Musings
Lady Archer's Musing (quoted with permission)
I woke up at a quarter 'til 5 this morning...why?...good darn question! So, I get out of bed and wander the house, only to find Tyler wide awake on the couch watching his beloved cartoon network.
Hi mom he says, like it's no big deal. Hi Tyler I said. I walked out front and realized that loe and behold, my husband without a brain left the sprinklers running all night, so we watered the whole neighborhood's yards. After shutting them off, I walk back inside to get a drink, and notice that Tyler must have made himself a midnight snack from the mess in the kitchen. I cleaned it up.
Then, I walk upstairs to check on baby Travis, and he's just sitting up in his crib staring at nothing. I walk in his room and pick him up, and he's burning hot. Great...I thought. Here we go again. Take him downstairs, change his diaper, fill him up with medicine, make him a nice warm bottle, and back upstairs we go. I come back down after getting him tucked in, Tyler has fallen back asleep so I go to cover him up, and there I notice all the cookies he had stashed under his blanket. Put the cookies away. I go back into my bedroom, and I can hear water running. So I walk into the bathroom, and the toilet has come alive and is spitting water everywhere! Holy Cow I scream, and grab a towel. 30 minutes later I have successfully beaten the old water sucker into submission, and all is flushing peacefully. I look at the clock, only 10 'til 6, no sweat, I'll go back to sleep now. Just started dozing off, and all of a sudden I hear air raid alarms going off in my head. I jumped clear out of the bed, and realized that no, no air raid alarms here, just the alarm clock announcing to husband without a brain that it's time to get up for work. I lay back down, my nerves shot, my heart still pounding, making a mental note to shoot that alarm clock and buy another one less offensive.
.
Next thing I know, I have two boys jumping on my bed screaming for cereal, open one eye, look at the clock, oh joy, 7:15, woo hooo! They let me sleep in 15 minutes later! So, I walk to the kitchen, tripping over every darn toy these boys have in the house all the way there. Coffee, coffee is my focus. I get the coffee out of the fridge, set it down next to the pot, fill the pot with water, 8 cups should be just about right I'm thinking. Get the filter, open the coffee, and just stare into the can. Now, being not fully awake yet, I can't register what is in this can. I can smell the aroma of the coffee, ah heavenly, but wait...is that chocolate I smell? I focus intently in the can, hmmm, now when did Maxwell House start adding chocolate chip cookies to their coffee?
I shrug my shoulders, thinking no, it wasn't Maxwell, it was Tyler as I'm plucking cookies out of the coffee. Coffee is brewing, cereal is made, baby is up and changed, medicine has been equally distributed among the ranks. All is well on the home front...now what the heck is that noise?!?!?!?! I go in search of the god awful squealing, ouch, my ears, what is it? where is it?! Codyyyyyyy!!!! Tylerrrrrrrr!!!!!! Who put the hot wheels car in the VCR???? "I didn't" "Not me"
"Travis must have" were the answers I got. 15 minutes later I have fished the mangled car out of the VCR, hoping upon all hope that the VCR will not sustain permanent damage in fear that the boys bottoms will sustain permanent damage when their dad finds out. Whew, all is running well. Crisis over. Back to their cereal bowls they go, looking so innocent and unassuming. Little devils with an angel's halo, that's what it is. So, upon getting them settled down with their cartoons, I take my coffee into my room to work on the infamous computer. I turn it on, and it starts making unusual noises. "Uh Ohhhhh" I think to myself. Could Tyler have struck in here too???? I start checking everything out, nothing looks out of place, but wait, I didn't check the cd rom. Man! these cookies are making their rounds today!!! But alas, I got it all cleaned out and working like a charm. I jumped up quickly, went into the kitchen, found the bag of said cookies, and hid them appropriately to avoid future appearances like those this morning.
So, computer's whizzing right along, time to work on my web page. Delete the old page, get ready to upload the new page that I had just finished last night. Oh but wait, there was a couple things (yeah, a couple things, just a couple of things, right) I wanted to change. Well, an hour later I'm done, get ready to publish to the web, and boom, computer freezes! Tilt head back, open mouth, and let out a bone chilling, raise the hair on your arms type scream that made all the boys come running to investigate.
There sits mom, fuming in a now silent rage, trying to control the urge to heave the whole freaking computer right through the window. "No kids, everything's ok, mommy's not having a heart attack. No, I don't need any medicine (a beer maybe, a bottle of wine sure, but no medicine). No, I don't need to call daddy (although a good slap upside his head might calm me down)." Start over, completely. Another hour worth of work on the page, and a successful upload to the web. Whew! Didn't want to go through that again.
Crash!!!!
I fly out of my chair, jumping any hurdles in my way (one of which was Travis) to find out what the heck just crashed in my living room, and worse yet, who was under it. There stands Tyler (busy little bee today isn't he?), looking at me with those big deer eyes of his, and I can already hear the excuses coming out of his mouth before he starts...you know, things like "Cody did it". I look at my entertainment center, that once stood with such grace and beauty with smoked glass doors (those of which have been broke by said children who don't know who did what) and unscathed oak (which is now scratched from being turned into the hot wheels parking garage).
It seems Tyler, in his futile attempt to play Spiderman and crawl up the entertainment center to retrieve his sacred Terminator 2 movie, broke my shelf which until then housed a part of my collection of angels, which fell to the bottom shelf right on top of the volume of encyclopedias that never get used unless mom needs to find a new word to describe her pending insanity.
Oh, an angel has fallen victim to the catastrophe, give it a proper burial as it is beyond repair. I look at Tyler, ready to give him the usual onslaught of verbal reprimand, followed up by a swift stop-crawling-on-my-furniture swat to his behind, when all of a sudden, the bottom lip begins to quiver, that big crocodile tear wells up in his eye, and the little hands ball into fists and come up to tuck childishly under the chin. "I'm sorry mommy (sniff sniff) I didn't mean to bwake your anshil". Oh, how can I verbally assault him now?
So, I do what any normal mommy would do, I grab him, hug him, tell him that it's ok, but that I am very upset with him, blah, blah, blah. Timed out, he now sits on the couch and watches me try to fix the entertainment center's broken limb, all the while offering me suggestions that only a 3 year old could offer.
Meanwhile, I'm thinking Oh Geez!! !Husband without a brain is going to have a cow! You know, it's amazing what a thumbtack and some bubble gum (already chewed of course) can do, lol. But wait!!! Where's Cody in the midst of all this commotion??? I dare Tyler to get off the couch and go in search of my second born trouble maker, finding him nowhere. Ok, it's a game, I think to myself.
Where is Cody? Oh Cooooooody, where arrrrrrrrrre you? No answer. Ok, don't panic, it's a big house. Search the upstairs first, nope, nowhere to be found. Ok, my room, downstairs, nope. My bathroom, nope. Ooops, tripped over Travis coming out of the bathroom because he has turned into my shadow and follows me everywhere. Take a few minutes to soothe his feelings, set him on the floor with the remote, tell him to have a ball, and continue my search. Walk back into living room, look at Tyler who's still sitting on the couch like he was told, watching me carefully as if trying to assess my mood. Give him a quick I love you smile, and continue on. Go out back, nope no Cody. Walk out front, no signs of him here. What the heck! He's disappeared!!
Panic starts to creep in, think, think, think. Hmmm, the garage, that's the only place I haven't looked. Walk out to the garage, the lights on, so he must be in here. Look around. Listen closely, I can hear him. Walk to the corner of the garage where I have my old bed frame and mattresses stacked (the boys have made them into a fort). Quietly move one mattress out of the way, and there sits Cody, eating those damn chocolate chip cookies that I thought I'd hidden so well. Then, with all the innocence his little body could muster, you won't believe what he had the audacity to say to me....
"Tyler did it!"
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