Mistakes

Now that I have three children under the age of 5 I feel like I’m somewhat of a seasoned mom. I’ve got our routines down, I have a general idea of which kid needs what at various times of the day, and I nearly have a handle on the housework. Until this past week. Apparently everything I knew went out the window when I came down with a fever on Monday. It only lasted one day but it was long enough for me to spiral into a disastrous remainder of the week.

My first mistake was misplacing the remote for our master bedroom TV. Now this one isn’t nearly as important as the remote in our den, but we were definitely out of sorts without it. We had to resort to retired habits of the good old days when we actually had to get off butts and walk to the TV to turn it on. Only now we needed to turn the FIOS box as well. So, we dealt with it, but completely gave up changing channels…..we just left it on one of the kids networks. I basically scoured every inch of our house looking for the remote. My mother was convinced my middle child hid it somewhere. I even looked in my toddler’s room and in her crib, imagining she was stashing it somewhere among her stuffed animals so she could play with it whenever she wants…..knowing that we freak out whenever she grabs it. Oh well, we’ll survive.

My second mistake was teaching my toddler to blow her nose. When her runny nose first started we all thought it was so great that a 15 month old could blow her nose into a tissue. This was great until she started blowing her nose all over my house, sometimes with….and sometimes without the tissue. Unless of course she empties the tissue box of all its contents all over the floor. And then I don’t know which tissues she’s blown into and which she simply pulled out of the box and flung into the air. And when her runny nose was really bad I had images of my house being covered in ectoplasm from the Ghostbusters movies. I shutter just thinking about it!

We also taught my toddler to say no. And now its her favorite word. I should have learned not to do this from kid #1 and kid #2 but guess not. Now all I hear all day is “no no no, no no no” followed by a little giggle. Fabulous.

Fourth mistake was juice related. My 3 year old son contracted the household illness, as illnesses often travel from mom to kid to kid to kid and back again, and as a result had a runny nose, fever, and tummy ache. He didn’t want to eat anything but wanted some of his “pink juice”. This juice is a combo of fruit and veggies (including beets). He LOVES the color pink so he’s excited to drink it and he gets some nutrition. Well, mommy wasn’t really thinking until he told me he thought he was going to throw up. Oh no! Beet juice stains!!!!

And while we’re on the subject of the color pink my 3 year old (yes, my son) also has a brand new pair of bright pink pants. I was smart enough to wash them separately the first time they were washed but I mistakenly thought once through the wash would get all the excess dye out. Wrong. I pulled everything out of the dryer and half the clothes were pink! Well, my 3 year old was thrilled but my 4 year-old son was less than excited to have pink superhero underwear.

But on a good note when I grabbed a set of sheets out of the linen closet my TV remote slipped out from one of the folds. I have absolutely no idea if I actually folded the sheets around the remote or if one of the kids slipped it in there. But I don’t care. I have my remote back!