Twice Blessed Life

Tonight our little band of intrepid explorers was led by Halle on an expedition to the Beach (an area rug in our living room).  Once there, we basked in the warm glow of the sun (at 8:30pm EST) while laid out on lovely beach towels (various coloring books). 

Once we had had enough of that, we collected seashells (invisible ones) and decorated each other with fronds of seaweek (also transparent).  We dug in the non-existant sand and put that into bottomless pails and from time-to-time we refreshed ourselves with sips of lemonade (water) from our thermoses (sippy cups).

Luckily no one got sunburned, as we had forgotten our sunscreen lotion at home.

Today, since my husband was home, I decided to let the twins paint.  This is not for those who are faint of heart.

Imagine: 2 two-year-olds, 4 paint brushes, and numerous blobs of paint (supposedly ‘washable’) and only a vague idea that paint should go on the paper laid out for that purpose, and not various other things like walls, carpets, themselves….

Let’s just say that the ‘various other things’ now have some interesting multi-colored splotches on them.  And the only thing the paint actually washed out of was the twins!

I swear, my husband actually spontaneously grew another pair of arms to deal with all of that!

He dashed to and fro, saving ‘various things’ from imminent destruction, or at least re-design by force.

The poor guy was quite exhausted by the time we called it quits.   The girls had loads of fun, though!

I plan to do it again next Saturday.

I am an evil mama.

What would a two-year old and King Kong possibly have in common?

They both like to climb as high as they possibly can.  King Kong did it to whack a few planes around, my toddler, Halle, does it to annoy me, and to scare the heck out of me.

After moving into our new apartment, which is MUCH smaller than our last one in Florida, We had to put the computer desk in the living room.  To reduce temptation, we put a gate around it.  Apparently that wasn’t much of a deterrent, because Halle soon scaled the gate and was merrily hopping around on top of the computer desk. 

That’s when she discovered the window.  At first, just her being on the computer desk was enough to worry me, but then she started fiddling around with the window locks, figured out how to open them, and then started pushing the window open - uh oh!

Way back in October, when we signed the lease, there was an option to get window bars installed for free.  I did choose this option, but the maintenance guy, for whatever reason, decided to give me a hard time about it.

“You don’t need window bars!  What’cha need window bars for!?” he blustered beligerantly.

I explained that I had twin toddlers and could he please go ahead and install them.  He blustered some more claiming the girls couldn’t possibly get up there and open the windows.  I caved, he left.

Now, in December, there Halle is, looking pleased as punch at her new achievment.

So I called the leasing office and said this time I REALLY needed those bars installed, ASAP!

Again the maintenance guy blustered, but this time I held my ground.  He wouldn’t believe me that Halle could do what she did, but I hung on and out-stubborned him.  He said he didn’t have any in stock and they’d have to be ordered.

After following up with the leasing office to make sure they were indeed ordered, a week later they had arrived.  Then the maintenance guy calls me up claiming that it’s too cold to work outside to install them.  I reminded him that if he had installed them in October when he should have, it would have been much warmer.  I asked him to please install them ASAP.

He didn’t get back to me for nearly two weeks, refused to return calls.  So I called the leasing office and their headquarters and reminded them that if the bars weren’t installed, and something happened to my kids, there’d be a lawsuit for their negligence.

Surprise, surprise, the bars got installed that morning.  And he installed them from inside the apartment!

We all feel very relieved now.

And we finally unpacked enough boxes in the second bedroom to make room for the computer desk, so Halle no longer has access to that particular bit of death-defying acrobatics.

So what did my little monkey girl do?  She climbed up the plastic easel!  And then her sister, Zanna, followed her up!  So now we’ve got an easel in the kitchen.

I’m SO looking forward to when they can understand me when I explain that them going Splat! would not be a good thing and they should listen when their mama tells them don’t climb something.

For now, though, our monkeys get bars on the windows.

At last the day has come, where (we hope) we have passed the threshold of the twins hating baths! 

I had bought a bottle of bubblebath (non-toxic, non-drying and with lavender aromatherapy, too!), dumped it in the tub, threw in a few plastic boats and some toy pigs (long story, don’t ask), and plunked in the girls and hoped for the best.

At first they were a little leery of so much water, but when they realized there were bubbles to be played with, the frolicking commenced!  They stomped, they splashed, they flung suds with merry abandon!  They also didn’t squawk that much when we doused them with the shower hose and shampooed their hair.

The problem, however, was when it came time to take them out!  They flailed, they wailed “MY bubblebath!” “More bath!”  I never thought I would see this day when they protested being removed from a bathtub!

I’m a very happy mama right now

We also took the obligatory ‘toddler in the bathtub’ pictures, with which to embarass them in front of future fiancees