traps

so i just wanna know one thing...are my kids the only ones that set legitimate booby traps throughout the house? i mean look at this thing i stumbled upon at the top of the steps last night! to set a visual, i had a large pile of folded laundry in my arms and therefore wasn't looking down while walking up the stairs. (eyes obscured by shirts, pants, and such.) low and behold when i reached the precipice, i stepped directly on approximately 32 legos...amongst other treasures and trinkets. i will not divulge the expletives that escaped my mouth in that moment, but i sounded like a trucker. my kids were happily playing downstairs (building other booby traps) upon my melody ala bad words, but after i pulled the last lego out of my foot i yelled down, "WHICH ONE OF YOU LEFT ALL THIS STUFF AT THE TOP OF THE STEPS!?!" there was silence from below and then ella yelled, "CARRIE did!" right after that carrie yelled, "ELLA did!" oh good...now we need to play out an episode of judge judy to see who is at fault here. instead of practicing my lawyer skills, i put down the laundry in one of our bedrooms and cleaned up the lego landmine. i will say this doesn't beat the time i turned on the garbage disposal, only to have the explosive sound only a golf ball can make, backfire out of it. that's right, one of the two little people i live with plopped a golf ball in the sink one time, which went into the garbage disposal. (i unknowingly turned it on.) these toddler built booby traps sure beat anything that i ever saw on the goonies.

so anyway, as i was dealing with all that, my husband went on the facebook and posted the this pic:

when i saw it, my first thought was, "i feel really bad for you and your 11 hour day, as you are alone in the car with a starbucks and i am at the house breaking up a fight about a fake horse." my first thought was that, and that's exactly what i texted him upon seeing that picture. (oh yes i did.) alas, right before he posted that gem, there were screams galore, because both kids wanted to ride a toddler sized pony we have. they both wanted to ride that pony at the exact same instant in time, because clearly we do not have any other toys at all in the house that were suitable to play with in that moment. geoffrey the giraffe from toys r us took a huge dump of treasures in every room, but let's fight over one toy in this moment. (let's.) so i quickly went from "please share..." to "if you don't share i'm taking it away..." to "THAT'S IT I'M TAKING THE HORSE AND NO ONE GETS IT!" i hid the horse in my walk in closet and shut the door. (now no one is happy, including me. awesome.) after some tears, they wandered off to find something else to fight about. it might have been one (one) lego, or one (one) puzzle piece, or one (one) random shoe box. don't get me wrong, my kids play pretty nicely together, but sometimes when they are taking breaks from making booby traps, they want to play with one specific thing at the same time and it doesn't work out for anyone involved. (including the fake pony who is currently stashed in my closet.)

i didn't receive a text back from my husband, as he knew he hit a chord with me. in that day, i was super exhausted cause carrie was up the whole night before with an awful cough. i had to call off work to take her to the doctor, in the meantime getting ella up, dressed, and fed for school. he had to work late that night, so after administering medicine and caring for her all day (she also refused to nap, too!), i then had to pick up ella, make dinner, do homework, give baths, and do bedtime solo. so would i rather be sitting in my car sipping a starbucks, listening to music, while waiting for an open house at my school to begin? why yes, warren, yes i would. truth be told, if the tides were turned and he was at home dealing with sickness, booby traps, and fights over a fake horse...he'd be losing his mind. i'd be getting texts about how crazy they are and asking me why we ever reproduced in the first place. had he stepped on that treat at the top of the steps instead of me i would have come home to trash bags on the front porch filled with toys, including the contents of the lego landmine. furthermore, that pony would have been put out in the middle of the street to be hit by oncoming traffic. okay, so maybe i'm being a little extreme...but he wouldn't have dealt with it the same way i did. (men are so different).

so after a full week of my kids tag teaming sickness, i'm kinda spent. when my kids are sick, it makes me thankful that they are usually well most of the year. anyone that has to deal (or has dealt with) sick kids knows that it is far from a cup of tea. actually, it's more like a cup of whiskey. (it's hard. really hard.) hopefully this isn't the precursor to a horrible winter of illnesses, cause that would suck. as my husband sauntered in the door later that night sans starbucks, i told him that i was thinking about getting rid of a lot of the baby stuff we have around the house (feeding seats, bathtubs, boppys..baby stuff). he eyeballed me and said, "i think that's a very good idea." he didn't ask how the kids were that day/evening , cause he already knew about the fake horse (amongst other things) and didn't want me to get wound up about it again. i sat there sipping my cabernet sauvignon quietly on the couch, praying for no late night wake up calls from either offspring due to sickness. shortly after, the wine made me warm, so i went upstairs to get a short sleeve shirt. upon whipping open my closet door, an unfamiliar object was staring at me with beady eyes. (what the hell!?!?) i screamed...loudly. and then realized it was the damn horse. i was startled by the pony i had put in there...a subsequent booby trap caused by my own hand (damnit.) if i would've woken up my kids up in that moment, that horse would've been out on the street faster than you can say seabiscuit. shortly after you would've found me alone in my car sipping starbucks, holding a one way ticket to batshit crazyville. anyways, stay tuned...there's always next week.