Today

I woke up grumpy. Going to bed grumpy and worn out and then being woken up by one child or the other all night long meant that I was grumpy the minute I decided to get out of bed.

Rachel met me in her doorway.

“Hold me, Mommy!” she whined.

*shudder*

I don’t know what my deal is lately, but it seems like every word she utters is unbearably whiney. And I can’t stand it. We’re working on that—both having her practice not whining and having me practice not losing my cool.

“Turn off the whine,” Andrew reminded her this afternoon.

That means she’s supposed to repeat whatever she just said in a non-whiny fashion. This time she didn’t.

“But…you can’t turn off somebody!” she said instead.

“Right, but you can turn off the whine. See? Whine, whine, whine…I’m whiny. *Beep!* Now I’m not whiny.”

“Like this?”she asked, still whiny, “*Beep!* I can’t do it! It didn’t work. Do it again, Daddy. I don’t want to do it. You do it.”

*sigh*

Another tactic I use is to tell her to say whatever it was she had to say over again, but this time with a smile on her face. Remarkably she can whine while smiling. Quite effectively, too.

She didn’t want to take a nap today and kept whining and crying in her bed so long that she started hiccupping while whining and crying. I told her if she didn’t stop the whining she was going to get in a whole heap of trouble.

“But I can’t stop! I just can’t.”

“STOP TALKING THEN!” I growled.

She stopped. And miraculously the whining stopped, too, and she fell asleep for a blissful nap.

All the whining aside, she’s still as hilarious as ever. When she got up from her nap she asked Andrew to put a show on for her so they started flipping through the DVDs, trying to decide which one she wanted to watch. Since I was due to wake up and leave for tutoring at any minute, he told her she had to choose a short show, like Dora.

“But I don’t like Dora,” she explained/whined, “It makes my tummy hurt.”

In the end she ended up choosing Dora, anyway. She loves the episode with Gooey Geyser. And, truthfully, she likes all things Dora. And it has no effect on her tummy whatsoever.

Tutoring went alright, at least the tutoring part of it. Rachel lost her socks and chased the kindergartener around the house screaming “Hey, get back here, you silly boy!” among other precious gems.

Homework time is really wearing off on her. She’ll scribble away, talking to herself, teaching herself, correcting herself:

“Let’s see. Forty-three plus nine equals…twenty-five. Now I’m going to spell my name. R. A. L. S. T. Oh, oops! I did that one backwards. I hate it when I do it backwards. It’s a hard letter for me.”

Out comes the eraser…or other side of the crayon, whichever is handiest.

She really can’t draw any numbers or letters yet, besides I and O (and 1 and 0) and the occasional C or V. Still, she likes to believe that she’s really doing homework.

Miriam hadn’t pooped all day. So while I was bouncing her on my lap she just let it go. Did you read the part about how I was bouncing her on my lap? Yeah.

Poop. Bounce. *squish*

Straight up the back. And, being the super-duper prepare-o-matic that I am I had zero extra changes of clothes for her.

So now I’m tutoring, or trying to, while my two-year-old is running around like a maniac (at least she’s running around with my mentee’s brother—that makes it a little better, right, that they’re both doing it?), bouncing a naked baby on my lap.

Miriam ended up in an old t-shirt of the girl I mentor—size 4T. She looked like she was wearing a toga.

We left without Rachel’s socks, which were no where to be found, but at least we remembered my purse (and, therefore, house key).

Rachel announced she wanted a cookie the very minute I opened the door. Also, that she would prefer said cookie while watching Gooey Geyser again.

I didn’t argue. I was tired. And I didn’t want to make dinner. So I turned on her show and handed her one of yesterday’s cookies. Later we shared and apple and had a bit of leftover soup. Oh, and a bowl of popcorn. Sometimes it’s okay to give in to their every whim, right? I mean, I made her eat an apple…and it kept me sane.

Tomorrow should be better. Both girls have been asleep since 10:30 PM. Not a stir from either of them since then (although there were several stirs from the older of the two before then). Yes, tomorrow should be better.