Day 1

Justin left for his North American tour yesterday morning. Poor Gavin was so brokenhearted about his daddy going on a plane without him that he cried all the way from Dulles airport to the Target in Chantilly (a good 8 miles). Thankfully he cheered up when I told him we were going to buy Cooper a new cup (I totally forgot to bring one even though I was planning on hitting IHOP on the way home).

Too bad I was stupid and bought a straw-cup.

In my defense, Cooper has successfully drank out of a regular straw cup a few times, but with being shorthanded at the restaurant, I didn’t have any way of holding the cup & straw for him if I wanted to actually eat, too. And we already have 553,729 non-straw sippy cups.

So we bought a Nuby straw cup and I would hold the cup down for him to drink…that kid lost his friggin’ mind, howling in anger at me. Not wanting to really irritate the other patrons, I finally gave up fighting with him. But not before an older lady sitting at the next booth shot me several dirty looks. She stopped when I shot her one back and made some loud general remark about toddlers testing their un-caffeinated mothers. (Other patrons were very nice and gave me knowing and/or sympathetic looks…to all of you…big hugs and thank-yous for your non-judging of a woman desperate for some IHOP.)

The rest of the day went remarkably well. I even babysat Peyton so that Eric and Andrea could go to the Caps game with two of Eric’s brothers who drove down for the weekend.

Well, it went well until Gavin, in his earnest to show Peyton every last toy we own to distract him from him asking for his parents or Justin, showed Peyton, a huge Elmo fan, one of our several Elmos. Since I was changing Cooper’s diaper I wasn’t initially paying any attention until I realized the only Elmo we had upstairs was our T.M.X. Elmo. Before I could stop him, Gavin started tickling Elmo and scared the bejezus out of poor Peyton. That poor baby came tearing into Cooper’s room where I was up to my elbows in A&D Ointment. He was crying hysterically “Mama! Daddy!” over and over. Gavin came running in behind Peyton, his eyes big and scared. Cooper, wearing nothing but a shirt, socks and the aforementioned ointment, started to get panicky and wiggly. As I knelt to console Peyton, keeping my ointment hand on Cooper, Gavin started to cry because he felt bad for scaring Peyton and I think was a little afraid he might get in trouble. At that point, I was starting to wonder what I got myself into.

I finally got Cooper dressed, talked Peyton down from his personal TMX ledge, and got Gavin under enough control to have him hide that particular Elmo in my room so that we didn’t scare Peyton again when we walked past it to get downstairs.

The rest of the night was fairly without incident. Both little guys had meltdowns once they realized I was making food because it wasn’t in their mouths right then. But otherwise thankfully quiet. We watched some non-tickling Elmo, had some dinner, and I got all three in bed. I talked to Justin, who called while I was putting the kids down, and made sure he made it into San Francisco safely, then I watched the last hour of the hockey game.

Today so far has gone pretty smoothly, too. We ran out to the grocery store and had some playtime. I’m really hoping that these good days and behaviors continue once I go back to work tomorrow.