We never should have even gotten the kids out of bed today. I love them very much, but they might very well have been happier simply languishing in their cribs, left to their own devices, passing the time with various leisures such as books, blankets, and not us.
Everything we did was an uphill battle today, it seemed like, with the kids kicking and screaming from one activity to the next. Maybe the day wasn't that bad, and it's taking on a luster of negativity as I'm distancing myself from it. What's amazing - and amazing at how awesome we are, as parents - is that it didn't dissuade us from having, in the end, a pretty good day. But the kids...wow, they were just on edge all day. I think Lily had her first time out about 5 minutes after they'd been up in the morning. Abby refused to use any words to express her needs, choosing instead to whine and cry nearly constantly.
In absolute fairness, although the kids cornered the market on unhappiness for the day, they were strangely polite all day. Through tears and yelling, we would catch the ocassional, "please" or, "more please" or even a, "sorry", which makes us feel like jerks for being annoyed at their annoyances. At least we appear to be raising them with a modicum of genteelness.
Despite their miseries, and despite Lily's insistence that she not get dressed, put on hats, put on mittens, don her coat, leave the house, allow herself to be carried, get in the car, have us singing, have us not singing, be looked at or talked to or in any way be approached or acknowledged, we trekked out to St. Paul and visited the Como Conservatory. I love the conservatory. Despite the fact that we now have a MN zoo pass and will use it generously, I just can't get over how cool it is at Como, where mice run all over the place, the ant colony is awesome, the python is enormous, and even the sloth moves pretty quick.
I would certainly recommend going to the Como Conservatory before going to Hockey Giant.
On the way home around 12:20, Abby started to nod off. We were so close to home, so we screamed at her for the last mile and brought her in for some lunch and nap. We brought her up at 1pm...she didn't go down until 2:30. She's getting to be a much more finickey napper these days.
While she was up there, though, she provided an amusing moment. Jen checked the blog from yesterday, and was playing the video at what we both thought was a normal, reasonable level. It should be noted that we have a noise machine in the kids' room. She got to the part in the video where Lily counts from one to nine, and right then, clear as a bell, we heard Abby say, "Ten!" over the monitor. I cannot believe that she heard the video from all the way downstairs on Jen's crappy laptop speakers...but then, she said it, it did happen. Crazy.
Day two thousand and a jillion.
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