Pernicious Parenting & Being Neighborly

Obviously this is not a good parenting weekend for us. After last night's diaper debacle, this evening we experienced the Chocolate Catastrophe, otherwise known as the Evening When DS Decided to Bathe in Chocolate Pie.

Today not being demanding enough with the house & yard in a below average state of cleanliness and general repair, DH & I decided to start painting our bedroom at about 2 pm. This was not the best decision, as it rendered our room Chaos Central ^TM, complete with complaining DS (1^st) and alternately complaining and "helping" DD (2^nd). Painting one colour would have been chaos enough, but of course we have the plastered over Freddy Krueger wall which required priming (Paint Colour #1), and the other three walls to be painted a very pale, muted green (Paint Colour #2), and finally the plastered wall to be painted an intermediate shade of muted green (Paint Colour #3).

As if that weren't enough general destruction, for some reason I decided that it was absolutely necessary to finally start clearing out the 2 foot tall weeds from the veggie garden, and proceeded to attack them viciously with a hoe this morning after ingesting a decent amount of coffee. I got about 2/3 of the way down the first row of corn, and I was D-O-N-E. How sad am I--I can't even hoe a whole row of corn on a cloudy, cool morning?? I am SO OUT OF SHAPE! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

After bemoaning my general state of un-fitness to DH and muttering to myself about "making time to work out" while eating cornflakes, I realized that our floors are really quite dirty and at about that time DH made a discovery in DD's bedroom, along the lines of "Oh my G-d, what is this on the floor...honey have you seen this??" At which time I go into DD's bedroom to discover scribblings in ballpoint PEN on the WOOD FLOORS. NO idea when this occurred...it's just small enough to go undiscovered for days, and after some futile scrubbing on my part with lemon Formula 409 I add "Mr. Clean Magic Eraser" to the shopping list and hope that it will come out with that magical cleaning product.

So after getting DD down for her nap, full of homemade mac-n-cheese (to which the credit goes entirely to DH, who makes a mean cheddar cheese sauce), DH & I spent about 45 minutes leisurely perusing brain-dead TV (in our house, this means the Food Network) before deciding, "Let's paint our bedroom!"

Worst decision ever, I think. After a frenzy of painting and multiple paint pails around our bedroom, a toxic odor of drying latex paint which necessitated opening the French doors & thus inviting in hosts of flying organisms, and cleaning DD of latex paint TWICE, I deemed it time to take the kids for a walk so DH could mow the lawns. (Incidentally this means we could check on the neighbors' garden & feed their cat, whom I believe hadn't been fed AT ALL during the first week of their honeymoon, since they asked us to look after the garden but never mentioned their outdoor cat...poor thing was subsisting on who knows what before I realized what must be occurring and fed her yesterday.) Sure enough the cat was waiting for me and consented to being petted, although she is probably still quite huffy about getting no FOOD for a week. I will definitely clarify this with our neighbors when they get back because DH & I are quite sure they never asked us to feed the cat but it seems obvious no one was, so we want to be quite clear in future if they ask us to look after watering the garden that they also mean their CAT as well. (I mean it's one thing to not water plants except every few days but QUITE another to not water & feed pets!!).

Anyhow, we got back and I made dinner--a cobbled together lasagne with quite a motley assortment of leftovers. The beef was fine if oxidized, the leftover bits of onion were getting close to declaring independence but were still acceptable for use, and DH poo-pooed me because I added the garlic late instead of sauteeing it with the onions at the start. I also added some leftover roasted garlic marinara sauce (another no-no to DH), since we didn't have enough crushed tomatoes to make enough sauce. By some grace of God I actually stretched this measly amount of sauce to make a FOUR layer lasagne, something which normally escapes me, so I was feeling pleased enough with myself to whip up a quick dessert using what we had on hand. Tonight that meant organic vanilla animal crackers (Costco, we love thee), some butter, and 2 boxes of instant Jello chocolate pudding and milk. Voila, a chocolate pie was born, after some cathartic bashing of animal crackers in a ziploc and frenzied whipping with a whisk. Yum!

Which brings me to the evening's denouement...DS, who is in that fun 'grabby' stage, decided HE wanted some chocolate pie, and made a grab for mine, resting on the arm of the sofa. Er...suffice it to say, he had chocolate pie filling over his face, hair, in his ear, and down his chest, and I had an ample sufficiency on my arm and clothing as well. DD thought this was uproariously funny, seeing as she had been eating her sliver of pie with her fingers, and proceeded to declare he needed a bath. So all three of us ended up in the bathtub, where we washed off all the chocolate pudding with DH's help. I smell of Johnson & Johnson baby wash, am significantly de-painted, and DS still has a tiny bit of chocolate pie filling in his ear. I doubt I would improve the situation by attempting to clean it out with a cotton swab, so he's just going to have a dab of chocolate pudding in his ear. I'm sure the ladies in the nursery at church won't find it TOO unusual tomorrow...at least I hope so...

Let us hope that we can end the weekend without one of our children ending up in the ER for some small object stuck in their noses or ears. At this point, I will take that and celebrate it as an enormous success!!!