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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Day In the Life: Cocoa's Birthday

12:30 am Up and at 'em, Mom!  Cocoa here. I have a cold and a sore throat and a full diaper and woke up yesterday with a 102 fever, and heck- let's go watch cartoons and drink OJ.  Yeah, now.  No, I won't be soothed.  I will writhe and kick and head butt you because I half crazy with this aching pain in my throat.  UP and at 'em!

3:30 am Text my husband to tell him of my good fortune.  OJ and Curious George, all night baby!  Bless you, Netflix, and your "continuous play" option.

4:00 am Cocoa is asleep and I put him in his crib and go lay down.

4:30 am Cocoa is up again and comes to bed with me.  We sleep.  HALLELUJAH.

9:00 am We wake up.  Man, am I glad I canceled all my early morning piano lessons this week until the crud is gone.  (That's a technical term, by the way.  We get flu season, and then we get the crud.  Not really sick, but not totally well either.  Nasty coughs, grumpy faces, gooey noses.)  Go tell the girls their cartoon time is over, time to have breakfast and clean up the playroom.

9:30 am Send Ernie to get ready for a shower.  Change Cocoa's dirty diaper.

10:00 am Tired of waiting for her (she's making her bed) I take my shower.

10:30 am Ernie is now tucking teddy bears into bed.  I remind her that she needs a shower this morning.  I find Cocoa with a pen and Ernie's binder of "most prized print out coloring pages from Pinterest."  I substitute a page of scrap paper for him and start cleaning the kitchen.  I've been on the couch for 5 days, either sick or just too exhausted to get up for more than a little bit.  I'm finally feeling better, and it's time to catch up!  New diaper for Cocoa, and give him a piece of chalk for the easel.  He draws swirls and excitedly turns and shrieks "FROWAH!"  Obviously, my Monet is drawing a flower garden.  Little genius.

11:00 am Make a birthday cake with the kids- yes, I use boxed cake mixes.  It was a choice between cooking with my kids or banning them from the kitchen, and I had to choose kid time.  (Because I don't have the attention span necessary to follow a 15-ingredient recipe AND keep track of whose turn it is to stir, dump, pour, measure, mix.....eep.)

11:30 am Run around the upstairs with a garbage bag and a clothes hamper.  There are a LOT of used tissues around here.  GROSS.  Socks, too.  Why do kids leave their socks in every room of the house?

12:00  Serve the kids homemade apple sauce to start their lunch off- they all had seconds on Sunday, I know they'll like this.  I thawed out more just because they liked it so much.  I puree it so it's extra smooth, the only way they'll eat it.

12:30 They are having sword fights with their spoons and won't touch the applesauce.  I give them bread and jam for the 156th meal in a row and give them the mother's curse: Someday may you have children who don't appreciate good food, and eat nothing but bread.  And then you can try to explain to them why they can't poop.

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recipe and magazine

1:00 Send kids downstairs to clean up the play room, and I sit at the computer for a few minutes and start blogging.  (Did we just go meta?)  E-mail back and forth with my husband a few times on his lunch break, and make sure I tell him I love him a few hundred times.  Because Mama is coming off a week of flu and PMS and...yeah.  Needs to make sure people know she's back.  He wants a haircut, but not a haircut.  The only haircut I know how to cut is Missionary.  You know, the kind of haircut that's 1 inch long.  (You wondered why all the guy LDS missionaries look alike?  Yeah, there are rules for personal grooming!)

playset in the rain

2:00 Get all the kids ready to go- I have a follow-up appointment with my doctor to go over some blood work and Cocoa gets his two-year check up today.  Shoes and coats on everybody, realize that I can't fit any shoes over Cocoa's outfit of choice (red footy pajamas) so I run upstairs and dig through the clean laundry hamper to find a fresh outfit for him.  (Have I mentioned that the hubby does all the laundry now, and I take care of sorting/folding/putting away?  It had to happen- I never, ever, remember to cart the dirty laundry to the basement and get it started!  It was either start washing stuff, or buy everyone new underwear.  Thanks for picking up my slack, hon, we make a great team ;)

2:30-3:30 The appointment actually goes really well!  When one kid spills a glass of water on the table in the foyer, one of the gals from the desk pops out with a huge terry cloth towel.  When Mimi starts exclaiming that the table is sticky (because there is maple syrup on her doll, and MOM the table is only sticky to toys that's why it doesn't feel sticky, and NO my doll wasn't sticky yesterday!) the same gal comes out with a lysol wipe.  Basically, I love the staff there.  All two of them.  And our doctor.  Everything looks good, I'm from Seattle and am low in Vitamin D, and the kids all get suckers on the way out the door.  Happy campers!

3:30 Since we're in town, we head over to our nearest Asian market.  I load up on rice cakes for dok bokki, tiny baby bok choi, ground flax seed, panda crackers for the kids, and sweet potatoes to roast and snack on for me and Cocoa.  (Everybody else thinks they're a punishment- I can't keep Cocoa's little grabby fingers off them!)  Cocoa falls asleep on the way home.

pantry

4:20 Home!  Ernie eagerly offers to carry ALL the groceries upstairs for me (the better to get to their panda crackers!)  and I cart Cocoa off to bed.  It's a late nap, but he's so crazy in sleep schedule right now it's not even funny.  He took three naps yesterday, all in my lap.  I've had this flu, it's not fun, and I'm just going to let him sleep when and where he wants!  I pull some raspberry jam out of the freezer to fill the birthday cake with and settle down with a mug of our homemade applesauce.  And holy heck, it's awful stuff.  No wonder the kids wouldn't eat it- we've found the remains of that one batch I triple-cinnamoned on accident.  Ouch.  It's beyond spicy and into just plain punishing.  Maybe it will clear up the rest of my congestion.

4:45 Girls are done with their snack, and I send them downstairs to clean up their playroom.  Actually DO it this time.  Ernie really wants to help decorate Cocoa's cake, but the playroom needs to be cleaned up first and I can't wait forever.  Hopefully that will help her focus just a bit- I tell her that I'm going to make dinner in about 20 minutes, and I will decorate the cake after dinner.  So, if her toys are put away before dinner, she can definitely help me!

4:56 Cocoa is awake.  DARN IT.  He sure doesn't sound happy.  Maybe he's just looking forward to his Panda crackers.  I DID promise him he could have them after I bought them.

5:03 He was excited about the crackers until I put one in his hand.  No problem, he's strapped into his high chair.  I walk away.  It's the only way he'll ever really eat: ALONE.  I'm in the next room, listening to crunchings and crinklings and happy mmmm'ings.

5:10 I go help the girls go a little faster in their clean up downstairs.  Looking pretty good!

bok choi and rick sticks

5:30  I leave the kids downstairs and go start dinner- rick sticks and steamed bok choi.  Not terribly filling or nutritious, but hopefully something everyone will happily eat.  Most of us aren't too hungry- I've been staying pretty full on just a small juice glass of almond milk for breakfast, another for lunch, and a few bites of dinner.  Most miserable diet ever, being too sick and tired to be hungry! I boil the rice sticks for a few minutes, and then try a new way of cooking them.  Normally I take these smooshy rice bites (think something like gnocchi, but chewy and stretchy) and toss them in a pan with some oil to crisp them up a bit.  They stick and make a terrible mess- today I rinse off all the starch I can, toss them in oil, and then put them under the broiler on a foil-lined pan.  The recipe I found said to broil them 5 minutes till they're golden brown.  I go ten minutes, and they're looking wrinkly.  Switch to bake at 450 for another 5 or 10 minutes and they're just drying out and still completely white.  Then I spend 20 minutes peeling them from the foil, and then peeling the foil from the rice sticks.  Technique fail!  I frost the cake while I'm waiting for everything to cook, and fill the center with my raspberry jam.  I should put the cake in the fridge, since the jam is thickened with gelatin and doesn't stand up to room temperature without going runny, but I put it on the cake stand and now it won't fit.

6:15  Call the kids to dinner.  THEY LOVE THE RICE STICKS.  Hallelujah.  Ernie even likes the bok choi.  Mimi bravely tries a bite, so kudos for her.

6:45 I pull the girls into the kitchen to decorate the birthday cake- lots of chocolate candies and sprinkles, check!  It looks amazing!  Daddy gets home from work and gets himself kiss from me and a plate of dinner from the pot while I'm supervising in the kitchen.

decorating the cake

7:00 Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Bear, and Aunt Bert arrive for the birthday party.  Cocoa loves opening his presents.  His cake dripped and oozed red rasberry jam (very festive with the blue icing and vanilla ice cream).  Nana and Grandpa called from Utah to Facetime him a very happy birthday.  What a great night to be two!

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oozing birthday cake

8:30 Everyone has gone home, kitchen is just about cleaned (THANK YOU GRANDMA!!) we read scriptures with the kids and help them say their prayers and brush their teeth.  Rice bags get warmed up, and girls are tucked into bed with hot rice bags and cold cups of water.

9:00 Cocoa figures now is a good time to watch more cartoons.

9:30 Cocoa falls asleep, and then wakes up wailing when I put him in his crib.  He sits with Daddy until Daddy falls asleep.

10:15 Here's me and Cocoa, blogging.  And watching Curious George.  And both wanting to be asleep, I'm sure of it.  Man alive, I'm feeling better today but I still don't have enough energy to be taking care of a two-year-old with The Crud at 10:15 PM.  (He's not normally like this- bed time for him is normally around 8:30 or 9:00.  And it's easy.  He rubs his eyes, we heat up his rice bag, and stick him in bed.  The end.)

10:30 Give up on being the Nice Mom on Cocoa's birthday, and call in Tough Love.  Which is what he needs.  Give him his Advil, put him in his crib with a warm rice bag and his fuzzy blankets, leave the hall light on to keep him company, and go finish cleaning the kitchen.  And use the bathroom for as long as I want without company.  And listen to Cocoa play, sing, whimper half heartedly, and finally go silent.

11:00 PM Finish up the last few dishes, wake Daddy up and send us to bed.  

3 comments:

J. said...

I nominated you for a Liebster award. Near as I can tell, it's like a chain award. You get nominated and then nominate others. There's some questions to answer and such that go along with the award. If you are interested, you can check it out on my blog, but I'd suggest linking back to Whitney B.'s blog, the woman who nominated me, for more details on the award. Have a great one. I seem to be the only one in my family who loves sweet potatoes too :)

What I Did Today said...

Love that sweet tired two-year old face (he's already 2?!?!?). The cake looks awesome! And I totally want to start doing a log-type blog post every once in a while. They are so fun to read!

Alexandra said...

Ohhhh, he's sweeeet! I want one. :) I miss my little guy. Mine is 15 now.