Force of nature

Q is absolutely a force to be reckoned with. If I don't have my eyeballs glued on him constantly, he is a menace. If he has the puppy with him, it is even worse.

Yesterday, I was talking to my mom on the phone, lamenting my stressful situation, when Q turned it up a notch. He was being entirely too quiet, so I went to check on him. He had pulled almost every tissue out of the box and stuffed it into his kiddie toilet. Thankfully, they were still fairly clean, so I put them all in a big Ziploc to be reused.

This morning, I was upstairs changing the baby. When I came downstairs, Q had taken every pellet of dog food out of the dish and thrown it across the floor. They stretched all the way to the front door. As I worked to sweep them up, Q "helped" with his mini-broom by scattering them about again. I later found a few stray pellets covered in ants. Nice.

When I try to explain that this is a no-no, and he should not empty the dog's dish, he just sort of looks at me blankly. I am not sure if he doesn't get it or if he just doesn't care. My pediatrician did explain that children this age do not understand the difference between what they can do and what they shouldn't do. In their mind, if they are able to do something, there is not reason they shouldn't. How do you tackle that?

In R news; I believe he is now smiling here and there. He is six weeks old today. I honestly think he gave his first full-fledged smile to a woman at a lunch meeting I attended last week. I refuse to count that though!

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T and I have been talking about his job and the travel and my stress with it all. One thing we are pretty sure that we have worked out is that the whole family will accompany him on a trip to Wisconsin next month, where my parents and one sister and her family live. The plane trip will be interesting to say the least, but that is an arrangement I can look forward to instead of a week I will dread!

A friend came over to help me tonight. She stayed with the boys while I went to the grocery store. I lingered in the aisles and enjoyed a coffee before I returned home to the madness. Just getting out of the house for an hour helped me clear my head. I have a renewed sense that we can do this. T will complete his training and his Masters in one year, and things will be a little easier in my life. I can get through it.

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I am working tomorrow for our state's primary election. It will be a long day, but I am very excited. I would be so antsy if I were sitting at home watching the action from my couch. I have bottles of milk in the fridge and am ready for my first foray back into the working world.

--MM