Silver Lining

As an individual who was raised in a house where there was magnet on the fridge that said, "Dust is the protective covering of fine furniture" I've always struggled to keep a clean home.

I ways wanted to have this showroom spotless house that could accommodate company at the drop of a hat and I did sort of have that.

BC.

You know? BC...Before Children

I had this stupid, romantic, dreamy-eyed, child of the 70s and 80s sitcom-stupid idea that we'd have this perfect life with perfect children and this perfect house with clean laundry and spotless toilets.

Yeah...Um...That is not the case.

If all things are going well I might get the laundry finished, folded and put away before Wednesday every week and maybe, just maybe, I'll have enough energy to get at least the first floor vacuumed and mopped.

If my in-laws are coming I'll go the extra distance and make sure that the powder room toilet is scrubbed and that there is no pee on the floor.

The house is not condemnable or disgusting but it does get pretty dusty from time to time. If I know that people are coming over I'll make a point of cleaning and even dusting but day-to-day stuff I just don't have time for.

Don't judge...It's the best I've got...for now.

When I was a teenager my mom gave up on nagging me about cleaning my bedroom, which in hindsight should have been condemned by the board of health; however, she did make us clean when company was coming. It was an all day battle when company was scheduled to visit and usually ended with me stuffing things under my bad and throwing out the stuff that smelled.

I hope to avoid that with my boys but only time will tell.

The funniest things about my teenage years was that, aside from babysitting, my primary income came from cleaning my neighbor's houses.

I do try to set a decent example and try to encourage the boys to help when I am cleaning.

Having been a Dyson Demonstrator I have many cordless vacuum cleaners that the kids love to use.

Once we've picked up all of the toys, I give one to each boy and we go around the first floor of the house "cleaning." I usually have to go over where they were but they love to help so I am trying to capitalize on their willingness. Mom may not have been the greatest example for cleaning but she certainly did not raise an idiot!

One day the boys decided to help clean and piled all of their toys into a collapsable tube that goes with a play tent.

They were adorable marching back and forth singing their "Pick Up, Clean Up" song while stuffing toys into that tube.

It was so heavy when they were finished that hubby and I couldn't even pick it up. I was so proud of their effort that I didn't unload it and put it all back for a day or so.

One of the decisions I made right after the kids were born was to make the switch from toxic chemical cleaners to non-toxic green cleaners. It is a decision that I will never regret and one that paid off in spades last week.

After scrubbing the bathtub in the boys' bathroom I accidentally left the spray bottle of cleaner on the side of the tub and promptly forgot about it.

Guess who found it?

Yep...and they were taking turns hosing down each other and all the rest of the surfaces in the bathroom. The good news is that since there is no bleach their clothes were not stained, the cleaner didn't even hurt their eyes and when I finished cleaning it up it was cleaner than it'd been in months...

Silver lining.

The Powder Room

I bought two training potties quite a while ago. Initially both boys were interested but the novelty quickly wore out for the kids.

Or I was waaaaay too lenient with the positive reinforcement jelly beans.

Anyway...I originally began the potty training with them sitting down and purposely chose potty seats with tall splash guards. Then hubby changed course on me, "Because its more manly to have them pee standing up."

While this is a little more fun for the boys, it's entirely too much work for me and I put my foot down.

They sit.

There is plenty of time for them to be manly and stand to pee. We'll get there when their willies are over the top of the bowl.

In the meantime, we all struggle with the twin thing of trying to get two kids on the potties at the same time.

The Stuntman prefers the training potty on the floor but the Engineer prefers to sit on the big toilet with the insert because he has unlimited access to the flush handle.

Hubby and I have learned that the first release is not the full voiding of the bladder and they need to be encouraged to sit, relax and let it go.

This lesson was hardest learned by hubby who had brought the Stuntman into the powder room to pee. After the initial pee pee hubby prematurely removed the Stuntman from the potty set him on the floor where he proceeded to empty the rest of his bladder. At that very moment the Engineer exclaiming, "Pee pee!" stepped across the threshold and pushed hubby, in his stocking feet, into the puddle and closed the door behind him!

The powder room is a total of five and a half feet long and only 35 inches wide.

Hubby was now trapped in a puddle of urine (at least it was warm) with two two-year-olds one of whom is without pants and a diaper and the other wants to pee on the potty.

He'd reached overload!

What did hubby do? Scream for me.

What did I do? Laugh.

For some reason, he did not find this to be anywhere near as humorous as I did.

Anyway...he was in complete panic mode and practically stuttering when I came to his rescue. I joked that I do this all day long and don't see what the problem is. He replied that he can handle the peeing part it's the "multiple thing" that he has trouble with.

I guffawed!

Once I could finally breathe again I reminded him that we've been doing this for two years now so he might want to hurry up and figure it out.

Pooping on the potty has not been anywhere near as successful.

In fact it's happened only once with one of the boys and only because he had the runs and the timing was perfect. The problem occurred when the other one wanted to pee because the first one was on the toilet.

I was already in the powder room sitting on a tiny little stool across from the toilet in front of the sink when the Stuntman, not to be left out, pushed his way into the room yelling, "Pee too! Pee too!" and closed the door.

I was trapped!

Picture the scene here...

The Engineer was sitting on a Cars toilet seat insert that has handles on the side that when pushed make race car sounds. The Stuntman is sitting on the training potty next to me on the floor. Remember the room is just over five feet long and is only 35 inches wide.

Just about the same time I have the thought, "If he pees and his willy's not behind the shield I'm..." AAAACK!

He's peeeeeing......ON ME!!!

I put my hand up to block the stream which deflected onto the Stuntman. Both of the boys started to laugh and we were all in a fit of giggles when I whipped the door open and called to hubby. His response was that he could hear what was happening and I told him that he really needed to see the seating arrangement to truly appreciate it.

Getting peed on by the kids is nothing new. We went through the first six months of their lives in a defensive posture while changing diapers.

You just never knew when one was going to let loose.

It's been quite a while since I've had to be on my toes to keep from getting peed on.

I've yet to get either of them to poop on the potty again so I have no doubt that this will not be the end of the potty training stories. I am however, letting them control the pace that they are potty trained. I've read and heard more nightmare stories about people who pushed their kids and had accident after accident not to mention the stress for everyone.

It will happen in their time no matter what I do anyway.

That being said, I have learned my lesson.

I sit in the doorway when they are on the potties...safely out of the line of fire.

Right Side Out

Holy crap what a summer that was!

I set a new record for orders with my business, managed to keep the house relatively clean and even took a family vacation.

The importance of vacations, whether you travel or do the "staycation" thing just can't be emphasized enough. We were all pretty well strung out and desperately in need of time away from everything that had become our life.

So the first week of August we packed the car with the double stroller, double pack-n-plays and a couple of coolers of food, suitcases, toys, etc. and ventured out to my sister-in-law's boyfriend's house at the beach. The drive there was completely uneventful and perfectly timed, by you-know-who, to coincide with the twins' nap time.

Upon arrival we emptied the contents of the car, changed diapers - on the kids ;) - and began the sweep thru the house to move all breakable and valuable items above four feet. We were fairly successful with the exception of the Ficus tree that had these wonderful smooth rocks in the bottom of it. Beautiful yes but I spent the next five days in fear of one of those beautiful rocks being launched thru the sliding glass door.

The kids, having slept very well, and in a new exciting house were completely wired.

Haywire would actually be a much more accurate description.

Hubby is a really laid back kind of guy who is not the least controlling when it comes to the kids. Not that he allows bad behavior but was much less concerned about the concept of a rock thru a window or a child falling down the four steps to the back lawn.

While sitting and chatting over beers with his nephew, the Engineer knocked over hubby's beer and before he could get to it, it emptied nearly all of it's contents through the back deck. He was much less calm and I was suddenly transported to a frat house as hubby yelled, "Dude!" and the Engineer yelled, "Dude!" right back.

It seems that the Stuntman and the Engineer had switched roles for the week and I was a little out of sorts trying to wrap my brain around that idea. Fortunately, we had my SIL on hand to help out. She was completely amazing and my in-laws even came down for a day or two.

We took complete advantage of the extra hands and had our third date since the boys came into our lives. The sushi was amazing and we even took a walk on the beach while devouring some really yummy ice cream and holding hands.

Funny how the things that used to be important have changed.

I no longer need the shiny stuff that will eventually sit in my jewelry box. What I treasure most now are the calm moments where we can just lean into each other, not speaking but saying volumes about how much we love one another.

Priceless.

We fell into a wonderful pattern of slow mornings followed by a swim in the pool or a trip to the beach, nap time and another trip to the beach or back to the pool.

Naps are totally underrated!

While the boys napped hubby and I zonked out on the back deck under the awning in wonderfully cool breezes each day.

We had our own bedroom as did the boys. The two rooms were connected by a bathroom arrangement that had a sink and toilet on one end and a sink on the other with the tub/shower in the middle. The shower had one of those hand held shower head things with a hose that you could use just as a shower head or pull down and use as a handheld. It was a great arrangement and the boys like to be able to play with the shower head during bath times or just run back and forth between the rooms.

We've recently started the potting training phase of being parents. I'm a little perplexed as how to do this with twins as what one wants so does the other. It's not easy to strip (they like to take their pants off completely) two kids simultaneously and get them onto potties while keeping track of bodily fluids.

Hubby, in a rare show of machismo, doesn't like the idea of them sitting down to pee and decided that it would be good to have them stand on their training potties (they have lids) to pee into the toilet. In an effort to encourage them to do this, he doesn't close the door when peeing so they can see how it's "supposed" to be done. Yeah right...

At bath time he undresses the boys on the downstairs changing table and sends them up the stairs naked. They come into the bathroom climb up onto the kid potty and try to pee...sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Sometimes they try so hard they poop instead...isn't this fun!

Anyway...

As we were packing to leave the beach, hubby was peeing when I hear one of the boys say, "hose." I giggled and said, "No sweetie, that's daddy's willy." Hubby replied with a laugh, "Thanks for the compliment, but I'm pretty sure he was talking about the shower head."

Oops! HA!

The boys get more and more verbal every day and we constantly have to work on watching what we say.

Hubby seems lost on the the whole spell it out thing.

Multiple times now, after I've gone thru the trouble of spelling out something that I don't want them to hear like Jello, pudding or Fruit (they love the Welch's fruit bites) he has said what I dutifully have spelled out.

He thinks it's funny. At that point they're his to deal with.

Hubby's dishwasher usage has improved slightly, but he is still very challenged in the the department of laundry. He was the kind of guy who just threw it all in without even separating the lights from the darks, trying to get him to turn the boys clothes right-side-out has been a frustrating challenge.

I have no less than six loads of laundry to do each week. Most of the time it's not a huge deal but when the boys shirts are inside out I can't see what needs to be pretreated and I have to stop what I'm doing, turn them right-side-out and then pretreat.

Knit picky? Maybe...but she who does the laundry makes the rules.

One or two are not a big deal but depending on the day, the activity level and type they may go thru as many as three shirts in a day. Times two and that can be six shirts in a day and that adds up very quickly.

They are no longer at the age where we have to worry about them rolling off the changing table. Pulling off the shirts, turning it right-side-out and dropping it in the laundry takes a nano second.

The other night I picked up the clothes from next to the changing table to throw down the stairs and saw that the boys' shirts were inside out. I walked into the kitchen, handed each of the shirts to hubby and waited while he turned them right-side-out.

He laughed...I did not.