Muffin (holding his baby sister):
“Madam Poopsalot will be my friend when she grows up.”

Madam Poopsalot:
“Tooooooooooot!”

Muffin (very serious):
“That’s okay. She can poop on me.”

Now that is dedication and enlightenment! I am so proud.

Then I hold my breath and wait for the answer.

Thankfully, so far each time he responds with, “No, I like my crib”. There is in fact a God! We just came back from a 10 day trip to Canada and since Muffin is too big for a pack-n-play, we were forced to go the big boy bed route on the trip.

For the first time ever.

On our “vacation”.

Stupid? Kinda.

The first night we were staying with my friends in Vancouver, where we were sleeping in the same room as Muffin. OMG – nothing to contain him and sleeping in the same room? I knew that was to be a recipe for disaster. The first night went something like this:

8:00pm – Put Muffin and Madam Poopsalot to bed.
8:02pm – Muffin gets up out of his AWESOME Taun Taun sleeping bag and comes upstairs where Mommy, Daddy & friends are trying to eat a kidless dinner.
8:45pm – after taking Muffin back to bed and lying with him a while I go back upstairs to eat my cold dinner and drink my warm wine
8:50pm – we hear strange noises coming from muffin’s room. I go to investigate and find all (and I mean ALL) of our hosts children’s toys scattered on the floor with Muffin in the eye of the tornado, playing happily.

I marched Muffin back to bed and the dance continued for hours. We finally gave up and decided to go to bed ourselves. Muffin was, of course, delighted and still awake and wanting to play. The rest of the night was even more painful. His Taun Taun sleeping bag was beside our blow up mattress on the floor. I closed my eyes and tried not to engage him but he’d come up and try to pry my eyelids open while whispering (within an inch of my face), “Mommy, are you awake? Mommy, are you sleeping? Mommy, let’s play”. Aggravatingly painful – I was so tired and just wanted to sleep!

That night I got about 3 hours of sleep and so did Muffin. As you can imagine we were both very pleasant the next day. Actually, he was fine. Energizer Bunny – remember? I, on the other hand…

Mercifully, that was only for two nights. Then off to my mom’s house where we had a different room for each child and ourselves. This went much better. Though we still had some issues. With no toys in his bedroom at Grandma’s, Muffin now had to be creative.

He dug deep.

About 30 mins after we put him to bed, he comes out of his room and says he’s not tired. Admittedly, in Vancouver in the summertime it is light out until about 10pm, which Muffin is not used to. So, as I gently turn him around to walk him back to bed I see what has been keeping him busy for the past 30 mins. He’s got his blanky and baby bear and puppy and flatopotamus stuffed into his pajama bottoms. Although, not conducive to our tactical plan to get him to sleep, we had to allow ourselves a good laugh and stop for a photo on the way back to bed.

Is your to-do list a bloated scary monster? Mine is. Before I had children, I used to pride myself on how very efficient I was. Now, with two small children I feel like I am constantly crazy busy, yet never get anything done! How is this possible?! Small children require a lot of hands-on, interactive parenting, and while it’s a short-lived job, it leaves little time to accomplish all your tasks. The cherry on top is that you are utterly exhausted come bedtime and yet there is still a mountain of things undone on that annoying to-do list. Parents are multitasking fiends and are indeed a special species all of their own. Homo Parenteous Insaneous Multitaskus.

Enter OneThingToday. It’s an awesome to-do app for the iPhone and the Mac. It helps you to focus on one single goal each day, avoiding the distraction of all your other pending tasks or ongoing projects. You simply assign a single task or project to each day and Git ‘er Done! OneThingToday is designed for people who only have time to tackle one major task each day, and who find themselves overwhelmed by all their pending tasks in their limited time. It helps you prioritize the one thing that is most important for you to complete each day. It is genius in it’s simplicity. As one user puts it, “…you will be amazed at how good you feel as you start to whittle away at what was previously an overwhelming to-do list.”

It is just what I needed! Today, for instance, while wading neck-deep in all of my regular daily tasks, I was finally able to get rid of the bags of clothing I’ve been meaning to take to Goodwill (for the past 2 months) because it was my OneThingToday task. Hooray!

OneThingToday is not only good for Insaneous Multitaskeous, it’s also good for iPhoneus Irritateus, the executive mom or dad. The iPhone app is available at the iPhone app store and the Mac version is available from Line Thirteen.

Full disclosure: OneThingToday is brought to you from your friendly neighborhood biophysicist. My brilliant husband, Dr. McCutiePants, actually developed this software. He’s got a passion for programming. I’d like to think he did it all for me because he loves me so much, but I’m guessing he did it to finally get me to remove all those bags of Goodwill donations from our garage!

WIN IT!

To Enter: Simply leave a comment here telling me what your OneThingToday task would be for the day. Also please specify which app you would like to win – the iPhone app or the Mac version. Winner will be selected at random.

For extra entries:

• If you ‘Like’ Absolutely Delightful on Facebook, you get another extra entry.
• Blog about this giveaway with a link back to me.
• Follow me @AbsDelightful on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway.

Closes July 21, 2010 at 5pm PST

Last night the treat of choice was popcorn. This was a very, very bad idea. About a minute after the popcorn came out of the microwave, we started to hear muffin saying something, then saying loudly something, and then finally yelling something.

It’s at this point in the story that you may notice I said after the kids go to bed and not after the kids fall asleep.

Daddy are you making popcorn?
Daddy I smell popcorn
DADDY ARE YOU MAKING POPCORN?
DADDY ARE YOU MAKING POPCORN?
I SMELL POPCORN

Oops.

Popcorn, as you probably know, has a fairly powerful and distinctive smell. Our home, as you may not know, has a strange and distinctive geometry that funnels smells right upstairs directly into Muffin’s room. Muffin, as you probably do not know, has an unusually keen sense of smell.

Luckily, when I went upstairs to talk to him, he was easily convinced that it was probably our neighbors making popcorn outside. Silly, silly boy.

A few weeks ago, I had a couple of fillings replaced at the dentist and I actually enjoyed it! Being able to lie down in the middle of the day and close my eyes for a whole 60 minutes! Uninterrupted! Never mind that that glorious hour also included multiple needle pokes and drilling of teeth. Beggars can’t be choosers. If the baby doesn’t stop crying by 3am, I’ll be forced to begin continue the nightly ritual of chocolate-snarfing in hopes of more downtime in the dentist chair!

Isn’t it?
Right?
I’m right, aren’t I?

Who would think pairing a monster and a nightlight would be a good idea? Apparently Circo does. And my husband.

I sent he and Muffin to Target last weekend to pick a nightlight out because as of the past week Muffin has wanted the lights on when he sleeps. Well, Dr. McCutiePants came back with this….

When questioned by my raised eyebrow, he said that it was the one that Muffin picked out himself and really wanted. Hmmmm, okay. Well, we’ll try it but Mommy is thinking a glowing green monster is not going to help him get over being afraid of the dark. Astonishingly, it did! I thought I’d have to eat my words.

But then Muffin saved me the trouble.

The second night I could tell that there was some unease starting to bubble to the surface. So, that night when I tucked Muffin in, I also tucked Monster in and even gave them both a kiss goodnight.

About an hour later it happened.

I hear a blood curdling scream coming from Muffin’s room. I’m talking a scream that would put Psycho’s Scream Queen, Janet Lee’s shower performance to shame. At that moment, I knew Monster was going back to Target.

Dashing into Muffin’s room, I found him quivering in the far corner of his crib staring and pointing at Monster saying, “He turned! He turned!”. Meanwhile Monster was just staring back with his vacant eyes and sharp-toothed smile. No amount of convincing would make Muffin realize that Monster is in fact friendly. In no uncertain terms Muffin requested that Monster be immediately banished from the bedroom and returned to the store.

Muffin has not asked for the lights to be left on, or for another nightlight since. Thanks Circo, for helping my child resolve his fear of the dark and saving me fifteen bucks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased with how clearly Muffin speaks for a just-turned- 3-year-old. And you never have to ask him to turn up the volume. It’s always fully cranked. Oh joy.

There have been several embarrassing times that I’ve wished the meaning of his words would have been masked by a not-so-audible voice, but never have I wished this more than last week at SeaWorld. I had to go pee. So, I wheeled Muffin’s stroller into the restroom stall with me and went about my business. While I’m mid-stream, Muffin says (in his sonic boom toddler voice), “Are you going BIG MASSIVE poop on the potty, Mommy?”

Cringe. “No, Muffin, Mommy’s going pee.” To which Muffin replies excitedly, “BIG MASSIVE pee?!!!”

The restroom was packed, of course. I think I may have even heard a snicker or two.

Where is the fine print in the Motherhood Contract, where I signed away every bit of my dignity and privacy? Lately it seems, more often than not, that I have a 38 inch tall shadow (with verbose running commentary) accompanying me wherever I go. Even when urinating, showering, dressing – you name it. There’s nothing like being able to share the running commentary of your pee process in the company of strangers.

Ah Motherhood.

But as my little boy gave me a big, cheeky grin while he leaned back and grabbed his sippy cup with his chubby little hands, I thought, I’d sign all my dignity and privacy away again, just to be known as Mommy to this little guy.

If I could have dinner with any famous dead person, it would be Charles Darwin.

Without a doubt.

On behalf of all mothers everywhere, I want to know why the hell we haven’t grown a third arm yet? And when the hell are we going to?!

Our species, Insanus Multitaskus is waiting.

Come on, Evolution throw us a bone will ya! It’s been hundreds of thousands of years that we’ve been schlepping around sleeping babies or crying toddlers (or both), while we simultaneously try to make dinner or fill a sippy cup one handed. We need another arm, dammit! So, Darwin, when is it coming? Have you ever tried to make dinner one-handed? Or how about changing a diaper while simultaneously trying to keep four continuously moving limbs out of the poopie-pie?

Come to think of it, that third arm should be a special bionic arm;

• Extra fast and long; able to reach out in a flash and catch that speedy preschooler before he gets away.
• Super bendable and able to contort impressively and reach that fallen toy in the backseat of the car while still driving.

How about eyes in the back of our head? I’m sure all mothers everywhere can appreciate how incredibly useful this would be. Nature should be working on that. Instead we have a tailbone. Oh hurray. A tailbone. Fabulous. As far as I can tell, the only use a tailbone serves us is to provide yet another place of pain during, and after, childbirth. My tailbone still freaking hurts, and it’s been 5 months since Madam Poopsalot’s birth! Come on Evolution, a tailbone?! Seriously?

They arrive stuffed in my mailbox on an almost daily basis. One coupon offers me a buy-one-get-one-free rack of ribs entree at the local BBQ place. Another one offers me 15% off a “revolutionary” new fat burning supplement (which I’ll need if I take advantage of the free rack of ribs coupon). There is even a coupon for 50% off housekeeping service (which I’ll also need to help me remove all the bags of coupon clutter from my house).

They are everywhere. These little gems that help us keep more money in our wallet, or save for that special trip to the Caribbean. However, once upon a time, even the pull of the Caribbean couldn’t get me to use coupons. I was embarrassed to use them. Even the ones you shell out $50 for, like the Entertainment book. I would always find the coupon but then get my husband to do the actual transaction, so I didn’t have to.

I was a closet Couponista.

Fortunately, I am no longer like this. Now, I proudly embrace my inner Couponista and I have gotten some really great deals because of it (we recently bought a $350 car seat for $170 after coupon stacking and it was easy peasy)! So, now I wonder why I was so stupid for so many years. Manufacturers print those coupons for a reason! They want you to buy their stuff! What’s not cool about getting a deal? That’s just savvy, right? And what’s not cool about savvy? When did “frugal” become another bad “F” word? Many couponistas and frugalists are looked down upon: “Coupons?! Recycling?! Discount designer store? How mortifying!” I know this attitude well…because I had this attitude once! I went to a highschool and university where if the tag sticking up from the back of your designer clothing had the tell-tale slash of the outlet mall, you might as well drop out and homeschool.

A couple years before I had kids, when I was working full-time and earning a great salary I recognized the error of my ways. Now with two kids, and being a SAHM, I embrace my inner frugalist even more. I think it’s important to teach my children the value of being smart with money. Of course, for the Frugalist and the Couponista it can be a slippery slope between getting a great deal on something you need or want, and getting a great deal on something you don’t really want but, “Hey it’s such a great deal, I can’t pass it up.” The recovering shopaholic in me must make a conscious effort to steer clear of that trap! Especially when it comes to cute shoes.

Mmmmmmm, cuuuuuute shooooooooes…

For those of you who are Closet Couponistas, like I once was, online shopping with a coupon is a great way to be gentle with yourself while still getting that great discount. Now, whenever I am looking to make a purchase online I google a coupon code before I push that checkout button. I almost always find one for the major stores. I am often able to save an additional 15-30% and/or get free shipping. I also sometimes shop online through the cash-back sites. Ebates and Fat Wallet are a couple of very popular cash back sites.

So there you have it! Next, I’ll share how to get over the embarrassment of buying toilet paper. Either that, or just show you where to score the motherlode of Kleenex coupons. Boy, I used to have some issues! Like I don’t poop! Thank God I’m out of my insecure twenties and so “normal” now. Okay, well, at least the thing about my twenties is true.

Upon waking up from his nap…

Muffin: (groggily) “Mommy, I’m a dinosaur.”
Me: “Oh, you’re a dinosaur?”

Muffin: “I’m a T-Rex!”
Me: “Oh wow! A T-Rex!”

Muffin: (very serious and softly) “Dinosaurs need kisses.”
Me: “Oh good. Because I love kissing dinosaurs.”

*Swoon*. I am so lucky and so very grateful for my children.