As a kid, I played with Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids. I know nothing about cars or tractors or monster trucks. I don't really enjoy building things with Legos or zooming Hot Wheels across our wood floors. My brain does not comprehend the point of stacking things up, just to knock it down the second it is completed.
But I try. I try so hard to be the best mom to my boys. I try to build Lincoln Log cabins, and engage in exciting conversations regarding tractor parts. I share my enthusiasm when my boys bring me their latest and greatest cake creation, made with sand and the entire bottle of bubbles they just dumped out after I told them they couldn't bring a bucket of sand to the bathroom sink.
Oh, I have lost more arguments to 3 year olds in the last year than I'd like to admit. I think that is what has made this past year so darn challenging. The constant trying to get the boys to listen. To follow the rules. To be polite. To be a nice person. So much trying day after day after day.
And just when you start to think your 3 year olds are on the right track to behaving out in public, the next day they give the folks at the Target check-out lanes a little show as you try to wrangle them out from inside the ice cube freezers that they have somehow managed to get themselves into at the same time you are trying to figure out how to work the new chip reader for your credit card and pay for your groceries.
To summarize this past year, just imagine that you are hosting a birthday party that runs from the hours of 6am to 9pm. And the parents never come pick up their kids. For 365 days. That's what it's been like.
I'm learning to embrace the crazy, the mud, and the stink that being a mom to boys brings, but also welcoming the 4's with open arms.
Top 10 Phrases I Have Heard as a Mom to 3-Year Old Twin Boys:
1. Why?
2. Poopy
3. Why?
4. Pee-pee
5. Why?
6. No.
7. (silence and ignoring me when I'm talking)
8. Why?
9. No.
10. Poopy
Top 10 Phrases I Have Said as a Mom to 3-Year Old Twin Boys:
1. Where are your shoes?
2. Please stop smelling your brother's butt.
3. Please keep your hands out of your milk (juice, water, nose, ketchup, yogurt...)
4. If you had your hand down your pants, then you need to wash your hands.
5. Put your shoes on.
6. We only pee outside in our yard, not in other people's yards.
7. Please move away from your brother if you don't like him bonking in to you.
8. Can you please put your shoes on!
9. Mommy would like to go to the bathroom without you guys banging on the door!
10. Why does this bathroom always smell like pee even when I Clorox it every day?
For posts on previous birthdays, click here:
Three.
Two.
One.
