"Get Back Here!"

It’s been a while since I put fingers to keyboard, which is disappointing. "Where have you been?" See the photo above. This is the kind of thing Jess and I deal with everyday, now. While Jackson was violating our TP supply, Logan was off doing something else. Life has a way of stealing what once seemed like an endless supply of idle time. Fact is, what little time Jess and I seem to have these days is spent staring off into a blank space and contemplating how busy we used to think we were.

Or judging other parents on Facebook.

Our boys are now almost 11 months. Flopping on the floor has turned to crawling, which is a neat thing until about five minutes later, when you come to the obscene conclusion that you have officially lost any semblance of control. They move wherever the hell they want, banging, prying, pushing. If it is expensive, delicate or full of voltage they want it in their mouths. “For fuck’s sake, (insert name offending child),” is the phrase that pays in our house. The mobility issue really is a challenge, as anything you need (not want….wants don’t mean shit no more) to do requires equal parts coordination and foresight when dealing with them solo. Consider this:

We three are in the nursery after a diaper change. I need to go into the adjoining bathroom to wash my hands, but have to  shut the bathroom, so they don’t go in (more on that later). But I also have to make sure the door to the nursery into the living room is shut, because I may have forgotten to put up the baby gate in the living room, which leads to the kitchen where the pots, pans and poison are.

So the nursery door is shut, I’m in the bathroom with the doors shut, while Jackson and Logan pull down a wicker basket full of books they cannot read, but do enjoy scattering over the area of the nursery floor. OK, now my hands are clean. I grab one kid and run out of the nursery, into the furthest end of the living room and race back into the nursery to:

• Get there before  the kid I just brought into the living room.

•   Slide into the nursery before the kid who I left in there slams the door shut and morphs into an erupting door jamb, requiring me to plead for him to move, or hope he is on his ass and I can open the door slowly, as his terry clothed bottom slides with the door.

"Gotcha! Shit, no I don't"

OK, got the kid and bringing him out into the living room. Oh, but remember how I didn’t put up the baby gate between the living room and kitchen? Baby 1 is now doing a terrible John Bonham impersonation with the veggie steamer. So I scoop him up, as the other sneaks in to take over the shitty drum line. This life is a virtual game of Whack-a-Mole.

To offer a real-life example of how complicated these two gaining their God-given independence has become, allow me to share with you the fact that I use the bathroom. When one must go, one must go, regardless of whether you have twins who can move and get into stuff. Recently Jess left me alone with them, which is fine. I can do this. Usually.

So, we’re playing and having a grand old time when Mother Nature ordered a Bullet Train through my lower intestine. This was one of those, “I might not be able to live this down if I don’t move quickly,” situations. However, there are kids to think about. So off to the races we go. Trying to balance my physical situation and my moral obligation not to let my children wander aimlessly into danger, I grabbed them as quickly as possible and placed them in the nursery.

Upon securing the door leading to the living room, I bolted into bathroom to do what had to be done. In my haste to avoid a poop-filled Saturday morning. I realized I hadn’t completely shut the bathroom door. As it slowly swung open, there stood two smiling children. (Note this is the first time anyone has smiled while I dropped a deuce.) Within seconds, the darling cherubs  were exploring every square inch of the bathroom and all its toys: toilet brushes, garbage cans, toilet paper, toilet paper holders. Anything that wasn’t fastened they wanted their hands on. From the pot, with pants around the ankles, I grabbed stuff one-by-one, putting them in the one place that I could reach/they couldn’t reach. This is the actual photo of the aftermath:

 

Keeping kids out of places they shouldn’t be and extracting things that don’t go in their mouths out of their mouths requires more time than we could have ever anticipated. And not even the bathroom offers a moment of peace. So if you don’t see another entry for a while, just assume they started walking.