Haggis Baggis

Anyone care to guess what Haggis is? I am sure some of you know - I threaten to make it for my lovely offspring whenever they say that dinner is yucky.

They know, don't they... they are programmed to know from birth when Mom is about to loose it and they go hog wild. They also know when Daddy is not around to help out.

It began last night. Yesterday was Christopher's first day at Nada's house. Nada will be our substitute for a sitter at least until Christmas. If it goes swimmingly, we will stay. If I am going even slightly mad, we will look into a nanny again.

Christopher came home a rather unusual crankpot. He's my easy going guy, and yet I could not put him down for more than a minute from about 3:30 till somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00. He'd eat, spit up, cry, eat, burp, barf, cry, eat... this went on and on. My demeanor was probably close to she-devil by the time the boys went to bed.

It did not get any better with the rise of the sun. (Or, of the SON, either!!) Chris was up for about an hour in the middle of the night, and Matthew came in for reasons unknown to man or beast. 6:15 Parker comes in - wide awake and wiggly. He has learned NOT to purposly wake me up, so he stands at the end of my bed and breathes loudly. Think Darth Vador. Then he starts clicking his mouth.

"Parker, Stop That and go downstairs. We are not getting up yet!"

2 minutes later...

"Mom, the baby is awake, and he peed - I felt it".

Bad enough to wake me up, but when you wake up a sleeping baby that I had to hold for 6 straight hours last night - well, that brings you to within inches of death.

Baby is up. I hear Matthew get up while I am changing a soaking wet baby. I hear him go downstairs (I think possilby the town of Scottsdale hears him go downstairs - he does very little quietly.

Furious at being up well before my time, I go downstairs and demand they turn off the TV and go clean their rooms. This was to be done before bed last night but Parker was "too exhausted" to clean before bed.

I go downstairs to find Schooner has been outside swimming in the mud and has found a new home on my sofa. She also attacked and distroyed a USC pony-tail holder that, the last time I saw it, was nestled safely amongst my hairbrushes. It was cute and made from about 5000 beads. Those beads were now strewn all over my office. One can only imagine how many have been ingested.

I hear giggling upstairs. Tell-tale sign that there is not any work being accomplished in the "operation clean room" mission. (Little do they know the baby's monitor picks up their voices, too!!) So I go up and sure enough, the room is a sty still. There are toys and other various boy-things strewn across the hall. Matthew was hiding in the guest room and I spotted toys in my room, too.

All hell breaks loose. Ever hear Bill Cosby give his definition of a Kiniption fit?? It was like that. Even the dog cowered next time she saw me, and she was downstairs at the time...

All this before I even had time for a cup of coffee... And I go back to work Monday. God help me!