The following is from an email I received from a friend who lives near us - her kids are 5 and 2 (girl is older), and are darling! But, as with all kids that age, they are prime material for some gooood stories.
Ask Jmk - while reading this, I got to laughing so hard I couldn't see the screen for the tears. This is exactly what she wrote, with only her kids' names reduced to single letters for privacy. Parents - enjoy!!! Thanks Patty!
While I’ve got a minute, I’ll share last night’s experience with someone who can truly feel for me. Speaking of THOSE days. Long ago, I had promised a neighbor that I would come to her Southern Living at Home party if she had one, because she said nobody would come. So, Rodney was stuck in San Antonio underneath that swirling red and orange blob on the radar screen until extremely late last night. I had no option but to pack up J in his PJs and G and drag them over there at the very beginning of the party time. I warned the woman we were coming! So, we get there and I demand that the party woman go back out to her car and get me one of the catalogues, immediately, before J tears down the non-babyproof house. I don’t have the time to listen to the chit chat and eat delicate treats that no kid would touch with a ten foot pole. Immediately J sees the main staircase and tears off up to the top (because he practiced on stairs at our beach house last week). I’m chasing him up them and G decides to follow because she doesn’t want to be left alone with a bunch of strange women oohing and ahing over her. She only TOUCHES the railing and the decorative newel post thing crashes off onto the ground. It wasn’t ATTACHED! It was fine and they acknowledge it’s been that way for a long time, don’t worry. She recovers from that mortification and I try to find some fruit J might at least stare at for a few seconds. But, no, he follows the neighbor woman up a different set of steps that goes to a “party room” over her garage. Her husband somehow managed to finagle a man cave complete with a fully functional margarita mixing machine that runs non-stop, a pool table, a stage with instruments, a flat screen TV, and weird blue lights that makes the man cave appear foggy. I hear J screeching in overflowing 2 year old joy and ecstasy over this amazing place to hang out. I have to take off up THAT staircase to find him and drag him down where he finds the neighbor’s delicate little toy poodle who apparently dislikes small wiggly boys and anyone who touches her food - both of which J qualifies for. I beg 3 different women to help me sit on J so I can just flip through the magazine in a blur and find something/anything to buy and get out of there. Before I can even open the pen top, J’s back up the stairs and trying to mix his own margarita. I bring him down, I write my name and part of the address on the form. G comes tearing into the room to tell me ………FLOP FLOP CRASH FLIP FLAIL FLOPPITY FLIP … grapes and cookies fly across the room and I manage to catch her before she actually hits the floor. She drags her feet and caught her flip flop on a crack between the tile and wood flooring and fell across about 5 feet of space without actually landing on anything. She was so embarrassed that she began to cry. I calm her down we all clean up grapes and I run back upstairs where J’s playing pool and trying to learn how to play the guitar. Down we go where the dog growls at us. I beg again for my nearest neighbor to watch him so I can fill in some more blanks and see J’s pajama clad body tear past the doorway heading back to the stairs. I ignore him and finish the form. The neighbor’s husband has arrived and went to defend his man cave and J runs back when faced with a male stranger. The woman figures out my total $$ while J runs laps around the kitchen island. I write out a check toss back a margarita in two gulps and head for the door all before any of the other guests even nibble their food.
I don’t know how many times I went upstairs – completely lost count. At least nobody broke anything (that wasn’t already broken – the post thing). It was full blast boy energy unleashed upon the entire house from one corner to the other, attic to mudroom. I hope I didn’t buy the most expensive thing in the book – didn’t have time to judge.
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