oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy.

What a weekend. Let’s do it in list form, shall we?

Saturday

• 6:45am woke to the sounds of ethan and jocelyn frolicing on the main level. Could not go back to sleep.
• 7:15am ethan & jocelyn walked into the bedroom while i was laying there reading my book. managed to sneak it under the covers and pretend to be asleep and they went back to the play room. SHEW.
• 7:45am finally got up and, you know, parented my children.
• 8:30 woke up james.
• 9:45am jocelyn soccer game in the FREEZING FREEZING COLD EARLY MORNING COLDNESS.
• 1pm ethan soccer game which jocelyn and I skipped and james took him to because THE COLD ALREADY IT FREEZES.
• 1pm amy costco trip with jocelyn
• 3pm amy ikea trip with jocelyn and ethan. (did you see that? I went with the kids A-LONE. NO BACK UP. THIS IS HUGE.)
  managed to get everything PURCHASED and put into the car before the pager buzzed to get teh kids out of smaland. (oh how they love smaland.)

  For the record, we went last weekend too, except that was with james.

• 4pm had ikea ice cream (the main reason the kids love to go to ikea. the ICE CREAM payoff at the end.)
• 8pm kids in bed.
• 8:15pm Jocelyn wandered down the stairs in search of mommy and daddy in order to inform them that she is thirsty.
• 8:17pm Jocelyn pottied (again) and drinked (again) put back into bed, where she thankfully stayed the remainder of the night.

Sunday

• 6:45am woke to the sounds of ethan and jocelyn frolicing on the main level. drowsed until…
• 7:30 .. somebody hit somebody else because somebody took toy a away from somebody else and everyone involved came to bedroom to tattle.
• 7:32 told everyone that i didn’t want to hear it, they need to work it out, and hey, hop up here you, you look chilly!
  7:33 cold feet on warm skin is better than any coffee. sleep gone baby gone.
• 7:45 BED PARTY!
• 9:30am amy put together several trofast toy storage units. Ethan helps and accidently breaks a cross piece. wood glue and clamps come to the rescue. mommy does not raise her voice even once! PARENTING MOTHER OF THE YEAR award somehow does NOT magically fly through the window in recognition of this feat. Go figure!
• 11am carrying of tall trofast units downstairs, general running around in the basement by small people, scrubbing of paint spots on floor by grown ups, entirely too much playing with the glass doors on the new tv console for grownups to stomach before finally abandoning the basement for the upstairs again.
• 12pm lunch and then an attempt at quiet time. grownups discuss the need for another ikea trip.
• 1pm lots of cleaning ensues, with promises of a ikea trip as the carrot at the end of a stick
• 3pm amy, jocelyn and ethan off to ikea! (ALONE! AGAIN! WILL THE SAME LUCK STRIKE TWICE? OR WILL OUR CONTESTANT BE RIGHT IN THE CHECK OUT LINE WHEN THE PAGER BUZZES? TUNE IN BELOW TO FIND OUT!)
• 3:30pm amy checks her children into smaland, and the timer is set. She has 30 minutes to get all her stuff before she is required to get her children again! Can she do it!
• 4:00 BZZZZT! She can’t. She is still picking out bins when the pager buzzes. She is in the warehouse, finishes picking her bins, stashes the cart near the checkout lines, and dashes to retrieve said children.
• 4:10 amy is in the checkout line, PUTTING HER ITEMS ON THE BELT.. when she notices that a piece is missing from one of the kitchen items she wants to buy. Kitchen item. Kitchen department. one floor up and in the MIDDLE of the floor. SHE WAS ALMOST HOME FREE, but now she must RETURN, with TWO KIDS IN TOW, to get the item with all pieces intact.
• 4:25 one would think that by now she’d have that item and be back in the checkout line, but no. she’s not.
• 4:35 letting the kids play in the kids section before heading downstairs.
• 4:45 nope not yet. She has however, started using that hissing mom voice every time a kid clings to the side of the cart and then jumps off, which sends the cart careening to the side into other shoppers.
• 4:55 HAHA – not even close. Every “kid-house” in ikea must be played in, you see.
• 5:05 there are approximately 247 “kid houses” on teh bottom level, even taking the short-cuts (and i know them all, baby).
• 5:15 we’re in the rugs. the end is in site, but mommy is about to lose it and her feet are killing her and she sits both kids on the rugs to give them the rules that will ensure mommy’s brain doesn’t ooze out of her right ear (probably due to the fact that she is shoving something sharp in the left ear). #1: no jumping on the cart. #2: no jumping off the cart. #3 no running ahead. #4 no lagging behind, and #5 no, we can’t buy that. Any infractions will be counted, and if mommy gets to 3, then no ice cream.
• 5:25: finally in the check out line. So many bins to dig through. Gates to swing on. And of course, there’s the cart to jump on and off of. Mommy curses the designers of those damn ikea carts where the back wheels which swivel in all directions instead of staying forward like any normal cart for fuck’s sake
• 5:35 check out completed, but now no one is allowed to even TOUCH THE CART OR AS GOD IS MY WITNESS WILL BE NO ICE CREAM. EVER. IN THE WHOLE WORLD.
• 5:40 nearby man nearly jumps out of his skin from the mommy bark of the above order at both children.
• 5:45 ice cream obtained.
• 6:00 safely in the car. oh my lord the relief. SWEET RELIEF. MOMMY IS NO LONGER IN IKEA WITH THOSE DAMN CARTS AND 2 SMALL CHILDREN THANK GOD!
• 6:30 home sweet home! and look, james has laundered and put away every single dirty item in the house. amy knew there was a reason she married him.

The rest of the evening is a blur, but you get the jist. Will I attempt Ikea alone in the future? Probably. That smaland russian pager roulette is just to scary good to not try again. I will probably wear better shoes though.

The basement is shaping up nicely. Hopefully if i get the camera on a tripod the lack of good lighting will be ok and I’ll have some pictures to show. All major pieces have been purchased, and now I’ll be getting into the smaller details. The only problem is now I have no budget left for any smaller details 🙂 Ah well.

Hope you all had a nice weekend!