For some reason, though, the second half of last week I had a few days of headaches and total fatigue. I think I must be pretty wimpy in the "suck it up" department, because I had a hard time keeping it together. No work happened from home, no emails, no financial reports, definitely no cleaning, and bare minimum fun was had by all at the Barrett house.
The boys were pretty feisty by Thursday after watching me lay on the couch like broccoli for two days. I tried everything to encourage sedentary amusements ... not so effective with my one year old Will. My grand plan to read books on my bed from naptime until Tim got home worked for about 15 minutes. Although Jared could sit and read on my bed with me for a long time ... once Will joins us it is "Wrestle Fest '09" ... every time.
I tried to make up for this by letting them do a really messy activity and play with raw eggs, while teaching them about the different parts of an egg. That was cool for a while ... until they started wiping raw egg everywhere and I could see I was making far more work for myself than was worth the effort.
By evening when the neighborhood Dad's took off for "Guys' Night" I was toast. As I talked to Melinda on the phone, we tried to stir each other up to finish out the day's work and get our respective houses in order and kids to bed. While doing the last of the dishes, I looked through the kitchen window as the boys played in the water hose and had a brilliant idea to economize on time and energy ...
OUTSIDE BATH!!
After completing bare minimum cleanup inside, I headed outside with some shampoo and towels to see who was up for an "outside bath". Both the boys were pretty excited about it and happily stripped down. However, they were none to excited when I put the cold hose on them full force. I soon figured out if they held the hose themselves it wasn't such an issue and so we bathed on.
I had them lathered, rinsed, and then huddled in towels trying to warm up in no time.
End result? Both kiddos were in bed, "lights out" by 7pm that night. No mess in my bathroom to clean up, no bath toys to put away. Granted, 7pm this time of the year is still total daylight so we did have some protesting when they realized where I was heading with all this.
That said, I am now a BIG FAN of the outside bath. Expect it to make a reappearance at the Barrett house.
Will liked splashing on the basketball court.
Making use of the slide helped get Jared clean AND not waste the water.
OK... can I just point out the obvious here ... how about that BELLY on Will???
PS: How cute is my husband? When I proudly told him about the outside bath and how it easily shaved a half hour off the bedtime routine, what was his response?
"You are such a fun mom!"
Hmmm... I'll be honest: "fun" was not my primary motivation at all, I was aiming for sheer efficiency ... but, I'll take the compliment nonetheless! ;-)
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