Whirlwind

Lately we've had a regular playdate each Wednesday with a friend of The Boy's whose mother is on mat leave with her second. It's a great thing, we alternate houses and the boys play together very well -- no tears at all, which was certainly not the case with the playdate we organized a month or so ago with a little girl from the daycare. We were only there an hour and a half and both the kids were in tears several times from conflicts. Why we invited her and her mother over this weekend I'll never know. Oh, right. Because we'd like our child to have a normal social life, unlike us, the hermits. 

Right. Where was I?

So today the other mother called and asked, in a rather embarrassed tone, if she could perhaps come by for a visit and then leave her 2.5 year old with me over lunch while she took the 6-monther to the doctor. He's had this nasty cold for some time, she explained, and it's just so much easier with one of them ... ? 

I of course said yes. Not only is it actually almost easier to take care of one child when he has a playmate, but let's face it: someday *I* might need emergency babysitting. 

So they came on over, and there was much excitement, and much playing and running about. And then she left, and I made lunch, and the boys were almost too excited to eat, and there was more playing and more running about and Dear Lord that other child has an even shorter attention span than mine which really is saying something since they aren't even three, either of them, which naturally makes their attention span about 0.015 seconds, and so we had trucks! and diggers! and hockey! and train set! and drawing! and more running! and then trains! and hockey! and let's play ball! And so on and so on and I cannot even begin to describe the chaos of the two children and how we made it through until she came back to fetch him.

But you know? It was kind of fun. 

One of the many things we discussed re: childrearing when she was here was her inability to get the kids to nap -- they are so excited about each other and they each want her there to nap, and so she can't lie down with one while the other is up and vice versa, so what ends up happening is that neither of them nap during the day, which makes for a very cranky two year old and a six month old who falls asleep at the drop of a hat at inopportune times, and so she is getting rather desperate ... and so I was extremely pleased to get an email from her after they arrived home to say that BOTH her boys were asleep for naps at the same time. A much needed break for her, and some happier boys later on. 

As for mine, we had our usual naptime quiet time (because we no longer nap) and at the end of an hour, when he's usually up and ready to go, he looked at me and said "Mommy, I want a nap". I can tell you that those words have almost never left his lips before. I looked at the clock and saw it was 2 and mentally calculated that if he fell asleep at two for an hour I would get to bed at approximately 3:30am* because it would take him hours to fall asleep and then I would be so frazzled I'd be awake even longer ... and so while the extra break would have been welcome, I was rather relieved when after 15 minutes of quiet lying in the dark he declared it was "wake up time" and we went out and played in the sink for an hour or so.

And now it is later, almost four o'clock, and I am hoping for an hour of quiet play before I have to get up and make dinner, because with an hour of play I could get the sock heel finished on the next socks. This weekend, I really will have to buy some mitten yarn. What will I do with my time otherwise?

Ha ha ha. 

*exaggerated for comic effect.**

** I hope.