Night Owl

Andrew has been pretty miserably sick for about a week now. He's had a faucet for a nose and has this terrible sounding mucky-lungs cough. Two nights ago I was up 5 (yes, FIVE!) different times with him. I felt like a had a newborn again. Last night I was up 4 times, but one of the times is definitely worth writing down.

I am awakened by Kate moaning/whining in her room, which was strange cause she doesn't get up in the night really anymore. I think the worst, "Oh no, she threw up." But luckily I am very wrong. I come out of my room to see Andrew's bedroom light on and him sitting in his chair surrounded by a pile of books. He looks up at me wide awake with the deer-in-the-headlights look. I'm still trying to figure out what is going on, so I head down the hall and find the living room lights on with the little time-out chair from the kitchen next to the front door underneath the light switches. I turn those off and put the time-out chair back in the kitchen only to find that the backyard floodlight is on and the whole backyard is lit up like day. (Sorry, backyard neighbors.) I turn that off. My best guess is that he used the time-out chair for that light switch before advancing to the living room. At that point, I hear Kate again and wander back down the hall to her room and she sleepily whines at me, "Why did you close my door loud and wake me up?" I tell her that it was probably Andrew closing her door and that she's fine. I give her a hug and move on to the perpetrator's room. He's still frozen in his chair when I make it back in there. The whole scene was just too weird and slightly humorous, so I really don't feel like getting mad at him. I just tell him to get back in bed and not wander around the house turning lights on again. He says, "Okay." (I'm pretty sure he didn't really pick up what I was putting down, but as parents, sometimes you just feel better telling them what is expected anyway.) I head back to bed...finally. Now from the looks of it, my thoughts are that he was up for a good 45 min. to an hour with all of the "work" he had done around the house + the number of books he had scattered all around him. What a little turkey.

(At least I wasn't up that entire time.)

This was obviously not taken last night, but as you can see, Andrew has always been a book "reader" and scatterer.

The Phone Thief

Today was quite the interesting and eventful day. Kate had her Valentine's Day party with her preschool class, so I sent her out the door with a bunch of candy to give away and she came back home with a bunch of candy to keep. She was thrilled about that. Now it is my job to confiscate it all and ration it out slowly, like the Halloween candy that we are still passing out for treats after they eat their dinner.

For lunch, I got to go spend some time with some friends and let my kids run around and play. They have been so stir crazy being inside all the time with the snow and cold that giving them a chance to play was a welcome treat for all of us. However, we ended up staying until well past Andrew's nap time and so I decided to fore-go the nap and planned on getting him to bed early.

So here I was at 2 something o' clock and I was all being a good mom and dressing my kids up in their layers upon layers of snow gear so they could go outside and play because the sun was out and it wasn't sub zero temperatures and there weren't any ridiculous wind gusts (this was a rare window of opportunity). Kate goes to put on her gloves and rips the zipper right off. Now I was previously quite unimpressed with these gloves that had already popped a seam the first time she wore them, but this was the last straw. So I unlayered the kids and put them in the car to drive across town and attempt to return the gloves to Target. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund for them (they have a rather Nazi-ish return policy, I've noticed). Then I set out to find Kate some new gloves. Um, yeah, trying to find children's SNOW gloves (not the wimpy knit ones) in February in Idaho Falls is practically impossible. I dragged the kids around to 7 different stores before finding the only existing gloves her size left in the entire city at Big 5. Whew. By then it was dinner time so I rushed home and whipped out dinner. Jason played monster with the kids for a while then it was off to bed. I read Andrew his story and put him to bed. It wasn't until about an hour and a half later that I tried to find my phone and couldn't. I had Jason call my phone and to my horror, realized that the ringing was coming from Andrew's room and I thought for sure it would wake him up. Nope. In fact, I couldn't believe it when I walked in and was trying to listen for it. He had somehow snatched it during or after story time and had it snuggled up in his arms under his body and was now dreaming away to a Led Zepplin song that was blaring at full volume from his chest area. Jason & I jostled him around enough to recover my stolen phone. That kid didn't even flinch. He was so wasted from playing and shopping and no napping that he was completely dead to the world. I was glad I didn't have to deal with a delirious toddler. But I still have no idea how he managed to kidnap my phone without my knowing. I swear kids are getting more and more whiley these days. If he can pull that off at two, who knows what I'm going to be facing when he's a teen....oh, man.

This is Andrew when I got him home from shopping and put him on the couch. This is the position in which he sleeps and he was tired enough to assume this position outside the comfort of his room...this has never happened previously. So just imagine trying to pry a object clutched underneath that little chest right there without waking up the subject pictured above. Miracle.

This picture was taken after Kate demanded I take one of her because I took one of Andrew. He was sleeping on the couch so she had to go and retrieve her pillow and a blanket as well.

P.S. Just a side note. I had a humorous little exchange with Andrew the other day that went like this.

Me: Drew, you're funny.

Andrew: I not funny. I a guy.

And there you have it.


Feb. 13, 2008:
So I just had to add that I had to go comfort a crying Andrew in the middle of the night last night as he was sitting up in his bed sobbing, "Where's phone? Where's phone?!" I totally didn't see that one coming.