Don't come a knockin'

I've officially been a stay at home mom for a year now and  I am either starting to be kind of ok at it, or my insanity has reached such a level that I just think that I'm ok at it.  One of the most surprising things about being at home all day is the enormous fleet of door-to-door foot traffic that happens during the afternoons. The Baptists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses have all come on a mission to get us to heaven and I've turned down people selling magazines, pest control, lawn control, and among other things, MEAT.  I honestly don't know why anyone would ever buy meat from a random stranger who comes to your door but apparently it happens a lot because the meat sales people are still in business.  Any time one of these people comes to my door it sets off my dogs and they start barking like we are being robbed, which then upsets/wakes up the babies so they start screaming and I end up climbing over a mountain of barking dogs and crying babies to get to the door just to tell some sketchy dude that no, I do not want his meat/magazines/Jesus and it takes me a good hour to after they leave to get everyone calmed down again, and my kids sure as hell aren't going to go back to sleep.

Anyway, I thought I would stop this problem by using my previous passive-aggressive-office-post-it skills and posting this simple sign over my doorbell:

Of course I was so, so wrong in thinking that these people would get the hint and just turn around when they saw my sign.  Nope, apparently if you are asked not to ring the doorbell then you just knock on the door in  your quest to sell/save. So then, in addition to the sign over the doorbell, I put up this sign:

I thought it was witty and cute and a good way to say "thanks, but no thanks" to the porch pilgrims.

This sign however, did not serve its intended purpose. In fact, I think it just gave the door-to-door people a challenge to overcome.  The first person who disobeyed my request was a tweaker named Timmy from a company called Coastal Concept Sales. Timmy actually acknowledged my sign and told me how funny it was but  that he wasn't "selling anything" and was there to help our troops by collecting money to send them care packages. So while Timmy is giving me his pitch, talking at about 100 miles an hour and having a hard time staying on subject,  Luke is standing in the door with me only wearing a diaper alternating between demanding pizza and saying "bye bye"and trying to leave while Lily is in her swing screaming her head off.  So because I am a softy and I just wanted the guy to freakin leave, I gave Timmy 40 bucks and sent him on his troop-helping way.  It was only after he'd left that I got onto my computer to figure out that the whole thing is a scam. Coastal Concept Sales is a shady for-profit company that may not have ever sent a single care package to our troops but nobody knows because they keep changing their name and they don't report financials  So that ticked me off, you know, just a little.

The second offence was even more infuriating. It was a Saturday morning and Mike was on about day 13 of being out of town and somehow I'd got both of my kids to take a nap at the exact same time which is a HUGE victory in mom land.  I took this time to eat lunch (without having to share!!!) and take a shower that lasted longer than 5 minutes (and OH MY GOD SHAVE MY LEGS). I got out of the shower feeling clean and smooth only to hear somebody frantically pounding on my door. This is a full-fist house-shaking pound and my thoughts were "OH MY GOD THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS ON FIRE" and "PANTS, I NEED PANTS!!" Of course the dogs and babies started their chorus of barking/crying while I struggled to thrown on a pair of dirty yoga pants and simultaneously run to the door. I got there just in time to see a man closing my gate and to find a flyer stuck into my door inviting me to come to his brand new strip mall "church." JESUS CHRIST!!! Either the dude couldn't read or doesn't know the 11th commandment "THOU SHALT NOT RUIN MAGIC TANDEM NAP TIME." Needless to say I was furious and I spent the next 2 hours trying to get the kids back to sleep while writing a strongly worded email in my head to the church, which of course I never got around to sending because really who has time for that?

Anyway, that has provoked me to put up a THIRD sign:

If this one doesn't work, I'm getting a shotgun.

Two in Two

I was a little apprehensive about having two kids in just under two years, but when I first brought Lily home from the hospital I thought my fears were all for naught. I was so proud of her big brother for adjusting amazingly well. He was sweet and considerate and just an all around good boy.  I was proud of Lily too, she was a gentle calm baby, she ate well, slept well and our whole family just seemed so happy and perfect. Fast forward three months and I realize what a delusional moron I was.  I have to constantly ask Luke not to hit/microplane/smother/stab with the iPad/color on his sister. He has also adopted his (dog) toy monkeys as his own babies and they must be constantly diapered, dressed, undressed and fed throughout the day but since he lacks the coordination to do these activities himself I am now responsible for caring for the monkeys. Thankfully, Lily sleeps through the night but she REFUSES to be put down during the day.  She also has this problem where she will eat way too much and then projectile vomit all over the place leaving her hungry again and me with no milk left to feed her.  Anyway, I've been a little overwhelmed lately, but all of this is nothing compared to the tag-team effort that my kids pulled on me yesterday.

My husband, Mike has been out of town so I've been wrangling the two bamboozles by myself for the last week. So it's the end of the day and Lily had managed to do her throw up trick twice that afternoon and she smelled like frat house. For some reason I'd given Luke spaghetti for dinner (i.e. I am an idiot) and he was covered in tomato sauce combined with crayola marker from some artistic expression he'd engaged in earlier in the day. Plus I'd taken him to Chuck E Cheese the day before and I really should've hosed him off the second he'd gotten home but I got distracted, so it was time to give the kids a bath.  Because I am a stellar multitasker, I approached the chore with confidence.

I had just bleached the tub the weekend before and I was afraid that there may be some kind of residual bleach left in the tub, even though I'd rinsed the tub immediately after cleaning it and the parts per gallon of bleach to water had to be minimal, I rinsed the tub again extra good before I started to fill it up because I had an irrational fear of giving my son chemical burns to his boy parts.  Then I filled up the infant tub for Lily and put it on the counter so that I could wash her and watch Luke through the mirror play in the tub. I was so proud of myself for my genius plan. Look at me, using mirrors, bathing my kids in a super clean tub, being super mom. No big deal, I was born to do this.

When I put Lily into the infant tub she immediately began to scream because she wasn't being held but then got used to it and started to kick and splash and have pretty much the best time of her life, probably reminiscent about her time spent in my tummy before she was exposed to this cruel, cruel world. Luke too was having a good time, he had his approximately 127 bath toys engaged in some kind of epic battle where they would randomly scream out "OH NO!!!" and plunge into the Petersen Sea.  I was reveling at how awesome I was. Both of my kids were super happy, developing their little brains like champs and getting clean! Mama of the year.

I started to get disgusted by the fact that Luke's bath water had turned grey. Like, really, really grey, and I vowed to bathe him more often.  Then I noticed an unfamiliar bath toy floating among the boats and biplanes and whales. I felt the dread start building up in my stomach as got up the courage to take a closer look.  It was poop. Poop in my recently sanitized tub. Poop that was rapidly disintegrating into the bathwater and turning into our own personal sewer system. OH NO indeed.

I yanked Lily out of her tub and wrapped her in a towel and ran and put her in Luke's crib and she starts howling like she's been injured, but at least it's better than leaving her in the tub while I address the poop situation.  I get back to Luke and make him stand up in the tub and I slather him with half a bottle of Johnson's baby wash and then I take the shower nozzle and start to hose him down.  The problem is that I used all the hot water up rinsing the tub, filling the tub and filling the infant tub so it is ice cold.  Luke started to scream like he is getting murdered and reached down to grab a toy to defend himself with.  The toy that landed in his hand was the poop. He looked down at the poop and he knew EXACTLY what it was and started to scream louder and SQUEEZED THE POOP THROUGH HIS FINGERS. It took every single bit of restraint in my body not to vomit right then and there. Somehow I calmly finished hosing him off with the arctic water and removed him from the tub and took him back to his room. By this time Lily had stopped crying and was cooing happily in Luke's crib and I'm thinking "maybe I should give her more naked time, she seems really happy." I got Luke dressed in his PJ's and then picked up Lily and I figure out exactly what baby + cold air + no diaper equals.  Lily had peed all over her brother's bed.  So I reacted by screaming "OH MY GOD" which of course scares the hell out of both babies and they start to cry again and all three of us just sat there crying for a good five minutes.

Eventually I got up, got the sheets changed and got both kids down for the night.  I filled the tub up with more bleach water to soak overnight and made myself a strong vodka tonic which I got about 10% through before I fell asleep watching some idiotic romantic comedy Netflix thought I would like.  So far today Lily has not thrown up and Luke is only 25% covered in marker but if I have to bathe them again I will be ready for anything.