Slippery Genius

My blog would so rock if I had a little recording device to hang on my shirt all day.   I have moments of pure genius of wit and commentary on the daily scramble  and think, “Ooh!   I have to put that on my blog later today!” only to sit hours later in front of a blank computer screen and mumble, “What was that again??”

But I do  remember thinking at one point today, Wow: two kids are a lot harder than one.

Duh.

I have a friend whose husband insists that having more than one child is developmentally irresponsible.   He says that there is no way you can effectively rear more than one child without seriously neglecting key teaching opportunities.   Then I have another friend with five kids whose husband insists that they need a few more – arguing that the more kids you   have, the more fun you have and the more they learn about life.   Then there’s another that just read the Duggar’s autobiography, 20 and Counting, and swears that they have  a lot of catching up to do.    

But back to my own (obvious) revelation: being a stay-at-home mom to more than one preschooler is tough.   When Kenny was Cooper’s age, he never napped.   Never, ever, never.   Unless I nursed him to sleep and held him perfectly still.   If I so much as shifted my elbow, he was up with a start, looked at me and shouted with glee, ready to play with the Mama.   At least he was happy, right?   But I had a little routine for awhile: at 10AM, I would sit and nurse him and watch ER, which had back-to-back episodes at 10 and 11 in syndication.   I would usually make it through both.    Occasionally at 1 I would sit in the same spot and turn on the Food Network, and we’d get through Everyday Italian and part of Paula’s Home Cooking.   (Ok, I didn’t do that every single day.    Just when I could get away with it!)   Then when he was awake we played, went on long walks, went to the park, the mall or out to lunch.   When it was time to fold laundry or clean I put him on the floor wherever I was working and he played happily for the brief time I was otherwise engaged.   We were the Two Musketeers.  

Fast forward to the present.   When Cooper doesn’t fall right to sleep on his naptime, he cries.   And cries, and cries.   I try to juggle playing something meaningful with Kenny and getting through bits and pieces of the housework.   Then if more than 30 minutes has gone by, I go get him up and juggle a whole different set of tasks, namely trying to play  something meaningful with both of them simultaneously.   I usually end up failing on both sides of that one, and end up just playing referee.  

Oh my goodness, I haven’t even mentioned that Cooper has started to pull himself up!   And he’s tall!   He can reach anything on a coffee table or end table.   Today while I was putting the dinner dishes into the dishwasher, in partial sight of him and Kenny playing in the living room, I heard Kenny start to cackle.   “Cooper took his shirt off!   Oooooops…”   I stepped in to see Cooper underneath the Nok Hockey table – a very (thank God!) lightweight plywood contraption that sits on top of the coffee table in our living room.   Apparently Cooper was standing up, holding onto the edge of the hockey game for balance as Kenny, for some inexplicable reason, decided to take off his shirt.     Cooper must have lost his balance mid-strip and pulled the table on top of himself as he fell down.   He was not even crying, but rather laughing and trying to roll himself out from under it.   I was the only one having a heart attack, thank you very much.

One more reason not to do the dishes…

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