Brewery Blowout

When you double the kids in your house, the basic principles of the universe don't apply. For example, math. +1 kid = +1 persons' worth of laundry. Wrong! It equals three! I forget how much laundry is generated from one tiny, messy human being. I did it all on Friday morning and by Saturday night I had to do two more. How does this happen? Let me explain.

We were leaving the house Saturday to meet Uncle Tim and Aunt Jen (who were here for the weekend), Gigi and Grandpa out for lunch. We were ready to walk out the door, all of us clean, and looking nice for the day, when Benny threw up all over his cute little red outfit. Ew. It was a lot. Ok, no biggie. He's got a lot of cute outfits. I changed him, packed another (on top of the other extra outfits already in the bag) and away we went. We met at Tobacco Road in Durham (great place, btw) and then we went to Fullsteam Brewery for a little visit. We heard it's an open area, family-friendly and good beer. So we made that our afternoon destination. It was relatively quiet when we got there and got settled at a picnic-table style area and we had the corner to ourselves. I decided I would discretely feed him (hey, it's family friendly and no one could see a thing). This went well. Until it didn't. Ben let out a big wet push and I knew a diaper change was in my immediate future. I didn't yet know it was too late. As I left to take him out to the car for a change (I'll feed him in public but changing while people are trying to enjoy their beer isn't nice) I noticed a strange warmth on my leg. I look down to see a long, wet yellow stripe dripping down my pant leg. The kid EXPLODED on me. Ugh. Tim and Leo were there to help me. Tim was a champ and reached out to take Benny and walked out to the car with me. OMG it was disgusting! I was so very happy to have a big new box of wipes for both me and Benny to clean up with. Several minutes, many wipes and a new outfit later (him not me - I had an awesome wet spot all down my right side) we returned. I was worried we made a trail of poop without knowing. We didn't but he did make a puddle I didn't see, right under the bench. Worse - my moms purse had fallen on the floor minutes before and yes, it fell right into the puddle. Ugh! Well, by then I couldn't stop laughing (because really, I might have cried otherwise) and I cleaned up the puddle from the floor and bench while Gigi cleaned up her bag. Ew. Ben then spit up on my shirt and dripped on my leg but by then who cared - I was such a mess anyway. It was getting hot in that place and I was done holding an explosive child so we went on our way to my moms.

There, we celebrated Nathan's birthday. Dinner, cake, gifts, etc. No catastrophic messes. On the way home, my tired three year old fell asleep. When we got home, Leo picked him up and tried to get him ready for bed. In the process, half asleep, Nathan started to pee. All over Daddy! I do mean all over - like a fire hose. Leo freaked, Nathan started to cry and Benny was already wailing from the car seat sitting on the floor. I went in for rescue and clean up only to kneel in his puddle of pee. Awesome! I was literally covered in my kids fluids. Thus the immediate need for laundry. Infant outfits, toddler PJ's, mommy's jeans, blankets and towels - all soiled in the space of 10 hours. Ugh! I'm still laughing though. The site of me walking around with fluorescent yellow down my leg just had to be funny. I would have pointed and laughed at me too!

Despite the messes, the weekend was fun. Tim and Jen arrived to our house Friday and we made the trek to Pullen Park to ride the train and carousel once again and enjoy ice cream afterwards. That night we wall went to Red Robins for dinner when the birthday boy was serenaded Happy Birthday for the first time by a wait staff and got his own little sundae. We opened a big gift at home and the boys put it all together. (Thanks Truck for the b-ball hoop!) Saturday Nathan got an e-reader (which he likes to think of as his own ipad) and a cool rocket ship for playing outside which fit in with our space theme. The dining room was decorated with the planets we made earlier in the week and the walls were decked out with stars. The cake was a work of art by Tim and Jen, as Saturn, complete with aliens entering their space ship. I have to say I'm glad we didn't go all out for a party this year. Even though he would have enjoyed it I think the whole theme thing was lost on him. And when you ask him how old he is, he is still saying "3 in March." There are plenty years to come where we can have a big bash. This year it was just fine as is.

This morning we had everyone over for one last visit before Tim and Jen left. The Trend Brunch is a favorite event around here. And now it's Sunday. Aaahhhh. We are hanging out, watching March Madness, having left over cake and playing with new toys. Oh yes, and doing laundry.

Groovy

I hate when people say "I want to but I never have time for that!" The truth is, if you really want to do something, if it's really important to you - you make the time. And so, instead of scrolling through FB or messing around with a game on my Kindle when I have a minute or two, I will do my best to spend time here, updating the blog. It's what I really want to do and it is important. So here we go . . . a small minute at a time.

That's usually all I have. A minute at a time. Sometimes 5 or 10. At night I'll even steal an extra 30 if I can, to read, because it's time just for me. But it's a challenge. I'm always interrupted in everything I do so that there is rarely a meal I can get through without helping to feed, hold or clean up someone else; a night, obviously, that I don't have to get up to change and feed someone and sometimes even more often, put back into bed and calm after a bad dream; a shower where I don't have to stick my head out to check that the big boy isn't abusing the little boy. Even this sentence was interrupted by the big boy who wanted a snack. Adding a kid to the family is like learning to drive a stick. You start and stop a lot. Uphill seems impossible. And switching gears is jarring and grinds your gears. But after a while you become a pro. You can go on any road you want regardless of hills. You can switch gears all day long and never stall. You find your groove. We're getting there.

The last two nights we had less interruptions. The other night there was only cry out from Nathan in the middle of the night. Last night, none, and Benny only woke once for a feeding. (I admit I may have slept through the motions of another feeding somehow but I'm pretty sure it was just the one.) If we can keep this up, I can continue to catch up on sleep and find a nice groove for a while. This idea, and that I wrote instead of doing mindless FB stalking, are both good. I'm going to stick with it. It feels groovy.