And the punchline is....

When little LuLu started her 3's Class at preschool she was a bit apprehensive.  She only knew one other child in the class from the year before so I wasn't surprised when she mentioned her everyday after school.  She'd tell me about playing with Ava, eating lunch with Ava, reading books with Ava and I was thrilled she had made such a close little buddy.

Like many working moms, I have to admit I wasn't completely involved in the classroom.  I only had 4 hours 3 days a week to get A LOT accomplished.

When February rolled around, it was my turn to volunteer for the class party and I noticed that Ava's name wasn't on the list.  Odd....
So I asked Ms. MaryBeth about and little LuLu was standing by my side.

Ms. MaryBeth looked at me with total confusion ~ "Ava hasn't been in the class since the first week of school.  She got moved to the 4's room".  Stunned, I turned and looked at my daughter and she was grinning ear to ear.

At the ripe old age of three she had held onto her own little private joke day in and day out for 6 months.  I had been had and felt HORRIBLE for not having a clue what was going on with her at school.

Needlesss to say, upon the first day of summer camp she announced that she spent the whole day with Ava (who wasn't enrolled in her camp) and she cracked up laughing.

Flash forward to now and she is at a baseball game with a neighbor.  When her school was brought up, another mother asked if she had a little girl named Ava in her class and LuLu was adamant that she did not and she did not know her.

When I clarified that she did in fact know Ava she smiled that same ear to ear grin and said "They asked if I knew an Ava in my class, and Ava is NOT in my class".  

Great ~ she has the ability to lie and deceive already.  The teen years ought to be fun.

Visions of Parenthood vs. the Reality of Parenthood

There are these moments when I imagined what it will be like when my kids get a little older and we can we share experiences together.  Trips to the zoo, the library, the park....bedtime stories, family walks ~ in my head it all seems so blissful.

I've seen other families on these excursions and no one is screaming or yelling ~ not the parents or the kids.  They are all having a fabulous time.  Their kids are the same age as my kids.  They go on regular trips to all of these fabulous kid friendly places and I am empowered. Certainly we can do this.  We are ready.  And it is a good thing we go into these things with no expectations WHAT SO EVER.

My kids are at the perfect age for these little toddler excursions or moments.  They are 3 and 5.

We go equipped with snacks and water for our walk on the nature trail and it inevitably ends with someone dumping their snack, the other no willing to share, resulting tears and a trip cut short.

We take them to the book store prepared to spend a morning reading stories and playing at the train table and they are more interested Starbucks snacks or riding the "excavator" (escalator).  More tears ensue and another trip is cut short.

We snuggle in at bed and they beg for story time together as a family instead of one at a time.  After 10 minutes of negotiating who is sitting where, who is pulling covers, who isn't comfortable and why so 'n so's story is going first, story time ends with no story at all or individual story times that still aren't good enough.

My husband and I have learned to not take it personally.  We are not failing at this.  They are simply kids and to them sometimes spilt milk is the end of the world.  We work on trying to get them to adjust better in these situations, but I'm not so sure they are there yet.

So no matter how much prep work we have done, no matter if we are  using treasured vacation time for the journey, no matter how many situations we have accounted for ~ we are prepared to calmly call it quits and we finally quit having our own temper tantrums at failed special family outings.  It doesn't matter if a trip to the library was the best trip ever last Saturday ~ this Saturday it could resemble something closer to torture or hell.

Our visions of parenthood are not always a reality and we have learned to lower our expectations.

Cleaning ~ exercise of futility

I used to love to clean.  I'd start one room at a time and work from one corner to the next.  I loved the satisfaction of the chemical smell and clean lines....and then we had kids.

At first I used to think I could beat them at avoiding the messes.  I once spent a weekend with my sister and watched how she followed her kids from room to room picking up after each thing they played with.  I was exhausted just watching.

She also keeps all of her juice boxes organized in the fridge by flavor and facing the same direction and other crazy things like same color towels stacked together in the linen closet.  I was going to need a different strategy

It kind of made me want to give up and more and more I justified that I couldn't possibly own my own business, have a 100 lb indoor/outdoor dog, two kids and a back yard incapable of growing grass (mostly because we didn't ever water the grass we planted) and manage to keep clean floors.  It's bad enough our dog sheds a full body of hair everyday and I HAVE to vacuum that.  Nothing says squalor more than white hair balls along every floor board and piece of furniture.  I thought it was purely a matter of time that I didn't have.

When I sold my business I developed an inflated sense of confidence on my soon to be spotless palace.  The time I spent working could now be spent cleaning ~ HA!

Here's how yesterday went:
I stripped the beds and less than four hours later my son wet the bed during his nap and managed to get pee on the comforter, sheets and pillows! I was worse off than when I started.

I mopped the floors and while I was mopping my daughter was playing quietly at the bottom of our porch steps pulverizing a Costco size box of sidewalk chalk that immediately got tracked inside.  She then went and sat on the couch while I was re-wiping the floors.  Did I mention it had rained and that wet side walk chalk is more like clay and not so easy to dust off.

I cleaned and scrubbed every bathroom enough to make my mom proud.  My daughter decided to brush her teeth beginning with Agent Blue (bright blue pre-rinse to help your kids brush better by watching the blue disappear).  She spit it out with the vigor of projectile vomit onto the mirrors, walls, light fixtures, floor and a believe a little bit got into the sink.

I cleaned my daughters room while she was at school and returned it to the peaceful organized room that I love more than any other room in the house.  It reminds me of her childhood innocence...which is ironic considering what happened next.  She came home from school and threw an atomic bomb size temper tantrum because I wouldn't let her have a juice box.  She was sent to her room to continue her ridiculous rants and she proceeded to unmake her bed, empty her bookshelves onto the floor, empty her drawers and threw apart the dollhouse I had just found all of the pieces for.

So after a day of cleaning, my house is still in shambles and I never got that moment of quiet pride that is supposed to come with the over whelming smell of chemicals permeating through the air.  My house looks more like it got a "perfume shower".

I'm taking today off.

I don't think this happens to everyone....

This is one of those stories that led us to believe we were not dealing with your average 2 1/2 year old.

It's 11:00 at night.  The house is quiet...we are dozing....and I hear something downstairs.  Mother's intuition and our 100 lb German Shepherd told me all was ok, but to go check it out.

As I was coming down the stairs I could tell every light in the downstairs was turned on and I could hear Blues Clues blaring from our TV...I looked into my office and saw no less than seven open permanent markers on the floor.  This is not going to be good.


I headed to the family room and couldn't believe my sleepy eyes.  My 2 1/2 year old was standing at the coffee table cleaning it off with all of the appropriate cleaning supplies, eating a BAG of mini-marshmellows, had colored her legs solid black and red and was watching Blues Clues (Noggin ~ what pre-schooler really needs to be watching TV at that hour?).

To get the cleaning supplies she had to move a chair to the laundry room and climb onto our front-loading washing machine to get to the upper cabinets.  Thank goodness for a house full of non-toxic cleaners.  The marshmallows were acquired by moving the same chair to another cabinet and crawling up the shelves to the top level....leaving red finger prints all the way.

I was horrified, shocked and at that moment I was not the LEAST bit amused.  I yelled "Lulu what are you doing" and she announced "I'm cleaning and having a snack".  "Lulu, you need to get back to your room and go to bed".  Little miss no fear looked at me and said "Why don't you just go back to bed?"

She was furious with me for interrupting her. She wasn't afraid of the dark and clearly saw no boundaries.  She had even negotiated two remote controls to get it to her show.  In my head I couldn't help but fast-forward a few years.  What are we about to face?  Only time would tell.

Let's just say we have purchased a ton of locks over the past two years and have learned which ones she can pic :)