I Ironed Outside Today

It's true. I ironed outside today. On the front porch. In the cold. As in 40 degrees cold. Okay, so it wasn't officially freezing. But cold enough that the kids and I needed heavy coats and hats and gloves. Only one of us actually kept all three of these on.

Today was cabin fever day. Sunday. The no school day, no Ryan day, just me and the Diabolical Duo day. Before the day even began, I knew we would need to get out of the house to keep the semblance of sanity I've glued back together since Ryan was on vacation this week. Unfortunately, the weather has been rotten. Fast forward to 10:30 am: the kids are screaming, I'm looking longingly at the Pinot Noir... yup, we must out.

First, let me tell you, I absolutely dread taking both the kids on errands. I always try and organize my errands between the hours of 9 am - 12 noon, Monday through Friday, when I only have one little guy to watch out for, rather than two. (This seems a great time to interject that I cannot fathom having more than two kids - cheers to those parents who are outnumbered. I'll pour some out for you all tonight... or this afternoon). But I'd rather be crazy and productive, than crazy and bored, so I piled everyone into the car, and off we went to the Fred. G. Meyer. The excursion went like this:

Kaden refused to sit anywhere in the car cart
Anika and Kaden ran across the store as I attempted to pick out a toilet bowl cleaner in 1.5 seconds
I ran after them with three options of toilet bowl cleaners in hand for later perusal
I lassoed Kaden, tucked him under my arm, and forced him against his will to sit in the cart, all while he screamed hell-fire through the whole store
I meagerly attempted to soothe him for show, avoided eye contact with other shoppers, mentally pared down my list to the bare minimum, hustled through the aisles, and ended up buying all three toilet bowl cleaners anyway.

The culprit...

Just another day at the office folks...

The afternoon was eventful. I unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, made lunch, cleaned up lunch, started one load of laundry, wiped off the counters twice, relocated 53 toys, refereed 78 arguments over who had what toy first, yelled "Don't jump on the bed!" at least seven times, threatened to count to three 37 times, and actually counted to three once. Big day. Huge. My goal was to finish clipping and ironing the mountain of fabric my mom gave me this week. By 3:00 pm, I realized no one was going to just gift-wrap me my dream of ironing fabric. So, I layered up the littles, underarmed my ironing board and iron and threw open the door. The kids ran around, rode around, threw up their arms and screamed and did what little kids should do. I kept one eye on them, while my iron huffed huge clouds of steam into the cold.

And here's a hint to what my next post will complain about contain:

... in the meantime, I'll be holding on to my little wins.