While You Were Sleeping. Or, Children Don't Stay Where You Put Them.

Allow me to preface this post with an announcement:

It's STILL FRICKING SNOWING!!! Come on. There has got to be an end to this? I'm so sick of cold and snow!!!!!!!!!!!!

The part that really sucks though, is I know it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Cause at least everything is still frozen and relatively clean... once it warms up its gonna be muddy like nobody's business. And yuck, that's not playground weather at ALL.

That out of the way, I would like to report that I ran my 10k race this past Sunday and it went quite well, aside from the fact that the entire course was ice. I am not even exaggerating. It had warmed up last week, so the trail it was on (yeah, I for some reason assumed it was a road race. It wasn't.) HAD been all muddy and slushy and wet but then it got cold again overnight and so the entire length of the race was ice. Some parts black ice, some parts snowy ice, some parts puddles of ice, some parts that kind of ice you get when slush (complete with footprints) just freezes? Yeah. Not the nicest surface to run on. BUT. I finished the race, didn't fall, and actually beat my goal time by 5 minutes. And they gave me French Toast and sausages afterward, so I'd say it was a resounding success.

Photo courtesy of a random lady that I saw struggling to do a self-pic and offered to take it for her in exchange for this.

Which brings me to my next topic. (Eff segues.) The children and the sleeping. Things have actually been pretty good around here lately. We've had a nice routine going, one that allows me two free hours in the afternoon, which I am totally for. But yesterday.. oi.

Several friends of mine have asked me, upon becoming new mamas themselves, "But how can you get a shower? I can't even figure out how to do it with one baby! And you've got the baby and the toddler!" I answer- naptime. If simultaneous naps fail, I'll either put the little one down for a nap and then take the big one in the shower with me, or I'll put the big one down for her nap, stick the little one in the johnny jump-up in the bathroom doorway, and then get a glorious 14 minutes to myself. We went with the latter yesterday. Put Fiona in her bed, tucked her in, hung out in the doorway long enough to be satisfied that she was staying put, johnny-jump-upped the baby and stepped into that steamy goodness. Mid-shampoo I hear a little girl say "Mama?" and I'm pretty sure Violet didn't start talking since the beginning of my shower, so I very sternly say, "Fiona, you march your little self back to bed and take your nap."

Then nothing but silence and some distinctly Violetty baby-babble. SO I think, wow, that actually worked. I am awesome at this. Did not realize that she was not, in fact, napping, but carrying armloads of books from her room into the bathroom. When I stepped out of the shower I saw this-


and when I asked her (as sternly as I could manage) "What are you doing here, Missy Girl?" I got this-

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of a "shit-eating grin".

I just. I can't be mad. She was so proud of herself. She said she was going to work with Daddy and her books onna potty. I said to bed to bed. And she did.

And slept, covered in her books.

Part Two. Bedtime.

My first mistake was allowing her to open a present (that I knew she'd be crazy about) right before bedtime. She opted to play with her "decorates" instead of a bath, she served us up some "happy birthday cakecake" instead of storytime, she even wanted to sleep with her new toy. (So, Auntie Heather- it was a total hit. Thanks!) So she's in bed, playing with her little play food birthday cake, I can hear the wooden pieces clacking together, I'm like "Well, this will probably take a little longer than normal, but at least she's in bed."

She attempts to leave the room to serve me some cake. I turn her back around. She cries, then stops. Nate and I were sitting in our room talking, waiting for her to fall asleep, and then we hear her coming down the hallway again. "Quick!" I say, "pretend we're asleep. Let's see what she does." So we did.

Bad move on my part.

She came in, looked up at the bed, then turned around and went back to her room. Then came back and checked on Nate's side and went back. She did this like a dozen times, and then came in carrying her new cakecake and climbed up into bed with us (still "pretending" to be asleep, though I think Nate had actually fallen asleep by now) and snuggled right in and I thought that this was so stinking adorable that I just let it happen. Cool, I thought, I'll just let her fall asleep here and then I'll carry her into her room.

Moments later (I thought), I feel somebody kissing me right on the mouth. I taste... Nutella? What? I open my eyes and see the Nutella-covered face and hands and arms and jammies of a two-year-old who has not in fact been snuggling and sleeping, but has taken advantage of her sleeping parents and has been exploring. When asked, she says "Ona have choc-lat. With a knife!"

I clean her up, get her into bed for REAL, she finally actually falls asleep, and I go downstairs to survey the damage. And realize that it's 11:00pm. Which means Nate and I fell asleep around 9 and this kid was just chillin' on her own for TWO HOURS.

This whole incident was only funny because she didn't get herself hurt. She could just have easily pulled a sharp knife out of the drawer, or a glass down from the cabinet, or the Nutella could have been where it belongs in the pantry (instead of on the counter where I left it from my dinner-making-time snack) and she could have stacked things on top of stools to try to reach it. So the moral of the story is- those annoying childproofy doorknob things are now a necessity.

The scene of the crime. Poor hollowed out orange. Never did nothing to nobody. We also found a nutella-covered fork this morning. In the silverware drawer.