Party in the Hizouse!

Dear Jen,

So usually when I come home from rehearsal the house is dark and silent. Brad is upstairs in his office studiously working on some homework assignment and the children are peacefully nuzzled all snug in their beds, with no evidence whatsoever of whatever chaotic goings on no doubt transpired when Brad first put them down.

Tonight, however...

Well, immediately upon entering the house things seemed normal enough. Quiet. Dark. But as I approached the stairs my ears began to pick up a faint vibrating sound. Standing at the base of the stairs I realized it was coming from the floor vent. I thought, "Sounds like heating." But I was pretty sure we hadn't turned the heat on yet. The only other explanation was "power tools", but as I peered up the stairs I saw lights on, as though Brad was where he always was, working away in his office. Confused, I called out, "BRAD?" to which I got the gleeful response, "MOMMY!"

"Uh oh," thought I, "Trouble."

So I cautiously ventured upstairs, and you know what I found? Evelyn hanging out in the hall with an excavator toy talking my ear off, and Gavin sitting in Brad's office, bare bum, colouring on a note pad with a pink pen.

"Gavin pooped in his potty, mom! Gavin pooped in his potty! See? Right there! He pooped in his potty! Isn't that good, mom? He pooped in his potty! Right there!"

So, I gathered what happened here, is that Gavin pooped in his potty. I dumped the thing out (poor kids, it was stinking up their room!), then spent five minutes repeatedly asking where his pants were before Gavin finally was so kind as to retrieve them for me--with more poop in them. So I went to dump that out and returned to the hallway to find Gavin had magically procured a push toy out of nowhere that he'd begun running along the hallway, and Evelyn, clearly the Queen of the Upstairs, led me into my bedroom to show me the slippers she'd left on my bed as she was freely roaming her domain this evening. Well, I finally convinced them to get into their room, and to get Gavin's pants back on, when I noticed that their curtain had been pulled off the window. WHAT KIND OF PARTIES HAVE THEY BEEN HAVING UP HERE??? Aaanyway, so I fixed that, got them into their beds, gave hugs and kisses, said goodnight, shut the door, and went straight to the basement to find Brad working away at some wooden toys.

So it was the power tools after all.

Kids are nuts. Good thing this scenario didn't play out at like 3 in the morning or something or I might have actually been a wee bit annoyed!

Oy.

Mini Muk Luks

Dear Jen,

I've decided that if our money-saving heating tactics are going to be successful this winter, the entire family must be fitted with cozy slippers. This morning I completed my first set--Gavin's. He loves them! He is pretty much as excited about a pair of hand-made slippers as a two-year-old boy can get. He wore them all day long; wouldn't take them off. So of course he peed all over them.

I mean, what else would you do with newly-completed hand-made custom slippers? Of course you would urinate all over them. Don't be silly.

I shouldn't make this sound worse than it is. To be fair, it's not like he singled them out. He also peed all over his pants and underwear, and then it dribbled down to his newly-completed hand-made custom slippers. Because, you know, walking five feet to the potty is an outrageous thing to expect from a two-year-old boy who has purportedly been going pee in the potty for nine months.

Outrageous.

I was going to take a picture of them, but of course now that will have to wait. I have instead provided the sample picture from the pattern so that you can comprehend what a true tragedy any sort of abuse of these too-cute-for-life slippers is. Try not to cry.