8:45 I change poopy diaper #1 (Peregrine). He demands to go potty. Never mind that he already pooped. I have nothing better to do anyway, as preschool has been cancelled. Peregrine poops. Celebrations all around.
8:55 I change poopy diaper #2 (Peregrine).
9:00 Peregrine flips out because the cereal he requested contains flakes and cheerios. Apparently he had envisioned only cheerios. After his demands that I take out every single offensive flake have been denied, he proceeds to remove each flake by hand...and eat it. Toddlers are weird.
9:30 Peregrine sees the pile of laundry from last night and exclaims in delight, "My crud is cleeeeeeaaaan!" He launches himself into it, and I stop him just in time. He's a bit disappointed in me that I didn't do it in the middle of last night. He informs me sadly, "There some crud on my foot."
10:00 I change poopy diaper #3 (Peregrine). He demands to go potty again. He misses the potty...barely. He informs me happily that there's poop on the potty, but that it's okay, Mommy will clean it up. He reminds me many, many times within the next two minutes that I need to clean it up.
11:15 The morning has actually progressed relatively smoothly, aside from a few irrational whiny meltdowns, understandable due to everyone's 5 AM wakeup. But lack of preschool is taking its toll. I think up things to buy at Walgreens and we head out. Sylvia, who has heretofore been a model of baby patience, loses it entirely. She screams when she realizes her dreams of a carseat-free morning are not, in fact, coming true. She is very, very offended by my trivializing her problems with a pacifier and gentle rocking motion.
11:20 Sylvia loses it still more violently while waiting for Peregrine to crawl down the stairs at the rate of 2 miles per year, stopping every now and then to contemplate which method of stair descent he wants to use, or to space out entirely (5 AM wakeup, remember?). He then decides that the boodey he insisted on bringing (or else!) is far too heavy. As I am carrying a purse, a loaded diaper bag, and a carseat full of screaming baby, he decides I look like a capable candidate. I disagree, but this slows his rate even further. You can almost see that 6-oz water bottle dragging him along and draining his energy at an alarming rate. Leaving it at home is entirely out of the question. At this point, narrating this day in my head is the only thing keeping me going.
11:30 Walgreens reached. Sylvia is absolutely inconsolable. This is quite unusual for her, actually. She doesn't even calm down when I put her carseat in the stroller. Usually she loves the stroller. We do some hardcore outside strolling while Peregrine admires an armored truck.
11:45 Into Walgreens, with stroller and Peregrine, loose. After a pep talk about staying by Mommy and not pulling things off the shelves, we brave the store. He tries admirably, and everything goes all right, all things considered. Only a few items get messed with, mainly menstrual pads and weird energy drinks. There is a remote-controlled tarantula on the shelves, and it gives me the shivers.
11:50 Out of Walgreens. I only got a few looks of concern. Primarily because I announced too early that we were ready to check out, and Peregrine, who has an impeccable sense of direction, sprinted to the checkout counter while I was still on the opposite side of the store. Kid has a map in his head. He didn't get that from me.
12:00 Home. Much screaming en route.
12:15 I change poopy diaper #4 (Peregrine). No, he doesn't have diarrhea. No, he wasn't stopped up. It's just that kind of day. Fortunately, my cloth diapers are all dirty, and I don't have to wash anything in the toilet.
12:30 Lunch. Peregrine spills his drinks and eats minimal food. Teething commences for the afternoon.
1:00 Naptime. Peregrine refuses to sleep. Sylvia decides she will never leave the comfort of my chest, never ever ever again, and falls asleep. If I threaten to move her, she threatens to wake up. I surrender. Because, she is sleeping. That makes one of the three of us.
2:00 Peregrine is still refusing to sleep.
3:00 Peregrine finally gives in. Sylvia and I savor the silence and stillness (alliteration much?)
4:00 Weekly skype date with Auntie Sarah. Some day, they will invent a skype where you can just hand the baby through the screen. On second thought, that would be really creepy. Peregrine wakes up, and proceeds to cry over various small things. He actually takes me up on my offer to snuggle with me and calm down. A sure sign he is in fact not feeling very well.
5:30 Dinner prep commences. Macaroni and cheese it is. With no vegetables. My only goal for dinnertime is not having to fight anything. At all. Goal accomplished. Peregrine downs almost an entire box of mac n cheese, and then I give him cookies. Carbs for the win tonight. I eat while bouncing, a questionable practice, but Sylvia will have it no other way. Not fighting anything, remember?
6:00 Happiness ensues as Peregrine helps me with the laundry. It's the small things.
6:15 I change poopy diaper #5 (Peregrine).
6:30 I promise Peregrine a video if he will pick up all his cars and legos. I snag the sudden free space to clean the kitchen. With a bit of coaching, the cars are cleaned up (amazing what a little motivation will do) and video watching begins. Usually, I ask him what he wants to watch and just use that as the search word on Youtube. You know, fire truck, owl, that sort of thing. Tonight his requests are "boys taking a bath" (surprisingly, that one turned out mainly G-rated hits of people's toddlers being cute in the bathtub, often with pets involved), and "girls taking a bath with no shirt on" (horrors! that one I had to weed through to find the one cute clip, and I didn't even include that last qualifier in my search). He then screams for a long time when I tell him video watching is over. Then he interprets my "if you scream when we stop watching videos we can't watch videos anymore" to mean "if you stop screaming we will keep watching videos." Then he screams again when he realizes he was wrong.
7:30 Kid in bed. Finally. It took some baby-wrangling, but she was surprisingly compliant, and let me give her brother lots of attention.
8:00 Sylvia diapered and pajamaed. (That's a word, oddly enough, according to spell check). Time for a date with ice cream (from the carton) and Netflix. Unfortunately, neither of my children want to sleep.
9:00 The last hour has consisted of at least 15 trips into Peregrine's bedroom to try to get him to stop calling me for trivial things. Normally, I would probably have given up. But, he is sick. Tonight, I'm willing to risk reinforcing bad habits over the risk of missing something he actually needs. Unfortunately, most of his "needs" tonight are along the lines of "help drinking my bottle" and "more dees." When I'm not trying to get P back to sleep, I'm bouncing Sylvia, who has decided that she'd like to bounce forever. At least if I want her to think about sleeping ever again. Needless to say, this puts a damper on my ice-cream-and-Netflix experience.
10:00 To bed, armed with loaded Kindle in case Sylvia refuses to sleep. Surprisingly, she nurses, and conks right out as soon as I put her in bed. Possibly, this is because a.) the room is dark, and b.) I'm not reading out loud to Andrew.
The kids actually slept well. Sylvia woke twice (!) to nurse, which is enough that I never wake up wondering if she's alive, but I still get sizable chunks of sleep. Peregrine woke up once, which is far better than I expected, given the start of the night. When I asked him what he needed, he sobbed out that he wanted a snack first. He kept repeating this, and when I tentatively suggested that we don't have snacks at night and did he want a dee instead, he started screaming and said no. Kid never turns down a dee, so I knew something was up. By the time I had actually located a dee to give him, whatever horrible nightmare about his lack of snack had faded, and he accepted the dee and went peacefully back to sleep.
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