Weekend Mischief
This weekend Dan is gone to Tsoroja to get the internet installed out there. I got left with the three boys, and it has already been quite a weekend even though it is only half over.
Dan left yesterday morning at 6 am, and he woke up the boys in the process. When I went to their room to get them up, Moses was happily sitting on top of the dresser which happens to be about 6 1/2 feet tall. Jake still had a 104 fever from the night before. I carried the twins downstairs, and Moses lagged behind. Unfortunately a light socket in the hallway caught his attention, and I had to kiss the boo boo on his finger he got from being electrocuted. While I was consoling Moses, Ben climbed a bookcase and started eating a tube of diaper rash cream. And this was all before breakfast...
The day continued with much of my time taken up with Moses' potty training. We are proudly bribing him with gummy bears for number 2, and he has figured out how to control his bowels enough so that each poopy takes at least a dozen times on the toilet. I am running out of gummy bears...
In the afternoon, my teammate came over to let me know that Moses has been terrorizing everyone's yard for the past couple of days, and they just now figured out that it was him (because all the other kids were inside). See, a few days ago, we made it very clear to Moses that he was not to use the water hose, but we neglected to tell him that included everyone else's water hoses as well. He went over to our neighbor's yard, pulled down some steel rebar (don't know how he managed to lift it) and then unwound their hose, sprayed their porch down and managed to spray the curtains INSIDE their house as well. He has apparently pulled similar stunts at a couple of the other houses as well. I had a talk with him, and he learned to say "please forgive me" in English and Portuguese before dinner.
While Moses was apologizing, the twins got sent to their room for whining. When I went up to get them, one of them had pulled the door to their dresser right off it's hinges. Again, I don't know how since the door is significantly taller and heavier then either of them. Maybe it was a combined effort...
By the time bedtime rolled around, I was ready for it. Jacob, still feverish, was not convinced bedtime was what he needed, so he put up a stink for an hour and a half before he passed out. Around 3 am, he wanted to have another go-around. After a dose of Tylenol, an attempt at sleeping in my bed, and an hour of my life, he fell asleep again. But only after waking up Moses and Ben first.
This morning, the boys sweetly let me sleep in until 7:30. Not because they were sleeping though. No, they were just very quietly vandalizing their room. I walked in and found blood on the wall, dripping down the infamous dresser, all over the clothes that had been pulled out of the drawers, and in a puddle on the floor. There was broken glass from a light fixture on the floor, in each bed, in each drawer, and in Moses' hand (though he didn't seem to mind much). I ushered them downstairs and realized that now Ben needed tylenol for a fever too. After breakfast I stupidly decided that I needed to go to the bathroom. In the (literally) minute and a half I was in the bathroom, both twins climbed 2 baby gates and went up the stairs. Ben was banging away on the computer keyboard, and Jacob was dipping my card reader into the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. I still haven't stopped to find out if it is permanently water-logged.
I decided to try to entertain them, but fever plus lack of sleep made for some grumpy, uninterested kids. Not even Veggietales could interest them. So I filled the kiddie pool in the yard and brought them out to play. Now most good mothers would not let their feverish children go skinny dipping, but I figured that Dr. Grandpa said to keep the fever down by cool baths, and this was close enough. That worked pretty well until our pet deer, Bambi, decided she wanted to swim too. That terrified the twins, so we came inside.
Now they are fed and sleeping (please God, let it be a long nap!). I have learned one important thing the past day and a half: If something happens to Dan, I will be taking resumes before he is even buried. I am not cut out to be a single mother!