Always Two Steps Ahead

Despite being sick, Kennady some how seems to always be two steps ahead of me. Here's a little story about today.

Kennady was sitting peacefully in her high chair eating applesauce out of her bowl with a spoon, or at least she was having fun stirring it around. I was putting in a load of laundry. Our washer and dryer happen to be less than 2 feet away from our kitchen. Gotta love apartment life. I was preoccupied pretreating stains from Kennady's previous adventures, when there's a loud thud. I already knew what had happened, or so I thought, because when I looked over I was relieved that only her sippy cup was on the floor. I return to the laundry, moving quickly, but I was too late. Crash! And there goes the applesauce. Everywhere. All over Kennady, the high chair, the floor, the wall, the window, the table. I'm not surprised, but not thrilled either. So I undress the kid while she's still strapped down (it's a lot easier this way), carry her to the bathroom and plop her in the bath. While she is playing in the tub, I leave to get a start on the applesauce mess. Well as I am scrubbing the floor, I hear entirely too much water leaving the tub (which, by the way, our apartment builders were ever so smart to not caulk between the tub and the linoleum, I bet our downstairs neighbors love that). I go in to find that she has taken her hippo scrub puppet, drenched it and is having fun wringing it out over the side of the tub. As soon as she sees me she decides bath time is over. I take her out, dry her off, lay down a diaper and start to put it on. She does the angry worm maneuver and escapes, runs behind her packnplay and pees all over the floor, laughing. I put a diaper on her, take her peed on toys to the sink to be washed and return to start cleaning the pee off the floor. I'm about halfway through when I hear a crash and the scampering of little feet. I find the stain remover knocked off the washing machine and nearly the entire half gallon all over the carpet. Why is stain remover blue? At this point the extra hour of time I thought I had has disappeared and we are now running late for her doctor's appointment.

I return home to applesauce all over the kitchen, water all over the bathroom, pee all over her bedroom, stain remover all over the hallway and peed on toys filling the bathroom sink. I unload groceries, move laundry from the washer to the dryer and start another load, all while standing in a puddle of stain remover. I give Kennady medicine and lunch. She probably needed another bath, but I settled for washing her hands. Then it's nap time. During my quiet time I write a blog post about my sick baby, use the restroom, and then fold a load of laundry. Kennady awakes much sooner than expected. Hungry. She gets a bowl of Kix and her good friend the Disney Channel. We have a battle over the loudness of the tv. I lose because I haven't been able to find the remote all day, Ben having used it in the morning to watch news, so it's probably in a laundry hamper or in the bathroom or in his backpack. I start working on dinner. Ben comes home. We eat dinner. Ben leaves. I finally mostly clean up the stain remover. It will probably always be there, only now it's not blue, just crusty. I probably won't lose my deposit for crusty carpet that smells like mountain breeze. Kennady is hungry again because she wouldn't eat dinner. Kix again. All over the living room this time. Several bedtime stories. Lots of juice. More medicine. Down to bed. I put away laundry, use the restroom, and drink a glass of water. I answer emails about treats and babysitting. I look up things about putting tubes in toddlers' ears. I start writing a blog, thinking I'll do this and then clean up the messes that were made earlier (minus the pee, because that is where Kennady sleeps). Maybe I'll even get to other messes, like my bedroom. And then I will go to bed early. But, in the last 30 seconds my child has awoken. I cross my fingers that she will go back to sleep.