Skip to main content

I Live in the Kitchen

Kate hit the big TWO and decided to test all the boundaries and reassert her will. Which means she says NO to everything including peeing in the potty. She went from reliably dry all day to wetting herself every 1-2 hours.

So, today was recalibration day. I put the potty chairs in the kitchen, dressed she and James (who is a year older but behind her in every way, per the usual for my boys who hit all milestones on the late end of the curve) in only shirts, gave them water bottles, and planned a full day of kitchen cleaning.

Last night, laying in bed planning today I got myself all excited about spring cleaning and wondered if I could even get caught up on laundry, too. This was gonna be great!

Do you know what I did? I did dishes, made lunch, and emptied the veggie drawers in the fridge. That's it.

In short, 4 hours in the kitchen this morning covered just my usual kitchen chores. Sure, I was interrupted every five minutes by a kid thing because I had two underfoot. But still. I have now confirmed for myself that I wasn't imagining it and I actually do spend all day in the kitchen and laundry room.

Boy, it's a good thing I've been parenting for nearly two decades now and I have a great perspective on how quickly these phases pass. Otherwise I'd be incredibly discouraged about a life that has shrunk in scope to two rooms of the house and nonstop potty-and-M&Ms-talk.

Don't mind me. No, I'm not crying. Just chopping an onion. A lot of onions. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Flash Fiction - Guilt Free

And this one I wrote for the fun of it. It was delicious to wallow in such a world of self-indulgence I'll never know. This is flash fiction (less than 1,000 words). Guilt Free It was fudge sauce, thick and cold from the back of the fridge, dipped in gourmet raspberry jam—the kind from France with the understated label—straight onto a spoon and then suckled in my mouth, a frosty mug of milk tremoring faintly in my left hand, to be gulped in indelicate swaths allowing a dribble or two down my front, the first time I hit her. Not really hit. Shoved. A forceful push. A push that began with contact. The contact of my hand wedging so neatly between her small sharp shoulder blades, wedging in so that I almost could not retract myself from the catapulting force launching her into the tub. Not a hit—there was no smacking, cracking, sharp stinging rebound. No bruise. She’d laughed. She’d thought it was a game. Like when I clapped my hands together as she went up the stairs, cla...

I Lied.

For the very first time I lied to a birth family member. I've been brutally honest even when it caused an uproar. I've been honest because I was personally committed to always telling the truth. Until now. Because this lie may actually be the best way to preserve Jane's relationship with her birth family. At our last video call with Grandma Jane seemed uninterested, unengaged, not showing any real emotion. I struggled to find things to prompt her to talk about. Over the next two weeks I waited and she never asked for another call. In the third week I casually brought up the topic and she did not really respond, certainly didn't ask for another call. Finally, yesterday I point blank asked if she wanted to do a video call and she said the word yes but her whole body language said no. It was clear that she was saying yes because she thought she was supposed to, not because she wanted to. So, I took her body language rather than her words and made the decision that we...

We are thiiiiiiiissss close

Just got this email from the adoption worker: "We will be filing both girls’ adoption petitions tomorrow in [ ] County." Now I just want to sit right here with my cell phone and landline phone and email browser refreshing every thirty seconds until we get the final word. And today at 4:15 there's another social worker meeting at our house. I'm not doing this one. Theo is taking it, per my request, well, demand. I can't even think about them derailing us, again, when we're so close, again.