On my ooooooooowwwwwwn (kinda sorta)

Well here I am, almost at the end of my first week mostly on my own at home with a two and a half month old and a two year old.  Despite coming down with a pretty bad cold on Saturday that I'm still fighting (maybe my body thought if we could get sick, we could keep the help around longer), I'm managing okay.  Though, oh my gosh Zeb, could you BE more terrible twos?  He is so much more of a two year old than the older boys ever were at that age.  Everything is "MINE!  THAT'S ZEB'S!" and, in case you couldn't tell from that quote, everything is screamingly demanded.  He's starting to scream for a sippy cup at bedtime and naptime, and first thing in the morning when he wakes up (which was 6AM today, thanks buddy).  Good thing he only ever gets water in those.  Also he's starting to demand KIX!  MORE KIX!  Toddlers seem to be designed to run on dry cereal.  At one point Wolfie's diet was like 88% Special K.  I started calling it Wolfie Chow.

We did have fun this week, though.  We've been hanging out in the big boys' room a lot, rifling through their clutter bins.  I made up a couple of games.  There's "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Zeb" where Zeb gets into Wolfie's bed and I sing "Twinkle, twinkle little Zeb, take a nap in Wolfie's bed."  Then he calls out other peoples' beds he wants me to sing that he's taking a nap in.  First it was Eli, then Daddy, then two grandparents, then next came Leo!  Sally came after that, then various other family members and friends.  The next day he added in some farm animals.  Then there's the game where Zeb hands me the various elements of this soft toy shabbat kit I got back when Eli went to synagogue preschool (challah, candles, wine and goblet) and I say the associated prayer and then bop him with it.  It's a good game to do one handed as Opal is balanced on my hip.
   
Opal so far seems to be enjoying/tolerating being carried around while I focus more on Zeb.  She doesn't have to stare intensely into my face all day, who knew?!   I was surprised at how the house didn't fall apart like I thought it would.  Okay, the floors are gross and we're behind on the laundry, but there actually seems to be less clutter.  And I know Eli is glad things are getting more back to normal.  When I asked him if he was glad about it, he said "Don't have a fifth kid, mommy!" 

We made good on our promise to take Eli to the Franklin Institute planetarium this past weekend.  Well, we actually took all the kids.  It was our first outing with all six of us, first time with all four of them in the car together.  Check out these nerds:

 

Actually since we also briefly went across the river to Cherry Hill to check out this gem and mineral store Nic wanted me to go to, it was also Opal's first trip out of Pennsylvania!  The planetarium was all right, not really as cool as I remember it being.  I think the kids weren't that impressed either.  The consensus was it was pretty much like an IMAX movie.  They still liked it, though.  Well, Nic had to take Screamy McToddlerface out fifteen minutes into the half hour show, so it was just the big boys and me with Opal precariously on my lap and munching my overexposed boob.  Good thing it was dark, right? 

 

Then afterwards the boys insisted on doing the giant heart, aka the bane of cardiophobic mommy's childhood.  Imagine you're a kid who has frequent nightmares of beating hearts, then imagine you go to a science museum where the famous main attractions is a gigantic floor-to-ceiling tunnel-filled fiberglass heart, inside an internal-organs-pink room vibrating with the sound of a beating heart and filled with creepy freeze-dried animal and human hearts (they're not there now but they used to be, oh yes they used to be).  I can't even remember how much nervous terror diarrhea that room caused me as a kid, but I think it must have been a lot.  Anyway, I'm no longer phobic of hearts or the room, but I'd still rather not have a sleepover there.  The kids enjoyed themselves, though.  Wolfie and Eli ran through the heart over and over while Zeb messed with this fake vending machine that has a cartoon that judges you for the poor dietary choices you make.

 

Can't you imagine this thing closing in around you and shrinking and making you be stuck inside a body for eternity as it pulsates around you?  No?  Just childhood me then?

 

 

 

Soda is bad, mmmkay?



All the while I was reminiscing about the last time we went to the Franklin Institute, which happened to be right before I found out I was pregnant with Opal.  I remember feeling so nervous and hopeful that I'd be pregnant, and here I was returning almost a year later with the positive results!  A funny thought I had in the Franklin Institute bathroom last weekend that shows how often I dress myself versus the baby - I was pulling up my leggings and saw there was a hole in the crotch, and I thought to myself "Oh, that's okay, I'll just buckle my onesie on the outside next time."  Yup.

But for me, the highlight of the trip had to have been when we got home.  Zeb was sporting his usual toddler snot moustache, enhanced from the cold weather and having a brief tantrum over dropping his toy on the floor repeatedly on the way home.  So when we got home, I'm getting out of the car and I open the back door to get the kids out, and I see Eli leaning over with his finger extended, slowly magnetically drawn to the snot moustache of his oblivious brother.  When contact was made, I burst out laughing and could not stop.  I was like "Eli, what were you thinking???"  He said indignantly "WHAT?!  I wanted to see if it was REAL!"