Halloween at the Sivills

Um so blogger in all its finickiness is NOT letting me post pictures. It does this sometimes where it will not let me view or make comments to blog posts. I think it has to do with the fact that these functions are considered pop-ups and blogger and my computer do not agree about the usefulness of pop-ups. So instead I will update the kid's individual websites with the few pics I have of this year's Halloween.

http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/m/madelinecrackers/

&

https://www.babiesonline.com/babies/b/babybean2/

A Day in the Life of a Wheeling Momma - Part One - The Awakening

Jack's alarm goes off at 6am and even though every rational part of my brain tells me I should get up with him because that will give me an extra hour or so before the kids get up, I pull the cover back up to my chin and fall to sleep. I justify this by saying to myself. I need to make up for the 20 minutes it took me to get the baby back to sleep this morning at 4am. Despite my best efforts to go back to sleep, Jack comes back in at 6:45 to kiss me goodbye which sets off a lovely chain of events. This wakes up Isaac who now thinks its time to play, and Jack's walking out the front door wakes Madeline up. So we're a merry bunch in my bed at 7am - bright and early. Thank heaven that either Dora the Explorer or Go Diego Go! comes on right about then because I can have Isaac amused by Maddy and Maddy amused by cartoons (hey Dora's educational - she teaches Maddy to speak Spanish) while I pull the covers back up to my chin and doze for another lovely 20 minutes.

By the time I'm back to conciousness again, Dora's over and Maddy wants breakfast and Isaac is back to sleep. This next part is always interesting. Maddy can hop out of bed no problem but I usually have to roll to the side to push myself up, but the baby is laying right next to me. The dilemma - do I push him over so I can sit up with the added consequence of waking him up or do I somehow manage to grab the edge of the nightstand with one hand, wedge my elbow between my body and the baby, attempt to sit up with all the grace of a beached whale, also with the possibility that I would wake the baby because of my awkward shuffling? I opt for the awkward shuffling since I know for sure shoving him over would wake him up, and luckily this morning the bassinette is sitting right next to the bed. So I manage to get halfway up when an inadvertant loss of balance swipes my elbow across poor Isaac's head. He stirs as I hold my breath. His eyes flutter open, look up at me, and as his eyes slowly close again he gets a small dimpled smile on his face. First obsticale to getting out of bed accomplished.

I face my second obsticale - the wheelchair. In it of itself, the object looks innocent enough. But lurking just below the surface is a cacaphony of noise-making, baby-waking potential. This, I feel, is one of the Quickie Titanium's fatal flaws. Every adjustment of weight, every turn of the wheel, every push extracts a veritable symphony of cracks, squeaks and mettalic pops. And the overature to all this is the wheeze and snap of the air cushion. I manage to get in without too much noise, although the baby does stir a bit. Turning the chair around (crack, crack, pop) and then heading to the door to get out (push - squeak, push - squeak, door open, turn - pop, crack) and I'm out. Success! Baby is asleep.

I sigh as I survey my house for the day. The good idea I had last night of tuning out the 2 1/2 year old while I tried to work on my online store doesn't seem like such a good idea this morning. Clothes, toys and food are scattered all over. I don't think any obstical course at the Para-lympics can match the gauntlet created by a 2 year old. I already know what her bedroom looks like. When I went in to check on her before I went to bed last night, my off-roading over her bedroom floor resulted in a decapitated doll from McDonalds (not a huge loss), a page being torn out of her Clifford book and a near-beaning as I roll over a Mr. Pototo Head body part. It is so tempting right now to spend the rest of the day on the computer but I know that if I let Madeline run amok again today that my house will look worse, I won't be able to get to her fast enough if she tries to break something, and I will feel worse. My grandma-grippers are for some reason in the kid's bathroom and as I'm retrieving them from under a pile of laundry, I hear Isaac screaming for me in the bedroom.

Next time - The Cleansing