A day in the life

I was telling Josh the other day how sad I was that I will be the only one with these memories, the memories of these early days with my sons. They will forget. He told me that I would probably forget too. Which just made me even sadder. He is right. Who remembers just the normal everyday day?

Anyways, I have a friend who does this from time to time...a snapshot of her life. And I thought I would try it. So here goes. Today, St Patricks day:

Mal, who may be the first ever Clark early bird, wakes up at 5:30. Luckily for me he stays pretty happy playing with his hands in bed until Josh gets up at 6 and takes him along with him to get ready for work. I get to sleep another hour until Josh leaves to catch his bus.

Mal is in his bouncy chair, telling his new best friend Zebra his life story.
So I decide to do last nights dinner dishes while I have the chance. I get the dishes done, tea started, dress, and throw my hair up in a ponytail before Mal decides that Zebra is judging him and they arent friends anymore. We get a long and quiet nursing session behind us and my tea enjoyed before Zeke (in true Clark style) stumbles groggily into the livingroom at 8 demanding "snack".

We start some oatmeal on the stove.
We read Eek There's a Mouse in the House 3 or 4 times while it cooks. Zeke and I both prefer steel cut oats but it takes forever to cook and when you don't have 12 hours notice that your 1 year old wants oatmeal nothing beats rolled oats' 10 minute cook time. Except instant, I suppose, but that is just nasty.

We eat out oatmeal with milk and honey :)
Next its bath time. Malachi screams like I am performing some sort of advanced interrogation technique. He always does, which is why I try to sponge bathe him as much as I can but about once a week the kid just gets cheesy. Zeke drops the soap 8,493 times while trying to "wash brudda".

After getting Mal dressed I calm him down and he decides the only true way to recover is to take a morning nap and passes out on my shoulder. I drop him off in his bed and return to Zeke, who miraculously still has the soap.
(Yes, I left my 1 year old in the bath alone. But in my defense the talking NEVER STOPPED so I knew he wasn't drowning. If he stops talking I rush right back in there. People that have met him will be surprised to hear that when we are at home the kid keeps a constant commentary going at all times.)

I wash Zeke's hair and body and then sit on the bathroom floor to check my email and read blogs/online newspapers on the laptop.

Unfortunately it was about now that the cat (and it was even the GOOD cat) knocked my camera off the counter and into the tub. Having unfortunate experience in such things, I knew the best plan of action was to take out the batteries, not turn it on again until it was dried, and cross my fingers. As of the writing of this post its still not working.

So no more pictures.

But Zeke eventually gets out of the bath. He pours some fish crackers into a frying pan to cook on his play-kitchen and eventually goes into the backyard to yell at the birds (bird hating is apparently genetic because his father does the same thing). I putter around the house doing all those little things requiring two arms that always need doing and never get done because one of my arms is holding a baby.

Malachi wakes up just in time to nurse and make it to the library for story-time. But not if we walk. So much to my shame, we load into the car and drive 1 mile in beautiful weather.

We hear stories about pigs and do little finger songs (or more correctly watch others do them, Zeke is strictly non-participatory at story time). We read for a while, and pick 3 books to take home. Zeke does the dead legs thing and I threaten to leave him behind if he doesn't walk like a big boy. He tells me "bye" and the librarian laughs. I tell Zeke that only big boys are allowed to beep their books (i.e. push it thru the check-out machine) so I guess I have to do it myself and he decides to behave.

When we get home we read our new books 3 or 4 times each and then decide to make a cake for St Patricks day. We always bake something on Wednesdays, be it muffins or bread or fruit leather or crackers but I always try to find some reason to make it a cake ;) My talent for finding reasons to bake cakes is astounding.

After that Zeke goes back into the backyard and I nurse Mal asleep for another nap. A holding nap because he wont allow me to put him down. After a while we have lunch and Zeke goes down for HIS nap. Mal, of course, immediately wakes up. So we check my facebook account together and I try to decide what I want to do with my "free" time. Its always a difficult one. Watch House on hulu.com? Watch my new Netflix DVD (its 100 Days of Summer!) Read The Brothers Karamazov? Read You Are Your Child's First Teacher? Crochet some more of Mal's new toy? Start felting easter eggs?

I decide to do my Lent bible reading first since I hadn't gotten a chance that morning and to spend the rest of the time crocheting Mal's toy. I didn't think I'd have time for the whole movie (and I hate stopping in the middle) and didn't feel like reading Dostoevsky aloud (and I try to read aloud if Mal is awake).

So I read my bible and then listen to a podcast on waldorf parenting while I crochet. Mal watches the crochet hook and tries to grab my yarn and nurses and babbles and leaks feces onto my jeans and goes back to sleep on my chest eventually. You know, baby stuff.

Zeke doesn't wake up almost 4. Which means a 3 hour nap! Which means I TOTALLY had time to watch that movie! drat! I had planned to walk to the park after snack since we didnt get our morning walk in this morning but it looks like my plans to ever lose this baby weight have been beaten by a sleeping child once again. Instead we put the baby in his chair and frost the cake, and then immediately cut two pieces to have with tea (milk for Z). That will show my baby weight who's boss!

I do the dishes from today and a few one armed chores since Mal is getting crabby now. While wiping off the counters I look down to realize that the counters on Zeke's kitchen are grimy too. So I cut a new sponge in half so its child sized and show Zeke (who had been jumping on the couch and needed distraction) how to clean his kitchen. He's really into it for 10 minutes and then goes back outside.

I decide to join him with Mal and a book but it gets mostly left unread open in my lap. It was just too beautiful outside to be staring at a book! So I enjoyed the new green in the grass and the sound of the windchimes and watching Zeke throw his soccer ball.

Malachi started to get cold after a while, though, and sleepy. So we headed back inside and read Zeke a book about farm animals going to sleep a few times (books must always be read a few times over). Mal fell asleep and Zeke jumped off the couch and pretended to go asleep too.

I try to put Mal down in his swing to start dinner. It doesnt work. He wakes up right away and lasts happy only long enough for me to peel the potatoes. So I make the rest of dinner holding one baby and trying to control the "helping" of the other. (Yes, Zeke's days are always thus split between reading, cooking, and playing outside. They are his favorite activities and about all he does right now.) Unlike the rest of the world we dont eat corned beef. Because its gross. And also cant possibly be authentically Irish since last I heard the Irish dont hostorically keep cattle. At the very least they must eat corned mutton or corned pork?

I DO make colcannon however, since that is both authentically Irish and not gross. I also make broccoli and sloppy joes. A meal Josh and I always called sloppy ho's before we had kids, because yes, we regularly ate sloppy joes even before having children. They are delicious.

Anways, Im very happy when Josh comes home and I have my two arms again! I finish up dinner and then nurse (again) while he sets the table with Zeke. We end up with about 7 forks. Zeke was apparently in charge of fork distribution.

Zeke is impressed with the sloppy joes.

Mal is not impressed by the idea of being put down while I eat.

After dinner I try to calm down a crabby Mal and Josh clears the table. Zeke goes back outside yet again.

Then Josh takes over walking Mal around in circles and I write this post! It just got dark so he made Zeke come back inside.

The plan for the rest of the evening? I will shower. Then Josh will put Zeke to sleep while I most likely nurse Mal for the last time tonight. Then Josh wants to go downstairs and study up for an interview he has tomorrow. I will most likely go upstairs with a hopefully asleep baby to watch 100 Days of Summer. That or read, we will see how tired I am.

You know, I set out to get a good example of an average day. And I was going to write the day out really honestly. But today ended up not that average, it was much better than average in fact! No giant tantrums, no horrible mom moments. Fairly happy kids.