Two is such a lovely number. And such a fantastic age for a little boy who has his whole life in front of him.
The brilliant thing about the second time around is that you can re-live those sweet little moments all over again.
Our little baby is growing up. He is starting to string words together. He is showing his independence!
My heart melts when I walk in the room and he shouts ‘space, space’ forcing all three children to shuffle down and make room for me on the couch. How can I bottle up these sweet little moments cause in a few more years they will be filling the couch so I can’t sit down.

As I was spending my Sunday morning recovering from a surgery and several glasses of wine the night before, I did what most mother’s in this state would do and persuaded my five year old to play Mario Kart. I am sure that Gina Ford and other experts on the art of parenting would be in total agreement with me here….

He switches on the TV, controller in hand and nothing happens. After some grumbling about losing Wii games and taking care of our things I insert a new disc into the Wii and try to persuade him that he really preferred to dance.

The disc won’t go in. Hmmmm….unplugging things usually fixes them right up.

As I pull at the device to uplug the cords I hear a lovely jingling inside.

Toddler man has decided to stick his spare change in the opening. Someone told him that throwing money at it fixes anything!

T

uesday evening Darragh & I were nestled on the couch catching up on rubbish TV when we heard some coughing from upstairs. This was followed by a moment of silence, then a wail. Darragh rushed upstairs to find our poor little Ava drenched and sitting in a smelly puddle of vomit.

As Darragh peeled her jammies off and wiped down her exposed body parts, I had the lucky job of cleaning up her bedclothes. I gathered her blankets and stuffed animals then carefully pulled her sheets off the bed. I juggled the sheet to get it into the bathroom without spilling. Once in the bathroom, I dumped the puke in the toilet and washed the sheet in the tub. This is where I am not proud to have such a good shnozer! The smell was overwhelming!! It brought me back to a childhood memory of my Mom making these horrendous gagging noises when she cleaned up our puke. The sound of her gagging was almost worse than the original puke!

Ava stayed in our bed, waking up every hour to throw up all over all of us. She would then roll back over and slump into an exhausted slumber.

About 3:00am, after I was awoken by a vomiting session, I went to check on Jake (who was sound alseep). Since I was up, I went into the office to waste some time on the computer. I’d just sat down when I heard more coughing. Poor little Ava, I thought, as I walked back to our bedroom. As I passed the baba’s room, I saw Jake sitting up in his bed. It was Jake! He had just vomited his huge evening snack all over himself and his bed. Once again, we were peeling off clothes and rinsing out bedclothes.

I put Jake in the bed next to Ava, who immediately started rubbing his back. She knew exactly how he felt!

Thankfully, things did improve as the morning wore on.

All is now well in our house, although Jake’s little bear had to spend a night outside on his own after a quick trip through the washing machine:

Yesterday was a lovely, sunny day in the metropolis of St. Albans. The little ones were home sick due to a second night of projectile vomiting from our little princess. After breakfast, 10 espisodes of  Little Einsteins, taking Ava’s baby for a walk, building with our blocks, a couple snacks, a jaunt in the back garden, reading books upstairs, lunch, a nice long nap, coloring, riding on the trike, emptying the contents of our school bags and Mummy’s handbag onto the floor, putting our coats and shoes on 13 times, playing with Rocket and the Little Einsteins characters, playing with the house, Noah’s arc and several toys that make lots of noises by pressing a multitude of buttons……we ran out of things to do!

It was a gorgeous day and a perfect opportunity to practice our walking skills!
With our shoes, coats and hats firmly in place again – off we went.

The corner shop was our destination for our escapade as we needed a few items to keep us going. Out the door we went. First Jake holding one hand of mine and clinging to the side of the door for dear life. He plops his feet onto the ground outside. Then Ava, who was more apprehensive and preferred to be lifted out the door. Now outside the door, I had one on either side of me and we were off down the sidewalk.
We toddled to the edge of the road where they both clung onto my hand for dear life as the dropped one foot then the other over the big curb and down onto the road. Over the road we went. Up the curb and onto the other side. We made it about 3/4 of the way and Jake’s arms went up begging to be carried. I put Jake on my right hip and held onto Ava’s little hand with my left hand. About 20 more steps and Ava thrusts the arms up to be lifted. Jake goes down. Ava comes up. Another 20 steps and we were in the corner shop. Whew!

Inside the shop I grab a loaf of bread and hand it to Jake to carry. Fight ensues over who holds the bread. Jake wins and has a very firm grip on our now mashed bread. I grab tea lights and hand them to Ava. Another dispute over who holds the tealights. I grab a few more items and the process continues. At last we all have 2 items in our hands and we take off for the register to pay. Half way there I turn around to see 2 smiling toddlers proudly walking along and their prized posessions dropped all over the floor behind them. I go back and pickup the mashed bread, tealights, etc. We pay and get out the door.

The next 30 minutes follows this pattern:
– Jake and Ava are each holding my hand and walking happily
– Ava stops to pick at the mold in between the bricks in the sidewalk
– I stoop down to have a look with Ava and to encourage her to keep walking
– While we are looking at mold, Jake sees an interesting car that needs investigation and takes off
– As Ava is still engrossed in mold, I chase after Jake
– He starts banging on the car mirror which prompts me to pick him up
– A squabble ensues as the car mirror is much more interesting than walking home
– Ava loses interest in the mold and runs in the opposite direction of us towards someone’s front door
– With Jake in my arms, we go after Ava
– I put down Jake and grab Ava as she is going straight for a snail in the neighbors garden
– Jake is straight back to the car
– Ava is now going bananas as she does not understand why we cannot play with the snail she has newly befriended.

Essentially this up/down and toddling in opposite directions  continues until we make it to the front door. After trying desperately to escape, I get them both inside and shut the door. There were lingering tears but thankfully we did all survive and I am fortunate to be able to write this today!

Reliving this episode reaffirms my plot to convince hubby that reigns are not just for dogs!