Home Alone…with the Kids
Posted by Joe Cianciotto
I’m not sure what a wellspring the events of the past three days will be to this blog, but at a minimum I think I’ll get at least two posts out of it.
Intrigued yet?
So Jen left me home with the kids on Friday and did not come came back until Sunday afternoon. Apparently it was the last of her cousins to be married and in Pennsylvania that is something of a national holiday and she couldn’t miss it. So yeah, this represented a first of many things. It was the first time Jen has ever spent a night away from both of our daughters, except for the two nights away from Hannah she spent when we had Sophie. It was also the first time I ever watched the kids on my own for a period of time longer than four hours.
To give you a little bit of background, for the last three years Jen has taken time off of work to raise our two nuggets as a fulltime mommy. It makes things a bit tight budget-wise but it’s been such a great experience for the girls and for her I’m so glad we did it.
But back to this weekend…I figured Jen has this down to a science, how hard would it really be to survive 72 hours as a single parent. I mean I get up with them on Saturdays and this is just like one long Saturday morning.
I learned two things…
One, while I’ve always known Jen is a fantastic mother, I had no idea just how biblically skilled she is at it. Two, and I’m going to stop myself right here for a second and tell you my daughters are my life. They are smart, sweet, intelligent, caring, talented, insightful, thoughtful and inspiring. So with that said and catalogued, I also learned that they are both completely and totally out of their minds as well.
Like ‘Animal House’ crazy.
I mean the things I have witnessed over the last three days have put me completely and emotionally in the fetal position. Just the sleeping situation alone is like a vaudeville act. Sophie prefers Hannah’s bed and Hannah prefers Sophie’s bed, or I should say, inflatable mattress (which in itself is a story). But what they both like even more than that is sleeping in our bed, which usually happens around 4 a.m. each night. So, to get ahead of the curve I figured F$%# that, we’ll just all sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed to start with.
This started out as a sound plan, until of course they both started fighting over who’s back I would rub. I eventually found a way to rub both of their backs at which point they asked me to turn the TV on. Once that was soundly quashed and not happening, Hannah then decided she was thirsty. So I go downstairs and bring her up water at which point Sophie cries because she’s thirsty too. I go back to the kitchen a second time and by the time I make it to the bed, it’s soaked and Hannah is laughing. She then says she peed the bed as I’m wrist deep in this puddle of a sheet. Seeing the horror on my face she immediately informs me that she is kidding and she just ‘accidentally’ spilled her water…but she then tells me though she did pee her undies a little bit…which I still don’t know what to do with.
Anyway, I then take out the hair dryer to somehow make the bed less wet, at which point they both start taking turns putting their butts underneath the dryer. And any reaction I have just makes them laugh even more. I finally get the sheets to not be soaked while I distract them away from the crime scene with my iPhone. We get settled again, except this time Hannah wants all the lights on for some reason I still haven’t reconciled. So yeah, there we are, lying in a damp bed with a room as bright as an MRI and Sophie watching Peppa Pig on YouTube in what I believe to be a German dialect. After about an hour they finally go off to sleep, at which point I thank God and proceed to settle into my happy place, on the floor at the foot of the bed with an Olaf doll as a pillow.
Wow, that was only the first twelve hours. I guess I have so much more still to share…this might even be three posts. I’ll try to get to that before the end of the week while the trauma is still fresh in my head.
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