A make-it-or-break-it day for a mom

Let's face it. There are many, many make-it-or-break-it days for moms. The days when the spit-up and poopy diapers seem endless. The days when you've had a combined 2 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours. And the list goes on and on. This was just one of those days. Maybe not even as bad as one that I've listed, but a couple of situations I have yet to face in motherhood. Until now of course.

Garrett's bestest friend, Avery, came over for a few hours this morning, so that was actually pretty awesome. Once I (finally) got Cooper down for his morning nap, I was able to really clean my kitchen like it hasn't been cleaned in a while. It's amazing how much you can get done when your chatty 4 year old has someone else's ear to talk off. Before Avery came over, Cooper was being very fussy, which made my last minute clean-up before Avery's mom stopped by, a little more harried. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's cutting the hardest tooth to cut ever in the universe. (Or at least it feels that way. He's been teething for 6 months now. It's about time to start seeing the fruits of the fussy, drool-filled labor.)

After my kitchen cleaning was done, I went to check on the 2 buddies playing in Garrett's room. The first thing I see is Garrett pulling his pants up, then Avery telling me that Garrett peed on his Spiderman punching bag. Seriously?! He hasn't peed on the floor since potty training days. To say I was mad was really an understatement. And by the look on his face, he knew he had jumped way past the line of following the rules (an unspoken one would be, never pee in front of a friend. But apparently it needs to be a spoken rule. Especially when the peeing is NOT taking place in a bathroom.) So I "dealt" with the situation swiftly and immediately. On top of the "dealing" he was also banned from Wii for the day.

After Avery left, I was straightening things up around the house. I made a quick run through of Garrett's bathroom and got to looking at the shower curtain. It's normally never closed, but since the bathtub is in need of a good scrubbing, I pulled it closed this morning. And in my run through discovered that "someone" had used it as toilet paper. Seriously?! I basically hit the roof by this point.

I know that once Cooper is walking and really getting into things, days like today (few and far between as they hopefully are) will be multiplied by 2. I have really tried to encourage Garrett to do a lot of things independently, like going to the bathroom or playing with a friend in his bedroom. And while I don't plan on changing this course of independence, we apparently need to have a good talk about ground rules. And I should make no assumptions as to what I think he knows.

When you start thinking that maybe your child is figuring out this crazy, mixed up world, and doing a good job with it, days like today happen to remind you that they are, in fact, just 4 years old and still have LOTS to learn.

And a funny story about Garrett to balance out this post: A few days ago, he patted my stomach and said "Your belly is big! You're gonna have another baby." Just what a dieting mom always wants to hear. The next day he told me that he really wanted to have another baby and that we need to go to the doctor and get one. Yesterday morning rolls around. Garrett is sitting on the living room floor eating dry cereal out of a cup for breakfast (it's how we roll in our house). He sat the cup down for a second and Cooper took off. He crawled as fast as his little legs would move, grabbed the cup of cereal, dumped it on the floor and started chowing down. Garrett looked at me and said very emphatically "We don't need any more babies!!!!"