Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Lately

This past Friday I got a 6 year old in the house. Aside from the requisite "Where is my first born baby and who is this giant that replaced her?" and "If I've been at this parenting gig for 6 years why am I still failing frequently?" feelings I am digging the 6. The 6 does this:

 Yes. She is washing potatoes for dinner while I snuggled a teething PiaBaby and grouchy Dom. When I told her I could not have made dinner without her help she grinned so big her smiled wrapped around her face. (I love that line from Rudyard Kipling. It has always stuck with me. I can't even remember what story it's in, just that he wrote it.)

Yesterday after retrieving the 6 from school we made a quick trip to the Joe's which quickly turned into a grocery store walk of shame. Partially because the children wouldn't stop emoting but more because Pia pooped all over the place. Initially I played it cool; "this is why we sometimes bring our diaper bag, " I pepped talked myself. "This is why we always have an extra outfit on haaaaand--oh." Not today. Not in this diaper bag, not in this bathroom.

So I did the only thing I could do. I put her in a clean diaper and put her back in the sling and we grocery shopped with a baby clad in only diaper and her pink pilot cap. Except that because she was in the sling with her pudgy arms and legs and shoulders squishing out, she looked totally naked as opposed to partially naked, since the diaper was hidden by the sling.

And a dumpster diaper no less! You'd think if you were going to take your baby to a natural foods store in nothing but a diaper you'd have the decency to do it with cloth. No one actually said anything to me about it, but I know they were looking. Sometimes crazy-acting kids create a really good buffer.

The lack of a cloth diaper brings me to my next unfortunate confession: I'm so behind on the laundry that Brad walked around the house collecting the over-flowing hampers and dumping them out into a pile in the basement. We look like....hoarders. Or worse. I don't know. And even as we've been chipping away at the mound of clothes we know that we're all just walking around, dirtying up more clothes faster than we can wash them.
at least we had the Hanna Andersson hat on. Euro-chic covers just about any fashion mishaps, right?


4 comments:

  1. I love to do laundry. It's a pity we don't live close......

    Sharon

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  2. Oh my goodness! Your story sounds almost like mine!!! I'm in Lexington and as you may know we too have a Trader Joe's. Of course, it's rather out of my way, but my son has been attending preschool in the neighborhood 3 days a week this year, so I stop in on any one of those days of the week for a few items I like that won't bust my budget. Well, on the preschool days I just have two at home with me, a 2 year old and an almost 3 month old. Recently, because of the good weather, I've been able to pack up the two younger ones into a stroller and run around a walking path located nearby my son's preschool. The day of our most recent jog, I had a bout of bad luck, but at least I got my jog in before the rains came. After replenishing coolant into my van at the auto parts store in the pouring rain (temperature gauge on the engine spiked suddenly), I made a stop at Trader Joe's located right next door. Everything went smoothly on the way in, but my dumb/bad luck wasn't completely run out. After making it back to the car without becoming drenched, thanks to the clerk who insisted on accompanying us with an umbrella to shield us from the rain, I realized I needed to nurse the almost 3 month old, pronto. So, I did something with my sports bra and nursing cover that would impress Houdini and filled up the gigantic infant with life bearing milk. No sooner had he finished did he poop ALL over himself and me in my running shorts. For some reason I had brought along a towel that day (I never am prepared) and I had a pack of diaper wipes and the right size diaper in the bag. I had to cleanup in the rain, and I managed to keep the poo only on the towel and the clothes. HOwever, when running to trash the diaper, I knew I was receiving many a glare from the eco-warriors.

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  3. Oh, and laundry around here? A joke.

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  4. LOL. Just reading this now, but if you're on Instagram, you should see my picture from today. I think we could compete for "laundry piles that look like hoarders live here." Well, we COULD have. I managed to get rid of 75% of my winter clothes (and by "my" I mean my entire family's).

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