Coming Down Off The Sugar High

Yesterday was one of those days.


You know the ones. The first "normal" day following a three day weekend filled with sugar and missing sleep.


The kids were crazy.


Three times yesterday I found Grant, naked and trying to change his own diaper, just because he wanted the diaper with "Mickey and Bawlloons!" instead.


Ben decided that he could just ignore my voice and run and hide under the table when I called him, and when I threatened a time-out, he would run up with the biggest grin like he was a good little boy and had been listening all along.


Grant somehow got ahold of the Clorox disinfecting wipes, pulled the whole roll out of the container, and then shoved them all back in and put them back on the counter. I figured it out when I went to wipe the counter and discovered the wadded up mess, and then did the sniff test and found Grant's hands smelling lemony-fresh.


While I was fixing dinner, I had Drew in the Bumbo in the kitchen with me. The twins came up and were giggling and talking to him, it was adorable. I seasoned the chicken for my stir-fry and turned back around to find the twins shoving Drew back and forth across the floor like they were playing air hockey with my baby.


During clean up-time, Grant decided that part of cleaning the living room must include getting the garbage can out of my bathroom and wearing it like a hat.


Emma has decided that she wants to sing soprano. However, she is not a soprano. But she sings like one anyway by just singing even more nasally than usual, and last night it was the same wrong words to the same verse of the same song over and over. And over again. "He gave me a heart and He gave me a smile, He gave me Jesus and He gave me a child, Thank you, Jesus for (mumble mumble) making me, me!" I'm glad God thinks her praise is beautiful.


We took the kids outside after dinner to let them run off some energy. We played baseball but we don't have bases in the backyard, so we just told the kids to run around in a really big circle and then back home. Emma scored a home run. Drew and I were the outfielders, and we just weren't able to tag her out. Grant hit the ball all by himself, and ran in a zig-zag close to the fake bases, and with Emma's encouragement, touched the mound of weeds grass that was home and scored a home run as well. Ben was up next, and with Marty's help, swung and connected. He turned around and ran straight into the woods and down the hiking trail. He ran along the back fence line and came out on the far side of the storage shed, ran to the step of the shed and sat on it. It was on the other end of the house from our makeshift baseball diamond, but we made that third base. We tried to encourage him to tag home, but he ran past it and got on the John Deere tractor toy and left the game.


We put the kids down early, hoping a good night's sleep would help, and it did at first. Grant was back to his usual agreeable self, for a couple of hours. Then something clicked. I was lying on the floor, and he was sitting on me, pointing to me eyes and saying, "eyes!" and so on. It was all fine and dandy until he started jumping on my belly. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Grant, will you please stop jumping on me? You're squishing me!
Grant: Ok, Mommy. (Starts to get down, then stops.) Wait, NO!
Me: What?
Grant: NO! (Jumps on me some more.)

I truly hope today is a better day.