I heard the pitter patter of little feet upstairs as I was downstairs taking a quick morning nap with baby. It was followed by Osh yelling "stay out of here, go away" at Peanut, which was promptly followed by crying and wailing that Oshy is mean. Peanut came down and I put her in the blankets. After some snuggles she felt better so I went up after Osh and told him to be nice.
Small snafu, on with our business.
We watched a movie, we played, we ate breakfast. Easy peasy. We were blessed with an unseasonably warm day so we all got dressed and went outside. The twins were playing and I was holding baby. Then the twins wanted to swing so I was simultaneously cooking lunch in the oven, feeding the baby AND pushing two toddlers in a swing outdoors. I basically felt like I was kicking motherhood ass and taking names.
We ate lunch, which they ate like champions and managed not to get all over the place. They helped me give baby his first bath in the big tub and he loved it. I sat on the couch to feed baby again and they brought me pretend food to eat. When they pulled out the next bin of stuff I asked them to please clean up the other toys first and they did it like good little angels.
I've good this shit under control. Boo yah. Baby is happy, twins are happy, I'm still on the planet honed into the mother ship, life is good.
Then of course it all went downhill. Osh man started acting like a fool so I told him if he was a good boy we could go for a walk to see his daycare friends. That bought me about 20 minutes of decent behavior. He got out his spaceship which doesn't stay together well so I got up to help him and as I was snapping it together it came back and hit baby in the head. Baby cried, I soothed him then helped put the spaceship back together. Peanut wanted to play spaceship so she picked up a figure that Osh wasn't even touching and that sent him over the edge. Screaming bloody murder. The baby was on my boob, almost asleep, and then he was wide awake giving him the side eye wondering what this outrageous noise was.
I quietly told my son to share with Peanut or he could not play, he wasn't even use that figure and there are three other figures. I reminded him of going to see friends. He continued. I told him to go sit in the time out area until he was going to be nice and we could work it out. Instead he took the figure from Peanut. I told him to give it back and come see me. Instead he hit her in the chest and then the face. Of course I had to put baby down to go get him. I told him no, no, no, we never hit and then took him upstairs to his bed. He screamed like a crazy animal. I shut the door. I went downstairs and Peanut was bawling because Oshy hit her. I gave her hugs and kisses and she went about playing. Poor baby was laying on the couch sucking furiously on his hand.
Osh screamed and screamed and screamed. I fed baby and took deep breaths. I reminded myself that I love my children and am lucky to be at home with them all day right now even though I really wished I could take that little booger down the street to daycare. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
Finally he came down stairs and said sorry to Peanut and to me for throwing a tantrum (yes, I do forced apologies. Fake til you make it!). He continued playing with his spaceship which kept falling apart and he had meltdown after meltdown. I had to keep up with the deep breaths. Finally I distracted him from the spaceship with fruit snacks.
What would make this situation better, besides Super Nanny of course? A nap. The twins aren't even 3 yet but naps have been Hell since they quit going to daycare for my maternity leave. If they take a nap, which is a big if, it's a four hour ordeal. 1.5 hours just to get them to sleep which requires my presence in the room the whole time, then two hours of nap, then half an hour of them being ticked that they are being forced to wake up from that nap. Then they stay up until at least 10. It sucks. So I decided to give up on nap, which means we have a lovely bout of terrible behavior mid day. I don't know what is worse. Four hour naps followed by terrible bedtime or terrible midday followed by an okay to semi miserable evening and a good night of sleep. It's hard to tell.
Thankfully after awhile we got back on track and Osh became his usual sweet self and I finally convinced the twins to use an indoor voice so baby could sleep more than ten minutes.
It was only a matter of time before something else happened. It came in the form of a sweet little Peanut voice proclaiming that she took off her diaper to pee in the potty. I came to look and told her how proud of her I am for being such a big girl and it was quickly followed by "and there's some poop on my jacket and some little poop on the floor."
Oy . . . . . . .
Oh my, you have your hands full for sure.
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