2 miserable teething toddlers + 2 poopy diapers smeared on the walls + 1 mommy with a raging headache =
1 dirty, unvaccuumed house + 137 toys strewn about + 0 dinner made
Can we throw some dark Lindt chocolate in there to even the playing field for me, please? Or a vacation*. I wouldn’t turn that down.
I think I might cry.
*A long period of being child-free constitutes a “vacation”. Like this.
This is what I saw when I rounded the corner to the hallway a couple of weeks ago:
Followed by:
Aha! Caught you!
I had just put on a new roll of toilet paper, and they did unroll it down to the cardboard tube. Annika was also helping, but by the time I got the camera, she evacuated. But don’t worry. . . there’s more.
While I was on a phone call, Annika was cutting paper. And just like I did while I was five years old, she decided cutting her hair would be more fun than paper.
Yes, this all happened on the same day.
Annika got her first shiner this week. It happened in her karate class. I guess when you have a half-dozen toddlers wielding nunchuks, something is bound to happen. You should see the other kid.
In an unrelated event, Annika moved into her first “big-girl” bed this week. No more nights in the Pack-n-Play. Her first night in the new bed, she reminded her parents that she has a tendancy, while sleeping, to sit up and then fall forward. This tendancy did not fit well with the hard wooden frame of her new bed. So, now her big-girl bed features extra padding, too.
In our last episode, the Portland metropolitan area was shut down for a day when several inches of fluffy snow showed up. That proved to be just a test run for the arrival of the real snow. The Sunday before Christmas, over six inches of fresh snow fell from the sky. By Sunday night, our street looked like this (click on the photo):
The snow kept coming daily until we had about ten inches at our house. Areas at higher elevations had eighteen.
As you might expect, this caused transportation havoc. We were really glad to be staying home for Christmas. But, as you all know, when life gives you snow, you go snowshoeing. We never thought we would be able to snowshoe by just stepping out our front door (or while being pregnant with twins), but it happened.
While we are grateful that the snow has stayed long enough to give us a White Christmas, we’re looking forward to The Great Thaw of Late 2008. You can see more photos here.
For some perspective, compare how easily we were amused by a “White Christmas” last year.
Given Portland’s temperate climate, the local weather experts are surprisingly fond of predicting snow, ice, freezing rain, or a combination of the three. Usually, nothing that exciting happens, except maybe a run on snow shovels at the hardware store. (Hmm — is that why The Home Depot sponsors the weather page in the local newspaper?)
Well, this time the forecasters were right. Our unusually warm and sunny fall ended this morning when several inches of fluffy white stuff began falling. A few hours later, we heard that all church meetings had been cancelled for the day, thus dispelling Jonathan’s visions of snoeshowing to church.
Earlier this week, the cruise ship Explorer, which took Jenelle and Jonathan to Antarctica, sunk after hitting ice and taking on water. You can see pictures of the disaster here, while the Explorer can be seen in happier days here (safely navigating the ice).
There were no casualties, but after feeling so safe on our cruise, it’s strange to think that the ship is now at the bottom of the sea.
