Pbenjay's Blog

THURSDAY – A new day dawns and around here it has been dawning at about 6:30am when Francesca calls out “Mom may” “Mom may”.  There  are 3 sound machines going and  I can hear her clear as a bell. And I’m not the only one;  Finley heard her, Mommy heard her, Daddy heard her, even Pasha heard her.  You can try to ignore the sound of pleading baby for only so long, you can try to will yourself back to sleep but it doesn’t work and besides within minutes the sound of pattering feet in the hallway is evident.

Chiara has to go to an auxiliary meeting this morning at Finley’s school which means Francesca and I are on our own.  Breakfast went ok, waffles and some fruit.  Then we went upstairs so I could make beds, and get her dressed.  Well while I’m picking up and mopping up (we still can’t seem to get these floors clean) (still too many boxes around I guess), I left Frankie in the toy room.  It wasn’t long before I heard voices!  The high-pitched sound of TV kid character voices so I raced back across the hallway to see what she was doing.  And there she sat…Little Francesca in the middle of Mommy and Daddy’s king size bed and there she sat with one of their iPads and SHE had turned it on and was watching some downloaded show!!!! She’s only 27 months old!!!  Needless to say, Gigi is persona non grata because I have to take the iPad away and insist she play with her own toys.

Sometimes the attention span of a two-year old works in your favor.  She quickly dispatched herself to the toy room and began the routine of removing 80% of the toys either off the shelves or from the bins.  Oh well, at least I know where she is.

All week Chiara and I have been planning an “outing”-an adult one that is. We are supposed to meet Elaine, their real estate broker, for a glass of wine in the late afternoon today.  Chiara has arranged to have a baby sitter come over about 3pm.  She will interview her and see how she interacts with the girls and if all goes well we will go out for our drink.  What do you think happened?

Things started out sort of okay because both Finley and Francesca were out on the driveway with me, driving their various vehicles. This is always a good way to expend some energy.  Mimi came out and I went in and for awhile there was relative peace while Frankie and Mimi explored the yard.  One can never be sure what the hair trigger is but soon there was the usual “no, that’s mine”, “I want that”.  Mimi was very calm and didn’t get ruffled as the meltdown began.  When it a fever pitch, Chiara and I stepped outside and Finley was dispatched to a Time Out.  She would not calm down and was sent to sit on the lawn.  The histrionics increased several decibels when Finley determined their were bugs and they were going to get her!  They may be sisters but they are surely different. Francesca likes to go with me looking for lizards and Finley won’t go into the pool if there is a bug in it or even a flower petal.  Having somewhat the same aversion to several kinds of bugs, I interceded for her with Mommy and she was allowed to have a time out inside.   Things were not looking good for the drink….

Playtime moved upstairs and as Chiara and I continued to put things away and clean up.  Not long after, there was a lot of crying and screaming coming from Frankie’s room where both girls were in her crib and having a territorial dispute over a pink blanket. These things are hard to resolve.  I mentioned to Chiara that it was doubtful Mimi would return.  Dusk set in, Mimi made the girls supper and the idea of going out with Elaine was officially put to death.

FRIDAY – Finley left for school especially happy today since on Fridays the girls at her school can wear their jumpers.  She left for school and Frankie and i hustled to get dressed and ready to go shopping.  Today we were going to find a Bed, Bath and Beyond Or as Chiara likes to refer to it, Bed, Bath and Bend Over.  At any rate we are headed there because she needs an ironing board and believe it or not, Target and Walmart  did not have any!  Two carts and one kid going in.  We found the ironing board and checked out rugs, containers and other assorted necessities.  Frankie, although almost completely toilet-trained, wears a diaper when we go on long excursions.  Chiara noticed she was leaking and took her to the ladies room.  That worked out well except upon return she had no underwear on!  Then it’s on to Home Goods. Both Chiara and I LOVE this store!  Chiara made a very funny remark, however, it was one you don’t necessarily want your two-year old to repeat.  She said as soon as we walked in and stopped at the first beautiful display of dinnerware, “This store is like crack to me”.  Don’t you know for the next 5 minutes, Francesca kept repeating like crack, like crack.  It was hysterical and hopefully none of the other shoppers heard her!

Friday is supposed to be reward day for Finley Ray.  For every good morning she has (there are several factors) she gets a star and 5 stars gets you to Barnes and Noble to pick out a new book.  Unfortunately this morning was not terrific.  Once she was home from school, Chiara decided they could at least go to the MacDonald’s in town because they had both seen it from the car several times and growing up in the city, there were no MacDonald’s with a super playground!  

As soon as we entered we knew something was amiss because the playground was empty and the door to it was locked.  Turns out it needs some repair.  OK, Chiara will find another playground and we can go through the drive-thru and get ice cream.  She orders 2 cups of vanilla and 1 cone. When a day starts out badly, it often just keeps on compounding itself.  First Finley threw a crying, whining scene because she ONLY wanted to to this playground,  Then when she saw the cone, she wanted that instead of a cup.  Being told she wasn’t old enough for a cone didn’t help either so more whining and whimpering.  I know she can handle a cone and she knows she can because when she’s with Gigi, we always get ice cream cones!  So on this point, Chiara conceded and gave her the cone. Not a word from Francesca as she shoveled in big spoonfuls of ice cream 🙂

Finally we are at a playground which is by the shore and even though Finley’s first comment was, “There’s not very much stuff here” , the girls ran around, climbed, rocked, swung and slid for quite sometime. Fearless Frankie swung from the top of the huge slide before she slid down and almost gave me a heart attack!  Then she got onto one of those big coil rocking things, this one was a sea horse.  She was rocking like she was on a bucking bronco and soon she was tossing her head back and forth – I think she was trying to keep the hair off her face BUT by doing so I knew she was going to eventually bang her face on the sea horse’s head.  Warning her fell on deaf ears and soon she was really crying-at least she didn’t end up with  fat lip!

English: Bed Bath & Beyond (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Friday was Tom’s birthday, so we needed to get home and make cupcakes.  This was going to be a joint project with Mommy and the way the day had been going, I opted out and had some wonderful alone time with my computer.  Tomorrow my friends are coming to visit me and we are going out to lunch, I can’t wait.

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Tuesday – Or in this case waffles as that seems to be Francesca’s breakfast favorite. Well as you know, Pedro did not show up today so the only TV working is the one leaning up against the bookcases in the family room.  Of course the kids don’t mind because Bubble Guppies (Seriously?) is in full view for them. Tuesday was a day filled with empty boxes which we broke down out of deference to the recycle rules and the sun was out and it was hot!  Chiara wants Francesca to play outside but wants me to watch her.  Watching her meant actually pushing her around in her pink taxi, that’s how she refers to the  bubble- top plastic ride-around car that is powered  by her feet. No battery-operated vehicle for her.  But don’t feel sorry for Frankie because she also seems to own or have access to a pedal car in the shape of a pink vintage convertible as well as another ride around toy with her name emblazoned across the back and then there’s the Radio Flyer red wagon and Finley’s scooter! The ONLY one of these that she really operates on her own is the ride-around  toy.  Everything else was, “Push me Gigi”.  The highlight of our outside playtime was finding lizards which scoot across the sidewalk regularly and up the bushes.

Then Peter called me and asked me if I had a moment to talk; If ever there was a sentence full of foreboding, this is it for me.  On Monday morning Peter had to move the car at 7:30am and when he got to the car he noticed a dent in the front passenger side fender.  How the hell did that happen? The passenger side in on the sidewalk side!  He got into the car to move it when the street cleaner came through and it wouldn’t start. Oy! So he called Triple A and they came out and tried to start it with jumpers and even a new battery but no good. So up on a flatbed truck it was hauled away to a garage to have a new alternator installed to the tune of $800.  With the $250 deductible for the fender, Monday turned out to be a pretty pricey day!  All I can say is thank God I’m here and not there because I would be making my husband’s life a living hell at this point, screaming we should sell the car.  I’m not a New Yorker at heart when it comes to cars.  I hate what happens to the car while parked on the street.

Finley arrived home, the AT+T guy finally left and since there was still no food in this house, we made off to the grocery store. with 2 kids in tow (one of which has NOT had a nap in 4 days) and oh what a treat it was!!!! Two kids, two carts – who wants to hold this, no, who wants to hold that? Mommy has to buy two cellophane packages of brightly colored straws and two aisles later there is a downpour of straws as Frankie has managed to rip open her package. Like a rainbow waterfall the straws drop through the slots in the carriage and bounce around the floor.  If that wasn’t enough the little napless-one threw a fit as we sailed through the candy aisle1 “Down, down, down” she wailed , only to be placated with Monkey Smoothies, Dora the Explorer yogurt and a humungous box of rainbow-colored gold fish, I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Do you think Francesca is working the cause?

Check-out was as much fun as only another mother of two kids two years apart knows! There was a minor skirmish over who is helping to put the food on the counter but before it could escalate, Mommy yelled loud enough to put the fear of God in them for a couple of minutes.

Pretty NOT Practical

I was to give the girls a bath and Chiara would put them to bed. Sounds simple right? Sounds not too difficult, right? WRONG!  Finley is crying because she doesn’t want her hair washed, Francesca wants to control the water flow and I’m trying to figure out how to keep the water in the tub.  The drain has some weird  mechanism that I’ve never seen before, as its stopper. BUT that’s minor compared to actually trying to bathe them because the bathtub has been designed with one of those fixed glass panels that shield one half of the tub area, the area where the faucets and shower head are located.  It was NOT a pretty sight of me trying to lean around the glass and grab onto a soapy slippery wiggle-worm of a kid.  On top of which I was in a fairly smallish bathroom with two entrances, two step-stoos and well two of just about everything,  Finally they are out of the tub and while trying to drape Finley in a towel, Frankie takes off wet and naked running down the hallway.  You see this is really why my generation knew you should have all your kids before you’re thirty!

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