While Timothy and I were in the middle of one of our rare (hah!) arguments…brought on by the fact that I told him to do something and he refused…he yelled, “I just wanna do what I wanna do when I wanna do it!!!”

Don’t we all?

Easter

Okay. So. Yesterday was Easter. The day our Lord and Savior rose from the dead, three days after a horrible crucifixion. A day more meaningful to me spiritually than even Christmas, I think…though I guess you can’t have one without the other. But why is it that on such days, when I am determined to reflect and trying to be…you know…holy and stuff…the little foibles and antics of children that generally happen over a succession of days all happen at once?

Alexis had a new Easter dress to wear to church so I got her all dressed and was busy feeding Caleb while Chris was outside shoveling snow (thaaaaaaat’s right. Snow. Sigh.) and it got uncannily quiet. I should have known. By the time I tracked her down, she’d colored all over both arms with a Rollerball ink pen. She looked like a tattooed lady. I scrubbed her off as best I could (those pens aren’t meant to come off. They’re actually meant for grown-ups. 1,051 washable Magic Markers in this house and the kids play with my ink pen.) By the time she was clean and I picked up Caleb to go to church, his breakfast prunes had charged through him like a herd of buffalo and everything from the waist down was covered in…well…baby poop. I swore when I became a mom I wouldn’t talk about baby poop. And now I’m doing it on Easter. So I changed him. I’m pretty sure he got it on me and I went to church with baby poop on my jacket. Fortunately none of the people I shook hands with that morning read this blog.

That night after all the kids were in bed, Alexis started yelling for me. I went upstairs to hear her shout, “I need to wash my face!” and looked in her room where she had taken out every one of the wet wipes in a 100-count box, then discarded them on the floor — apparently in search of the perfect wipe with which to wash her face.

I guess if I’m going to want a moment of spiritual reflection, I’m going to have to start getting up at 4am.

I go to a Bible study on Tues mornings…which, since it’s in the morning, is mostly at-home moms and retired women. There were two older ladies walking in behind us this last week who were admiring Alexis’ little pink dress (grandma on daddy’s side) and little pink boots (grandma on mommy’s side…seriously, if it weren’t for the grandmas, the kids would all be naked) and I heard one say, “Isn’t she a little doll?” at which point Alexis hollered “I A RACECAR!!!!” and bolted for the door.

(insert 2-hour break here)

I just came back downstairs after comforting a two-year-old girl (or racecar, depending on who you ask) who was wailing and lying prostrate on the ground because her CD was skipping (yes, I let her listen to a CD to fall asleep. I know, bad practice. I also send them to bed with sippy cups of soda and fistfulls of marshmallows in case they need to snack. Don’t you judge me.) Sometimes I wish I could still emote like a two-year old. It would be inappropriate to do it as often as they do, I suppose, but there are occasions that could call for wailing and prostrating yourself and I just can’t do it. Where does that go?

So now that the kids seem to be all cured — Chris is sick. He’s been sick for an entire week and I know it’s legit because he spent the last two nights on the couch, watching the 5-hour BBC Pride & Prejudice miniseries (oh, yes, my friend…I have it on DVD) with me. He’d only do that if he were too sick to protest or too hopped up on painkillers from being sick to mind (I think it was the latter — he was oddly into the whole program and at one point yelled at Mr. Bingley’s evil sister.)

Saturday it was 70 degrees here and every single person (except Chris, suffering from his Job-like afflictions alone in a dark house) in Colorado was outside. We went to the park and I was actually afraid I couldn’t keep track of the kids, there were so many there. Sunday, we woke up to blowing snow — we ended up with about 8 inches. Ahhhh, spring.

Alexis stopped calling Timothy “Fifi” and is now calling him a very carefully enunciated “Tim-o-fee.” Sigh. Another sign that they’re growing up. I was hoping we’d call him Fifi until he was 40 (you know, while he’s living in his mother’s basement). At least she still says, “See you later, crocodile.” I took her and Timothy to the movies yesterday while it was snowing and she’s so little, she got folded up in the movie seat when she tried to sit down.