Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Not Sure How To Say This

Have you ever been woken up at 3am and asked to function as a normal human being? Some of you will know what I mean because you are living that life right now, with babies and feeding and diapers. But my guys are four-years old. I am out of practice.

Which is why I found myself driving to work the other morning, suddenly remembering my 3am actions of the early morning, crashing down on me in a thrust of clarity.

J woke up at 3am (precisely - I remember looking at my clock as in WHAT THE HELL DAMN TIME IS IT????!!!). He, for some reason, had turned on the bathroom light which came shining down on my face like the eyes of God. The fact that we have a night light in there to help guide small and big boys alike who need to go pee in the dark didn't help him, apparently. So I got up to make sure he was okay. He was not okay. He had gone potty, but, in the process, had ripped his pull-up. Those pull-ups are supposed to go back together with some kind of fake velcro-thing, so I worked on that for a few minutes. It would not cooperate. And J was not in agreement with my plan - to just get another freaking pull-up already so we can go back to sleep. He wanted me to fix it, and fix it now, before the screaming commenced.

Did I mention it was 3am?

So I stumbled to the kitchen, got the blue painter's tape which we keep on hand for securing down Hot Wheels tracks, and I TAPED HIS PULL-UP BACK TOGETHER.

I'm sure that any parenting book worth its salt (what does that phrase mean anyway?) would have had a thing or two to say about my actions - something along the lines of being in control of your children instead of letting the threat of their screaming manipulate you into doing their bidding, even at 3am.

But now, as the mother of TWO FOUR-YEAR-OLDS, I subscribe to a different style of parenting - the MacGyver school. Our motto: you make do - and you do it fast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The phrase "worth one's salt" began with the ancient Romans. One reference suggested that the origin of the phrase "worth one's salt" could date back to before 900 B.C. During that time, Roman soldiers were paid for work in salarium, which was an allowance for the purchase of salt. Salt was considered good for human health and was a hard to find commodity. The word soldier, in that era, literally meant 'one who is paid in salt. The 'sal' in the word salarium is Latin for pay. Over the years, the word salarium was shortened and came into the English language as salary. To say that someone is worth his or her salt, you are saying that he or she is worth the wages that he or she earns.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/330476/popular_phrases_origin_and_meaning.html

Anonymous said...

now, if you some how could have incorporated some gum, kite string and a toothpick, you could have one upped MacGyver.

KatieBarron said...

Oh, Lissa, your story just made me feel so much better about my crazy kids.

Melinda said...

LOL you poor thing. My sister came for a visit this week with my almost 4 year old twin nieces. I soooo feel yalls pain. Being a mother who only had her's one at a time. I just have to stand up and applaud mother's of mulitples who can get through a day with all kids and their wits intact.