Just Another One of Those Days

Part I: I took the kids to the park for awhile this afternoon. The first half hour, everything went smoothly. Too smoothly. I should have been able to hear the ominous music playing in the background.

Here's where it all went downhill. Sam and Natalie were playing at opposite sides of the playground, and I was sitting on a bench halfway between. Sam suddenly said, "Mommy, what's this on my hand?"

Uh-oh. I said, "I don't know, what does it look like?" as I hurried over as quickly as I could. My flip-flops came off in the deep sand after about two steps. When he answered, "Paint?" I decided to leave the shoes where they were. I could only imagine...would it be bird poop? Gum? Actual wet paint?

One step later, I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I stopped to find a sand burr dug deep into the arch of my foot. After prying it out, I started running again, only to step on another sand burr.

After finally making it across the minefield of sand burrs, I reached Sam to find a purple splotch on his hand, obviously a remnant from an art class at daycare. As I breathed a sigh of relief, Natalie started shrieking from the other end of the playground. Ten sand burrs later, I reached her to find that she had fallen and had a sand burr firmly entrenched in the palm of her hand.

Just then, I smelled something rather foul. I assumed that the culprit was Natalie, since Sam had taken care of business before going to the park. As I was checking her diaper, Sam confessed that it was actually him that was stinky. Luckily, I had brought a couple of diapers and some wipes with, so I looked around for a spot to change him. I wasn't about to lay him down in the sand burrs, so that left the bench as the only option. Not too comfortable, and I knew he'd object, but the only other option was to go home.

(I should add here that this bench was not on the sandy part of the playground. It was on a patch of grass...and dirt.)

Natalie was still very fussy, so before changing him, I made her a bottle. She immediately spit her pacifier out into the dirt. Yeah, great planning there on my part. High-five for me! I used the little bit of water that remained in the bottle and poured it over her pacifier. The resulting mud puddle instantly drew both kids' attention, and before I could react, they were both covered in mud. Not just their hands, because of course, Natalie had to taste it to see what it was, and Sam had to copy her because he thinks that gets him more attention.

At that point, I said, "Enough!" and I tossed them both into the bike trailer, mud, sand burrs, poop, and all, and we high-tailed it home to clean up. By the time we got home, both were fast asleep. In the time that it took me to run in the house to get the camera, both had woken up, so unfortunately I didn't get any documentation as proof that it actually happened.

Part II: After we got home, Sam wanted to help Ron, who was working in the backyard. Evidently, there was a minor accident involving a shovel, so Sam decided to come inside to hang out with me for awhile. Shortly after coming in the house, he got into trouble and had to go into a time-out. I didn't have the patience to keep putting him back into the naughty spot every time he got up, so I decided to sit right beside him and hold onto his arm to "encourage" him to stay put. He hates that. You'd think I was twisting his arm, rather than just lightly holding on to it, to hear him scream and carry on.

The entire two minutes, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "I don't like this don't hold onto me Mommy leave me alone I want to get up", etc. When he got to the part about "scary monsters", I started feeling the laughter coming. I know it sounds mean to hear me say that I wanted to laugh, but I figured out awhile ago that he's not really scared of monsters. He's just figured out that's an all-purpose excuse to get out of things.

I made it until two seconds before the timer went off, and then I couldn't hold it in anymore. The absurdity of the tantrum, and his ramblings, was just too much for me. I had to leave the room and come back when my fit of laughter had passed.

Amazingly, he was still sitting in the naughty spot when I returned, and I went through the whole routine, "Do you know why you were in timeout?" followed by a hug and a kiss. He was still a little worked up from his tantrum, so afterwards he still couldn't stop talking but the words just wouldn't come out right. "I was in timeout--I threw Mommy--I hit a toy--I throw a toy and Mommy--I throw a toy and hit Mommy..."

In the meantime, I was removing his shoes, which were still sandy from the playground. He continued on, "I throw a toy and....someone was in the sandbox today!!" (This as the shoes came off and poured sand all over the living room carpet. Oops.)

The End.