One of those days...

I just had to post today even though I have recently. Today was just one of those days that you just say, "I can't wait for this day to be over!" Josh was playing in the stake basketball tournament this morning and lured me to come with the promise of shopping at the outlet malls in between games. Unfortunately for me, his team actually did well so the time in between games was not very large. I ended up chasing the boys around a junior high school cafeteria for most of the morning.

When we got home from that, luckily Caleb napped. However, Gabe did not. Which meant he was extra cranky when my sister and her little girl came over at 4:30. I think Gabe had about 5 timeouts in his room between 4:30 and 6:00. Then once he was settled down (somewhat) Jasmine (my niece) got mad at Rachel for telling her to color at the table, and decided to show her frustration by coloring with that black marker all over my white dining room walls. As I was wetting down the magic eraser to clean it up, Gabe starts bawling in the living room. Jasmine had bit his finger pretty bad (in her defense she said he hit her first - which he admitted....) so we needed a band-aid for that.

Less than five minutes later as Rachel is dragging Jasmine out the door, Caleb says, "Juice! Juice!" I was in the kitchen at the time and turned around just in time to see the full glass of orange soda that Rachel had been drinking, fall all over Caleb's white shirt like a waterfall and all over the dining room floor. I pulled his shirt and pants off and left him in his diaper while I filled the sink with hot water and some bleach for his white shirt - which took about 1 minute maybe. In that minute Caleb pooped his diaper so bad it was liquidous and coming out the sides. I quickly carried him up to the bath tub with my hands under his armpits and hosed him down. Yuck.

After that I put him to bed and got Gabe settled downstairs with a snack. I was sitting there, looking at my totally trashed house - black marker on walls, orange soda on floor, stained clothes in sink, dinner still on the table, toys covering the floor so bad I couldn't see my carpet... and I thought to myself, "Those moms who say they look back on these early years and miss it when their house was a mess must be crazy!" I always tell Josh I must be different cause I'm pretty excited for when it's just me and him again! But then I went upstairs to check on Caleb because he kept occasionally saying, "Mama..." and when I went in there and picked him up out of his crib he snuggled into me so close and put his head down on my shoulder and started patting my back and I just thought, "Aww...this makes it worth it." Of course this is what I will remember through rose-colored glasses when I am fifty and telling some fried young mom "I miss those days." Moms have an amazing ability to remember the good don't they? They must or else every family would only have one child because no woman would ever want to go through labor twice, right?!

Then I came downstairs from Caleb's room and Gabe was sitting on the floor with this doodle pad he has (the kind you slide a thing across the bottom and it erases it) trying to write his name. It was so cute. I wrote his name on the top and then drew a box under each letter and he went through very carefully and copied each one in the box below it. He was so proud of himself he set it on the couch and told me not to touch it because he wanted to show daddy when he got home. "Awww" again. My kids are so cute. I don't know who those monsters were at my house earlier.... THESE are MY kids. :)