This morning Muffin was decidedly not absolutely delightful.

Every step of our morning was a battle. I was already feeling weary by 8:30am, when we got in the car to go to baseball camp, where I was absolutely delighted to unload him.

Things were better after I turned on the car radio to drown out his whining. He starts bopping and singing and I start smiling, giving myself kudos on how I brilliantly redirected his annoying behavior. Then it happens.

Out of nowhere, my cute little cherub bleats out “DAMN”! Then before I can get my wits about me, he does it again! “DAMN!”

Really? Did he just say that? Twice!

“Where did you hear that word?”, I asked. “I don’t know. Damn!”, my 4 year old songbird bleated again.

At this point I explained to him that “Damn” isn’t a nice word for a 4 year old to be saying and that he should say darn instead.

“But that’s not what the song says, Mommy. La la la, DAMN!”, he sings happily.

“No, way Mister. This song certainly does not use that word.”, I state (with conviction).

“La La La, DAMN!”

Stop doing that!”, I growl.

The song ends and he switches from profanity back to whining, continuing the theme of the morning. As I drop him off at camp, I give him a lecture on turning his attitude around, which I am sure is falling on deaf ears.

As I’m leaving camp, the same song comes on the radio. Sure enough there are several “damns” in the damn song.

Oops.

When I come back to pick him up I see that he’s delightful with his coaches and fellow campers. Oh good! His mood must be better now, I think.

Really, Rookie?!

Really?

Have you learned nothing in 4 years?

As soon as I get him away from the field he’s once again reverted to whiney (I think it’s reserved for mommy – I feel special). As I’m trying to get Muffin and his little sister into the car, he’s being extremely uncooperative. “Please get into the car.”, “No, don’t climb through your sister’s side.”, “Please sit in your car seat.”, “No, don’t reach into the middle console – there is no candy.”, “No, you may not have candy.”, “Please get in your car seat, NOW.”, “Get in your car seat!”, “IN YOUR CAR SEAT! NOW!”

So then he replies, “I’m too busy!”

What?!?!

“No, Mommy. I’m too BUSY turning my attitude around.”

Evidently.

Anyways, I recently read that she is a regular at the classes at the Physique 57 studio in NYC. I suppose that NYC is a tad out of my fitness radius, but Physique 57 does have a workout video and guess who is now the proud owner of it?! Oh, yeah! Goodbye Butt by Nutella!

The goal of the Physique 57 workout is to really fatigue the muscles by working them with small isometric moves and then stretch them out. The way the muscles are worked and then stretched is supposed to give you long lean muscles, like that of a ballerina. All you need is a high-back chair, light weights, and a playground ball. The video moves quickly with very little downtime in explanation, which I like. The burn is pretty intense.

Even Muffin likes the videos. Here we are doing the Arms & Ab Booster.

Unfortunately, Muffin’s interest lasted about 60 seconds and then he was climbing all over me, making completion of the video impossible.

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

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.

Today I had a sh***y morning. Unfortunately, I mean that in the literal sense.

This morning I woke up to poop.

Now, that in itself wouldn’t be much different from most mornings, except that it wasn’t Madam Poopsalot’s fairly benign diaper-contained infant poop. It was my recently potty-trained 3 year old Muffin’s decidedly adult-like stinky poop. Thankfully he still wears a pull-up for nap and nighttime sleep. However, even with a pull-up the gross-factor remains high. Muffin’s “accident” was made even more unpleasant by the fact that he managed to get a finger in it (by accident he assured me). So, the whole crib was on immediate lock-down and scrub-down…and so was Muffin. Yuck.

With Operation Poop Scour successfully accomplished, I came downstairs to get Madam Poopsalot out of her cradle and she obliged the Baby Poop Gods by wholeheartedly obeying The First Commandment of Baby Poop:

Thou shalt poop in the first diaper just enough to necessitate a diaper change, but reserve enough to dirty the second (or third) diaper immediately thereafter.

Delightful.

Okay, so that’s about enough poop for Mommy to deal with before breakfast, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Madam Poopsalot disagreed.

As we were getting ready to leave the house, she obliged the Baby Poop Gods with The Second Commandment of Baby Poop:

Thou shalt hold your poop until Mom has got you dressed and strapped into your car seat and is about to go somewhere important, for which she is already running 10 mins late.

Today I was the Pooper Trooper. How absolutely delightful.

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.