Today began at approximately 2:30am, when Birdie woke squawking. Last weekend's "touch of a sore throat" is this weekend's "touch of a cold." Poor thing. She had dried snot all over the place when we opened the zoo door. Truly, we are living with zoo animals. We relay a gem of incident which happened, actually, earlier this week, as evidence and exposition. Joe was at the potty one morning, peeing, while Julie brushed her teeth, and Julie watched as Joe slowly glided his wee to the edge of the bowl and began peeing on it, such that pee was dribbling down the left side of the bowl. A flabbergasted Julie quickly spit out a mouthful of toothpaste to exclaim, "Joe!" Joe replied (whined) that he wanted to pee on the side. Indeed. What life must he like to have, to the three-year-old mind, the equivalent of a garden hose attached to one's body. So, we live in a zoo, quite literally it sometimes seems.
This morning, after Joe had pitched a fit (and various battles of the wills had been pitched) about getting dressed (he did not want to wear the shirt he'd just picked out), getting his toe nails trimmed (the day he can self-groom truly cannot come fast enough), and putting on his socks (he DID WANT TO DO IT, all evidence to the contrary), Ted said he would take the bambini to Target so Julie could get ready in peace and quiet. Off they went. Julie thought she would quickly vacuum and mop since it is really so much easier when the house is empty of all save Berenice. She was dashing about putting things that live on the floor on top of furniture and the kitchen countertops when she saw Ted's wallet, and phone, on the kitchen countertop, too.
She spent about a minute wondering if he would realize before reaching checkout, and how she might reach him, before hoping in the car and speeding off to Target. Omnipresent in her mind was the chance that Ted might not realize he'd left behind his wallet until checkout. She arrived at Target and didn't see Bronzie in the parking lot, but headed in to the store anyway to case the joint. Perhaps you are already ahead of us here, Fans: Ted and the bambini were nowhere to be found. At this point, Julie decided to hold position. After a bit, she thought she might call and leave a message on the home phone. So she called the house--and we do not make this up; you cannot make this up--at the exact moment Ted was calling her cell phone. After the whole o-kay-I'll-call-back-no-you-call-back-no?-o-kay-I'll-call-back shuffle, we connected. Ted said "Are you at Target?" Julie said "Yes." (We did laugh.)
And Fans, it's not even 9am at this point.
By noon, Joe had been wrestled into his car seat following music class (epic), wailed the whole way home ("I want to do good behavior! I want to do it myself! I want a song! I want to go the crazy other way!"), tried to wriggle free of his car seat straps, and banged all about the downstairs after being wrestled out of the car and into the house. Clara, in case you are wondering, sucked her two fingers and fell asleep in the midst of all of this.
Now, the bambini are rousing from the afternoon nap. Julie can here Clara chirping "Doh? Doh? Doh?" from her crib.
You can't help but smile, despite everything. And then there's this: the moment at the end of music class when Joe looked about for Julie and realized she did not have a handle to hold on the parachute to help fling leaves up and down, and finding her, said, "Here you go, Mommy," and made room on his handle.
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