rough day

the kids slept until around 7:30am today and i was very thankful because i am struggling with a head cold. i think that it is from stress and a general lack of sleep. they slept in because they were up late enough playing in their room to end up being separated for the night. what was the last straw? madelyn came out to say that her eye was burning. she was making up some complaint about her eye the night before because she had bumped it so i didn't pay too much attention to it - until i smelled her. what had she gotten in her eye? bug repellent! it was accidentally put in their toiletry bag that was on top of the tallest dresser.

so i am forcing her head down in the sink and trying to hold her eye open for rinsing while mason is climbing up on the stool to see what is going on. the bottle said to hold the eye open and rinse for 15 to 20 minutes which seemed like a totally unreasonable request. matt called poison control too who also suggested the unreasonable time frame. while we were rinsing madelyn's eye, first in the sink and then in the bathtub, she was screaming like she was being tortured and we only made it through about five minutes. since her eye wasn't red and she said that she sprayed it on the outside corner of her eye, we decided that she (and we) had had enough and she could go to bed. mason had already been put in his toddler bed in an attempt to just get him out of the way and he was asleep.

nobody worry - she is fine. this was a minor occurrence. i almost didn't put it in the blog because the grandparents get so worried, but i decided that i wanted to look back on it and laugh some day. no need to mention or ask about her eye. it is fine. really.

so this morning i decided that we would go to the zoo because it was going to be a nice day and it is going to be cold and rainy on saturday. we actually had a pretty nice time at the zoo and i let mason walk through most of the exhibits. mason did a great job of listening for the first hour but the rest of our time was a little rough. we got this cute picture of the kids together at madelyn's request. i think she was inspired by the brothers sharing the seat next to her. mason was too into kicking his feet to look at the camera.

mason really liked the gorillas and the sharks. he was hesitant to get too close to the gorillas at first. i don't think he realized that there was glass separating us from them. it was sort of like the hog video from last week.

actually, mason's favorite thing at the zoo wasn't an animal. it was the enormous crane that they were using to replace what looked like an air conditioning unit on top of one of the buildings. i had a tough time, physically, today. i even had to hurry us out of a few exhibits because the warmth and the smells were making me feel nauseous and light-headed. i just wasn't feeling well all over so we loaded up a little earlier than normal to head home for lunch and work.

mason wasn't interested in a nap after lunch. he did dose in the car on the way home and i guess that was it. i was really hoping that he would nap so that i could have a little bit of a break. since he wouldn't sleep i let him try using play-doh with madelyn for the first time. of course he loved it! he liked that he could 'stamp' shapes into it with the various tools we keep for playing with the play-doh. once he started trying to eat it he and i went back downstairs to work and left madelyn to her creations.

she made a huge mess but she was content, helped clean it up, and was apologetic for the mess. on a day like today i considered that a 'win'. as i was on the phone finishing up my work day, madelyn called down that she had peed in her pants. oh geez! i excused myself from my call, told her to take care of her dirty underwear (she has known what to do by herself since the day she was potty trained), to put on clean underwear, and got back to my call. once i was done with my call i went upstairs to discover the damage. i guess she couldn't get out of her bed where she and mason were playing because she had pulled the sheets and blanket off the bed and started her pee trail there. oh no!

and then daddy called to see if he could go to the driving range after work. i didn't think that today was a great time to do that and he agreed to come home quickly. the kids and i were waiting outside when he pulled up. i just couldn't have any more crying and mess in the house. instead madelyn did her crying in the front yard. i am happy to say that things improved after bath time.

we tried putting the kids down separately tonight. mason down and asleep before madelyn got into her bed. i just read her books in our bed until i thought mason was asleep. much more effective. we will get this figured out eventually. here's to a better tomorrow! matt is golfing in the morning and hopefully the weather will clear up for the afternoon so that we can check out the apple fest at the nature center down the road.

now it is bedtime for mommy and her aching body. love.