As much as I hate to write post that are just a event-by-event account of my day, I’m going to do it anyway. Jennifer left yesterday to go visit our newest nephew, leaving me with both of the girls. Anna has been particularly trying lately, so I know I’m in for a fairly rough week. To start out, neither one of the girls slept much last night; Tara woke up three times in the early evening, and then Anna came home from what was supposed to be a sleepover because she wasn’t sleeping either. She ended up sleeping on Jen’s side of our bed, and both girls decided to get up at the regular time despite missing several hours of sleep. Anna had her usual morning in which something upsets her and she explodes in a huge ball of fire and destruction. Normally calm Tara then becomes jealous of the extra attention paid to Anna and explodes as well. Toss in some more crying, hitting, attempts to run away from home, and it’s just another typical morning at weresotired.com.

I finally managed to gather up the girls to go to Pancake House, where we saw my boss, who later called me to say that he had found a Nintendo Wii at the store and picked it up for me. I’ve been looking for one off and on for months. After a failed attempt to go to SeaWorld and a stop by Target so that Anna could spend a birthday gift card, we picked up the Wii and went home for lunch. Tara took a nap while Anna and I learned a little bit about how to play the Wii Sports games. Two hours later we learned the important of tightening the wrist strap properly and called it a day.

After nap we visited the neighbors, who never fail to remind me that no matter how much you have going on, somebody else is bound to have more. After a quick dinner comprised of the last remains of food in the house, Anna decided to put on her best Stepford behavior and help out marvelously with bedtime. Hopefully she wakes up in that mood tomorrow.

I think all this single parenting is bringing out my inner a**hole. On Friday, I had to struggle to get Anna ready for school, only to be late enough out the door that I had to drive almost to work to drop off Tara, then drive back home to go to the post office to pick up something for Jen’s work, then drop off Anna, and then go back to work, where I continue to straddle the line between my new job and my old job. At the post office, I had Anna sitting up on the counter, and I was talking to her when out of the complete blue, some hayseed looked at my Michigan sweatshirt, then rolled her eyes and bleated, “As an Ohio State person, I wouldn’t go around advertising that I went to Michigan.” I squinted at her and said, “of course not, if you didn’t go there. Didn’t they teach you that in college?” Then, after a pause, “No wonder you couldn’t get into a real school.” She stared for a moment in shock and was about to say something when I turned the other way and resumed talking to Anna. In restrospect, I should have just said, “I thought I smelled something.”

Let’s see, I guess that was yesterday. I can’t believe it’s only Saturday. I’m past the halfway mark. On Thursday night Jennifer will be home. Now that I’m into this single parent groove a little bit more, I’ve made some decisions. First, that I’m definitely going to to buy less nutritious food. I’m thinking prepared defrost-and-serve sort of stuff from Costco, or even better, Schwan’s, which delivers to your door. I love to cook when I have the time, but when I don’t (which seems to be the norm these days), it sucks to try to make something out of nothing in no time for people (I’m looking at Anna) who don’t want to eat it in the first place. Second, we have to step up this nanny search. Third, I need to be more decisive. I have too many irons in the fire. There’s too much on my plate. I need to fish or cut bait. I need more clichés. I’m going to start saying “no,” in situations where I used to say “maybe,” and for things I used to say “no,” to I will probably say “get bent.”

On the up side, the house stays noticeably cleaner on a day-to-day basis. When Jennifer gets home, I’m going to quarantine her bags to a small area; packed is fine, unpacked is fine, half-unpacked is not allowed. Still, Tara is starting to miss Jennifer. For the first couple days, it was as if she didn’t notice she was gone, but after hearing her on the phone a couple times, she points to the phone and says “Hi! Hi! Hi!” like she wants to talk to her Mom. She broke out in “hi” and waving this morning when she saw Jen’s picture on the wall. Poor girl.

Anna has been very well behaved for the most part. If not stepford, then at least half-stepford. It’s a great thing. Both kids have been sleeping well for the most part. I would be way screwed were it not the case. I’m just counting the days now (five) until Jen comes home.

I’m not a big fan of photo-only posts (largely because they don’t really work with my theme), but this just speaks for itself. She also did a load of laundry this morning.

Today we have been (and continue to be) busy packing. We prepped Anna yesterday, telling her that we would like her to help, or at least keep herself busy so that we can get done everything we need to do. For the most part, she obliged.

Tara has also cooperated by not learning to walk before visiting Grandma D. and her tile floors. She continues, however, to put anything in everything in her mouth. We recently found her eating the paint off the wall by chewing on the corner of the windowsill. I kid you not.

Then, starting with nap time, Anna had some very unusual behavior. When I gave her a five-minute warning of impending nap time, she opted to play by herself instead of to read stories. Five minutes later, she informed me that she was going to go up for nap by herself and that she would come down later after she woke up. She went into her room and didn’t come out for an hour. No idea if she slept or not.

Before dinner, she set the entire table (this involves her getting a chair to climb up on the counter to get dishes out of the cupboards), complete with glasses of water, and set out jars of baby food so that I could feed Tara. She then searched the nearly-empty refrigerator for food for her own dinner (Jen was picking up take-out), settling on bread with jelly and a cheese stick, which she sliced into rounds. I sat and fed Tara and marveled. After Jen arrived with the real dinner, Anna set out milk and cookies for Santa and sprinkled reindeer food¹ out so that Santa’s sleigh would be sure to find our house.

We don’t know what to make of Anna’s super Stepford behavior, but one thing we can be sure of: when the other shoe drops, Tara will pick it up and eat it.

Update: Oh wait… I get it… “He’s making a list / checking it twice / gonna find out who’s naughty and nice…’”

¹ Reindeer food is apparently quick oats mixed with glitter. If you park your car under a lamppost and find that the bird droppings are more festive then usual, you’re welcome.

Anna has lately had a very high rate of stepford incidents. Several nights in a row, she has spontaneously decided to get herself all ready by herself. After dinner, she had been clearing her plates without being asked. This morning, she started putting laundry in the washer on her own. She is four. Of course, this has been balanced out by tantrums and general uncooperativeness, but still, we’re not used to this kind of good behavior. I wonder if she is beginning to pull out of the terrible twos¹. In any case, we’ll just have to take what we can get for the moment.

¹ We’ve heard the terrible twos are in fact followed by the thankless threes and the F-U fours.

Tonight, Anna has had the most unusual behavior. The day started out typically enough, though it was Anna’s first reward-worthy night of sleeping in several weeks. She had typical behavior; partly whiny, partly good, mostly low maintenance. She had an atypically long nap; actually most days she doesn’t take a nap at all. We went out for a playgroup trip to the bowling alley, and when we returned for dinner, the unusual behavior began.

We had a lot of different foods on the table: sloppy joes, green salad, fruit salad, rice, chips and guacamole, and probably some other stuff. Anna essentially ate all the foods we’re always hounding her to eat, and none of the stuff we tried to get her to avoid. She went on and on about how she was going to only eat healthy foods and not eat chips. Further, she was going to take long naps, and by these actions grow big and strong. Through the rest of the evening, she cleared her table, used her good manners, helped to clean up, helped with Tara’s bath, got herself ready for bed, and did so with practically no resistance. I’m stunned; she has had the occasional “Stepford morning” where she has a streak of excellent behavior, but I have never seen it in the evening, nor at such a high level for so long.

After a full day without Jennifer and Tara, the house still stands, and Anna is doing much better than the first night. She was amazingly well behaved all evening; very chipper at school, all the way through dinner (unprecedented!), and through the evening. This has been one of those “stepford days” we have every now and then. Bedtime was still a minor struggle, as Anna seems to be very averse to certain things, and I can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. Lately, she has been going potty many many times at night. I think it’s just her way of stalling. The last two nights, I have had to show her, as she whines and watches tearfully, how to obtain toilet paper without dislodging the roll–the TP-holder in her bathroom is not very robust. I showed her how to hold the roll in place while tearing the paper off, because if you try to just yank a portion free, the roll will fall off–this is a huge tragedy for Anna who gets very upset if she thinks she has broken something. Of course, once I have her in bed, she is able to go to the bathroom on her own without any sort of TP-tragedy. Nevertheless, we’re going to Home Depot today for a new roll-holder.

Last night I also heard her doing a lot of running around until about 8:40 (a full hour after bedtime), and upon coming upstairs later, found a neat stack of some items which she didn’t want in her room. Her room is generally a mess, but for some reason, she seems to know exactly what’s in it, and has a sense of what does and does not belong. Example: last night, we considered her Dora the Explorer activity book as a bedtime story, but it uses erasable markers, and she only has crayons in her room. Thus, she immediately had to put it by the top of the stairs, because it no longer belonged in her room. Also, any extra toys or stuffed animals which make it into her room during the day must be expunged at night time.

Well, I’ve got ten minutes to take a shower before she gets up, and today is sure to be a busy day in a busy weekend…

I woke up at 5:45am today because of the early night last night. Now, in my office directly below Anna’s room, I can hear her using the potty and going back to her room. No crying. She’s either sleeping or waiting until lights out. How cool is that?

Here’s something that doesn’t happen every day.

This morning, at 6:30am (lights out), Anna knocks politely at the door. Jennifer and I wake up, and I let her in the room. Anna excitedly runs over and jumps up on the bed for cuddles. After a couple minutes, Anna pipes up and says, “I’m going to go get dressed!” She runs to her room and fetches her clothes. She then proceeds to:

1. Go potty.
2. Get dressed.
3. Wash her hands.
4. Put her socks on.
5. Brush her teeth.
6. Brush her hair.

At 6:45am, Anna is ready to go, and Jen and I are still lying in bed. Good thing too, because after watching that little spectacle, one or both of us might have passed out. Now what did we feed her for dinner last night?