for sleeping great again last night 7h25 and then 3h40 for a grand total of 9:15 to 8:30. the kid is saving my life with her sleep habits. and her sweet and low maintenance temperament.
brady woke up around 6:15 this morning. i didn't want to sit in a glider for an hour only to find out that he was wide awake so i checked downstairs and asked chris if i could send brady down to snuggle in bed with him. my wonderful husband said yes but my clingy teething toddler said heck no. the boy only wants me. for everything. so i got him to snuggle in bed with me and we slept until 8:30 i think. then he snuck out of bed, watched abigail sleep for a few minutes, and then went to the kitchen and brought me a can of pringles to open for him. and then he started crying (why does he have to cry SO loudly?!) when i told him no. so i had to go downstairs with him (because he loves throwing tantrums when we're in the guest room while elizabeth is sleeping. she's a deep sleeper and she settles herself back to sleep so well but i still try to limit his screaming lest he give her ear damage or something.
brady got cereal, abigail woke up, the kids played while i fed elizabeth or something. i don't know, it's all a blur. i tried these white shorts on brady (with a built in belt in the front that you can't see in this picture) and he thought they were the greatest ever. he kept his hand in his pocket (as he's prone to do) and kept admiring his reflection in the mirror.
like dis...
what a stud.
abigail had us sit on the bench to watch her ballet show. then as soon as she started, she stopped to go into her room to pull out her chair (broken... i need to fix that) piled high with carefully selected books. i know i'm ocd about messes and clutter but it's been especially difficult lately for me to watch the migration of toys. if you want to read a book, just sit next to the books and read it... don't take a stack of books to the kitchen floor. that sort of thing. so i asked why she was bringing all that in the hallway and she said in case she needed to rest during her ballet. i told her no. brady and i were ready to watch ballet... she didn't need to rest. but she kept insisting it was just in case she needed to rest. i didn't have the patience to be nice anymore so it turned into "you whine and cry about cleaning up your messes and the chair is broken and i don't want you taking your crap out of your room and spreading it to other parts of the house... if you don't start dancing some ballet for us right now then brady and i are going downstairs to play something else." maybe we both had a hissy fit but eventually the crap stayed in the room and the ballet happened. it was serious business.
my favorite was the exposed thomas undies. not my favorite was the part where she kept yelling at brady for singing along to the taylor swift song (both kids really like her songs although they don't know who she is and haven't made a connection that they like all her songs. this one just so happened to be on this barbie cd we got from the library) that was playing. he was so cute and it made me sad that i couldn't get her to stop being so mean and bossy about it. she's insanely bossy.
we went downstairs to get abigail cereal. and i gave brady a small bowl (since he'd already had one). he finished and then accidentally flicked his bowl, splattering milk and soggy honey bunches of oats remainders in a three foot radius of his spot. awesome.
then a few minutes later when abigail was finishing her cereal, he somehow helped her spill the bowl in her lap and the floor and the cloth padded chair. uuuugggggghhhhhh my ocd self couldn't even handle it. i took abigail up for a bath.
it was very upsetting for all of us. well, except brady. he didn't care. this picture makes the mess look far smaller than it actually was. also, you can't clean up wet honey bunches of oats cereal without smearing soggy cereal flakes all over the floor. so i had to try to sop up some milk but leave everything else to dry (so i could sweep it later). once again... uuuuuggggghhhhh.
i ran a bath for abigail and had her hop in. the ambitious parent in me would have bathed both kids. that just wasn't me today. i was the lazy and already defeated parent. so i left abigail in there for an hour and a half to play as long as she wanted (because brady is miserable and spreading the misery to all around him so it was good to keep those two separated for a bit) and then told her to grab some soap and suds up and rinse off the lower half of her body. when i came back later, the water was opaque. i'm not sure how much soap she used but i'm guessing it was a ton. i had to rinse her with fresh water to make sure it didn't irritate her skin. ha. meanwhile, brady dressed up and then chewed on both thumbs (to get both molars) while i held him.
i think abigail got out and dressed around 12:30. so i was thinking let's eat and have quiet/nap time and then watch a movie, eat dinner, and go to bed. but while abigail was eating her sandwich and grapes picnic in the front yard, presley came over.
also, i didn't have time to try to get brady to nap before my visiting teaching meeting at 2. this is where my steady stream of water turned into a firehose. elizabeth woke up right before the rs pres and counselor showed up and i didn't have time to feed her. so i left her in her basket thinking maybe she'd go to sleep again but knowing she wouldn't because it had already been several hours. and brady was crying because he wanted me to go outside with him so he could play with abigail and presley but he kept coming inside because "mom, it's too windy for me." and when the girls finally came inside, abigail wasn't being nice to brady and wouldn't let him in her room to play so he was constantly crying outside of her room and on the stairs and in my lap about it. and my washing machine was going but my laundry room is so messy and full of crap that i could hear piles of crap continually falling off of my vibrating washing machine but i couldn't even go help it because i had yeun nam and syndee over and by this point, elizabeth was fussy and refusing to nurse and crying about it. she doesn't nurse great under a cover, but also wasn't doing great because i was distracted with our meeting and with screaming brady who was also climbing on me and taking pictures and slow motion videos... of my love handles.
and it would have been a difficult meeting just on its own with all the changes and was even more challenging when lucy and kalia came over and then that just added to the chaos having five kids squealing and running around and one kid fussing on my lap. and then they kept asking "can we color right now? and paint? because some of us want to paint too." and after forever, the meeting finally ended (even though i have more stuff i need to figure out, we just couldn't spend any more time on it) and i needed to make vt changes while it was fresh on my mind (didn't happen) and switch laundry and feed elizabeth and get her swaddled and down for nap and finally hold brady and i couldn't even send the girls home because my neighbor stephanie texted and asked if i could keep them for a bit (because she needed to leave for work) until her husband got home from work and they were all "can we watch a movie? and can we color and paint while we watch it? and some of us are starving so can we have a snack? and could you get us a cup of water? with ice in it please? and could we have popscicles please? and presley would like chocolate milk please. and she needs to go poop... can you help her with that?" and on and on and i was about to lose my mind because of the crazy mess that was in every room by now and all of the constant requests and that somehow in this brady had scattered ritz cracker crumbs and baby gold fish allllll over the great room and my back hurt and i had a headache and all i'd eaten since i'd woken up was milk and chocolate chips and chocolate milk and it was 5:00 and i was soooo done.
hallelujah that honey got home around 6:15 so i had reason to send the girls home at that point and i was able to speed clean a lot of the upstairs and at least keep the laundry rotation going. we had tacos for dinner (thank goodness for precooked, pre portioned taco meat) and the missionaries came over at 7 to teach us a lesson. honey even got the great room vacuumed in time. i'll admit that i was not at all looking forward to having them over but it was awesome. one of the missionaries was switched out with a zone leader. so that guy taught most of the lesson (on the plan of salvation) and it was awesome. i was pretty distracted with brady, who was climbing all over me whenever he wasn't jumping like crazy on chairs and about to bust his head open. when they left, we headed upstairs for bedtime. i let chris and abigail do their thing and then i took brady up to put him to bed. i think it helped having the kids separated tonight. at least, it helped me to have them separated. they love each other a lot but holy cow... when their powers combine... yikes.
i got out brady's baseball pillowcase (that emmy made him last summer but he's never had a chance to use) and he thought it was incredible. i wish i'd gotten a video of him when i showed it to him and he realized what it was. this picture doesn't capture how excited he was, but man... the boy sure loves his baseball pillow!
also, you know it's been a crazy day when you find a baby goldfish in brady's diaper.
and after playing hard all afternoon and evening and not getting a nap, he was out... fast. thank goodness.
and this girl was out pretty fast too.
i got those three loads of laundry put away and things slowed down a bit around 11pm so i was able to enter in all the vt changes and i finally was able to let out a sigh of relief at having survived the chaos of today.
and then i took a moment to be thankful...
for my clean kitchen. because as silly as it sounds, if my kitchen is clean... i'm okay.
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