Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Peanuts and Popcorn

January 13, 2007

Some days with twins, especially twins who are 3 ½ years old are more difficult that others. All days are an adventure.
On Saturday, January 13th Eric had to be out of the house by 6:00 a.m. to drive down to Indianapolis for some soccer clinic type thingy. Papa Pete had a Chorus thingy in Lansing, MI so was gone all day. I had made plans earlier in the week to spend sometime with Julia and Avery during the day and the night before had confirmed going over to their house for dinner and also watching Julia and Avery for an hour ½ at lunchtime while their parents ran some errands.

Saturday morning found me NOT in the mood to get out of bed – mostly because of what felt like a sinus infection under my right eye. When I did finally emerge from my bedroom I found my two adorable children practically naked (they had on underwear but had removed their pajamas) in a large box of packing peanuts. They told me they were swimming in their pool. It was too precious – I took a picture.

The reason we were up to our necks in packing peanuts was because the gifts from our Albuquerque Christmas had arrived the before. In fact, Eric and the kids had emptied the beanbag chairs, washed the fabric of the bags and refilled the beanbag chairs with peanuts from the mailing. What I know now, but didn’t then, is that these particular bean bag chairs have two zippers, one easy and one more difficult to open. Upon refilling only the easy zipper had been re-zipped.

At this point I called Julia and Avery’s parents to let them know that they might as well bring the kids over to our house, no worse damage could really be done and for some reason packing peanuts and a box is about the MOST FACINATING THING EVER in the mind of a 3 year old. It would prove to be equally fascinating to a 2 year old and a 5 year old.

I got a little perturbed when, while I was trying to clean up the main room where most of the mess occurred, the four of them took it upon themselves to distribute the mess further… into the kids’ bedroom.

All in all, however, it is hard to argue with something that keeps toddlers so ultimately enthralled for, really, all day long. At one point I decided that really, the only way to clean up the mess was to bring in the leaf blower, which has a vacuum component. And, actually, that’s worked well.

I am certain we will be finding bits of Styrofoam all around the house for YEARS to come. In the end, it’s a great story… one that I will inflict upon them when they have 3 year olds of their own… and in the VERY end, they are just too cute to be upset with for very long… Here is an on-line photo album of the whole event: http://picasaweb.google.com/RikkrP/PeanutsPopcorn

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