Adding Branches to Our Family Tree: Parenting Fails and 2013 Christmas Pictures

Christmas 2013 – the first year spent as a family of 5. More on that later – first, the parenting fails.

We all have those less than stellar parenting moments. You know it. Here we go:

FUN FACT 1 – My two three year old bundles of energy & joy get up early no matter what day of the week it is, no matter what time they go to bed.

FUN FACT 2 – I am resisting (okay, kicking and screaming) acknowledging that my lazy Saturday mornings are o-v-e-r.

I am an early riser, but the little (but surprisingly loud) voice bellowing in my ear at 5:45 informing me “no dark outside” is a pretty painful entry in to the day, especially on a Saturday where I didn’t adhere to my 10 PM bedtime.

FUN FACT 3 - It doesn’t actually matter if it is dark outside or not. (If they are awake, it is “no dark outside” in their little minds. It was once suggested to me at 3 AM in the middle of winter that is was “no dark”. I called BS on that one and carted someone’s little hiney back to bed.)

We have a playroom of sorts in our spare room - a guest room/storage area where toys have migrated since we’ve had the boys. We have a TV where the boys can watch movies. We’ve settled in to a Saturday routine where the boys will wake us up and one of us will take them to the potty. Sometimes it’s me…sometimes I pretend I’m asleep and wait for my husband to get up. You know you’ve done it. After this, the boys will usually watch cartoons for about an hour. This gives us a chance to get up and get breakfast. This allows me to ease gently in to the day and drink my coffee in bed without two little boys climbing all over me.

My entire household was sick over the Christmas holidays. I was the "illest of them all". Really sick. Dirty hair sick. Wearing sweat pants in public sick. On December 26th, I did allow myself a little bit of extra snooze time, even though my inner voice of reason told me this was a very bad idea. Pneumonia or not.

When I got up to go to the bathroom, I was treated with the site of a toilet bowl full of, say…two or three full rolls of TP. The damn thing was gurgling. My husband always tells me to leave the lid down and that despite my periodic lectures about playing in the potty, the bathroom is a land of inviting bowls of water for little boys. I climbed back in to bed and muttered a brief description of what I’d found in the bathroom to my dear hubby, who had also had the misfortune of indulging in some extra snooze time. “It’s gurgling. You deal with it,” said I as my head hit the pillow.

God love that man, he got up without too much grumbling and went off to save the day. When a little more yelling than I’d anticipated came from the playroom, I went to investigate. My budding artists had colored almost everything in the room – the walls, their table and chair set, their train table, the television set, themselves. The creative markings around their belly buttons and on their feet and legs resembled some sort of tribal tattoos. What I found most impressive (later, after I’d calmed down) is that they’d taken off their socks and pajama pants to decorate themselves then gotten dressed again.

Did I mention this was permanent marker? Of course I don’t let my kids color unsupervised and I store the crayons and markers in a spot where the kids can’t get at them. However, there was a mug of pens and markers on top of an old file cabinet that was shoved in the corner of the playroom. They’ve never touched this before and other than a random “I should move that” thought, I’d forgotten it was there. Parenting fail.

Thankfully, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers work well and thankfully, we keep a supply on hand. While my dear hubby was scrubbing the walls, I took the future tattoo artists down for breakfast. Their little heads were hanging and they had their oh-so-contrite faces on, so I decided to forego the cold cereal and make them bacon and eggs. I sent them off to the living room to play with some of their new toys while I whipped up the most important meal of the day. Another parenting fail. I blame the cold medicine.

When I went to round them up to eat, I found the box of tissues that had been keeping me company over the holidays – empty. My living room was decorated with many, many tissues. I guess it was their day for paper products.

Obviously, the morning snooze was a really bad idea. Yes, I felt icky but hubby and I should have flipped for it or I should have realized that mom responsibility overrides the Christmas Crud. We spent our Boxing Day morning elbow deep in Magic Eraser and plungers. No harm and no permanent damage done, but this will definitely go in the archives stamped “Epic Parenting Fail.”

Does this take me out of the running for “Mom of the Year 2013”? So close!

And now for the Christmas pictures, since the rest of our holiday season was incident-free. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of any of the above-mentioned damages.

Kyle at the CACH (Children Adopted from China) Christmas Party. This was at the end of November and a nice way to kick off our holiday season (even if we were celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving).