24 Hours

The past 24 hours have been hell a true test of parenting wills.  The kind of 24 hours where you think back to life before children, when all you had to worry about were unreasonable landlords, psychotic boyfriends, overdue bills, office politics, backstabbing coworkers, irate bosses...aw, those were the days!

I can't even remember it all.  I know the boys were up by 6am yesterday.  I know there was pissing all over the back of the toilet due to Sean's bad aim.  I know Ryan screamed and flailed because he just was not going to take that second nap.

But there were standouts:

(ONE) While walking up the stairs with a full basket of clean clothes, a smell hit me like a tanker truck.  A tanker truck of shit.  I am still not sure if it was dog vomit or dog diarrhea in the dining room, as it was runny, chunky, with both solid food and a substance that looked like poop to me.  So I scrambled to get towels to clean it up, and as I turned from the kitchen back to the dining room, I saw Ryan.  Wallowing around in said substance.  All over his feet, his hands...and his mouth and face.

I dropped the towels, ran to Ryan, and proceeded to literally torture my baby.  Waterboarding - do not try this at home!  With a full cup of water, I hung Ryan almost upside down, and practically drowned him, trying to flush out all the crap.  Because it may have actually been crap.  At a minimum, it was very foul puke.

As I'm doing this, the pot of boiling water on the stove overflows, and the kitchen fills with steam and gurgling, boiling water.  That was a sign that God was having a good laugh.

I got Ryan cleaned up, proceeded to cleaning the spot.  While I'm on hands and knees, fighting a now-perfectly-fine Ryan for the spot cleaner hose, I hear a thud and screaming behind me.  Sean hasn't quite master his mad jumping skillz, and scraped his back down the side of his solid wood step stool.  Gave himself a good four to five inch scrape.

(No, no pictures of the shit or baby torture.)

So my nerves were fried, and Isabella and Trey weren't even home yet.

And then they got home.

(TWO) Apparently, Isabella got a nice chip on her shoulder at school, and came home ready to pounce.  Not that we knew.  We also didn't know that Long Division would lead to a World War Three level outburst.  I've been learning that children, especially divorced children, want nothing more than to know that they are unconditionally loved, and they will test that knowledge at random.  So rather than engage an outburst, I now opt to just keep telling Isabella that I love her.  Last night was the first time I had the luxury of implementing said tactic, and let's just say, she didn't like it.  You name it, she said it, and I just kept quietly telling her, "But I love you."  I've never seen, felt or heard such rage.  Aunt Mandy had the privilege of being on the phone with Trey during the outburst.

However, the "I Love You" tactic is quite good, because while it was the most intense outburst, it was also quite short, and within 20 minutes, we were back out in the dining room, finishing that nasty long division problem.

I also started drinking a beer.

There was the usual folding loads of laundry well after bedtime.  Waking up at the crack of dawn this morning.  Cleaning up more urine from around the toilet.

Oh, and (THREE) I got to further hone my Baby Torture skills by waterboarding Ryan yet again!  This time, it was to flush the gushing blood from his mouth, after he fell down in the street on the way home from Isabella's bus stop.  Oh, and I spilled hot coffee on myself.

A very worn out Momma,

with coffee on the sleeve and blood on the shoulder.

Seriously, it's no longer considered a faux pas to drink before Noon, right?