Things That Keep Me From Writing

So The Bandit is finally asleep.  This is an exciting thing, Dear Reader.  As much as I absolutely adore him, The Bandit is exhausting to say the least.   Between him and Idiot Dog it’s a miracle anything gets done around here.  Tonight we read chapters three and four of Charlotte’s Web and then we  both fell asleep in his toddler bed.  I’m sure that’s a comical picture: he all sprawled out in his Spider-man pjs, his backie (the special blue silky blanket that Isabella bought him when he was born) and his Super Duper Snuggle Bear (that Idiot Dog has chewed both ears and the tail off of) and me, folded in half, all in a bed with a crib mattress. 

The crib mattress reminds me of a bittersweet memory.  When both Sassy and The Bandit were babies we had a heck of a time getting them to sleep in their cribs.  More often than not, they ended up in our bed, in fact they still do.  Most mornings My Honey and I wake up with both kids, Idiot Dog and the Worlds Laziest Cat in bed with us.  Thank God it’s a king size.  Anyway, more than once I curled up in their crib with them in an effort to get them back to sleep in there.  Well, one night as I lay curled up in the crib with a sweet smelling infant and contemplating the ceiling, I got to wondering what it was like in the crib from the baby’s perspective, so I raised the sliding rail all the way up.  Now don’t you know I couldn’t get out?  Seriously, when I swung my leg over the side I couldn’t touch the floor, even with a tippy toe.  I also couldn’t find a toe hold on the outside strong enough to enable me to swing my other leg over.  So I was stuck in there.  A 35 year old woman stuck in a crib with a 3 month old, wondering how all those little kids climbed out of the stupid things.  They must be either braver or more reckless than me.  Or perhaps they didn’t know enough to protect their privates from being maimed by the crib rail.  Anyway, I had to do the whisper/yell out the door until I could attract the attention of My Honey so I could get out.  After all, I couldn’t wake the baby I’d just cuddled back to sleep.  Of course, the baby awoke when My Honey couldn’t stop laughing when he came to spring me.  Now that is humiliating.

So this evening after I awoke with a charley horse from the stupid tiny bed, I came into the kitchen and discovered that The Bandit had scrawled all over one of my rubber spatulas with a ball point pen.  Why?  Why does he feel possessed to do these things?  My Honey said because there was a pen and a spatula.  My own little Sir Edmund Hillary.  He does it because it’s there.

The Idiot Dog is another story altogether.  He has another very weird habit.  Weirder even than standing, sitting and sleeping on the coffee and kitchen tables.  I realize that this is a hard act to follow, but humor me.  He hides things in the furniture cushions.  Things like bags of cookies, his toys, stolen stuffed animals.  In the early stages of this behavior, he would walk around with this toy in his mouth, whining, trying to figure out what to do with it.  It was only a matter of time before he figured out he could shove it between the pillows.  Now I find all kinds of oddities there.  It’s very exciting – like a treasure hunt.

So between fishing out a loaf of bread from the couch and trying to get ink off a spatula, I’m not writing on my book.  But, Dear Reader, I am writing to you.