Confessions of an Ex-Scrapbooker #22

Today started out like any Friday...alarm buzzing at 4:55 am, out the door by 5:40 am, morning jog, one kid out the door, two kids out the door, three kids out the door.....and then....two more left at home. Yes, the twins (20 months old) fast asleep in their beds....or so I thought.

The monitor had been turned off (what the heck?) and so I didn't hear anything, right? It's 8:30 am! They're still sleeping. Unusual? Yes. Usually they're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 7:00 am...but it's Friday. We had a long week...got to bed late every night, so I figured a few extra hours of sleep was probably overdue. Humm.....

For those of you who have multiples you'll know my pain...you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. There's this wicked adorable laugh twins have when they're doing something bad...and then there's this demonic wicked laugh when they're doing something really, really bad. I decided to turn the monitor back on while I was cleaning up the disaster in the kitchen when I heard it. Yes, the demonic-wicked-twin laugh.

The second I heard "it" I bolted up the stairs. I knew there was trouble, but had no idea the extent of it. I assumed it was the old "let's dump our last 1/2 ounce of milk out on the carpet" or throw the blankets over the edge of the crib....huh-uh. No. That's not what was happening at all. It was better than that. They were having a finger-painting party. FYI: We don't have finger paints in our house. Yep, you got it! There was a party going on and mommy wasn't invited. It was quite the smelly party too....OH MY GOSH!!!!!! EVERYWHERE! Hair, toes, walls, more hair, face, carpet, beds, pillows, ears.....EVERYWHERE!

Try getting two poo-covered twins out of the room and into a bath and not leaving one unsupervised while trying to wrangle the other one. So the mess of course trailed down the hall, down the stairs, to the big bathtub where some serious soaking could go on. The drama slowed down a bit as they frolicked in the bath and I re-ran bath water about 3 times....sorry, no saving water today in this house! They were clean after an hour or so, dressed and off to play. However, my work was not done....there's now laundry that needs to be done...quickly.

So off I go to get the mess upstairs and begin the cleanup process...I honestly wanted to call John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson to see if they could do one of those crazy Pulp Fiction cleanups they did in their movie....wouldn't that be awesome?!! Anyway, I proceeded to sanitize and decontaminate the area. I rolled out the yellow caution tape to spare any one the pain of what had happened. I took a load of laundry down the stairs and to my surprise....no, not to my surprise there were NO twins. WHAT?? Where did they go???

And then I heard it again....the demonic-wicked-twin laugh. With a little teamwork they realized they could stand on their little push cars, open the bathroom door, go in and wreak havoc on another unsuspecting room of the house. I can't be certain the toilet was flushed...we have 7 people in this house. But what I can be certain of is they were wet. The toilet brush was out, magazines were in the toilet, the TP was all over the floor and wet, and they were having fun! Fun! They heard me coming and bolted out the door with a demoniacal laugh that would send chills up your spine. I proceeded to chase them back into the other bathroom so we could bathe once again.

After this entire drama was over....they were actually tired. Hum...go figure. They'd been up for who knows how long finger painting and had exhausted themselves...or so I thought. I put them in their new clean beds and decided I needed a shower. It's only been 3 days so I figured it was my turn. I waited until the monitor went silent and I could hear the steady breathing of the two angels....and I ran to the shower.

So I'm sitting here now, in my towel, hair not washed, slightly damp recording this story....why? Because somehow they managed to get out of their beds and paid me a visit while I was in my "Calgon" moment. They had a box of crackers and an apple as they greeted me at my shower door. All smiles of course because once again, they had won. I had hoped they would sit by the door and eat the little treasures they had found....but within seconds they were up and running out the door...laughing.

You may be asking why this is this post is under "Confessions of an Ex-Scrapbooker". In my old life I would have maybe thought to grab the camera and get one or two blurred pictures...and then hope to scrap them in their baby books. But not today. Today I realized that it's stories like this that need to be recorded, in my version, so that on their wedding days I can read out loud to the 100's of guests that fill the reception hall about how wonderful and amazing they were. They can read about their fun little mishaps and adventures as twins. They'll more fully understand the paybacks of parenting when they're parents themselves. But most importantly, this moment will now be capture forever, in words. I can sit on my porch in 50 years with my husband and grandkids and great-grandkids and read to them about what life was like with twins 2008.