While You Were Nursing

Remember the movie, "While You Were Sleeping" with Sandra Bullock? I remember it as being pretty decent. As far as unrealistic romantic comedies go, that is. The concept of falling into a coma while some random stranger (who happens to be infatuated with me) infiltrates my family, claims to be my fiancee, and ultimately ends up falling for my brother is pretty disturbing, but anyway... 

Lately, I have not been in a coma (nor have I been doing very much sleeping, for that matter.) What I have been doing is nursing a baby. Lots and lots of nursing. Just like his brothers, this baby likes to eat. It's been a pretty interesting adventure, having three kids in just over three years. And this time around, by far the most entertaining moments have occurred while I've been nursing the baby. Or, the remnants of what happened during that time have been discovered shortly thereafter. Without a doubt, the boys are catching on to the fact that I'm pretty well tied down when Callan is eating. Their initial fascination with what he was drinking and how he was drinking has waned in favor of all of the fantastic things they can delve into while I (at least seemingly) can't do a darn thing about it.

I had a chuckle the other day when I realized just how relaxed I've become about a little chaos in the house. Seriously, when Cam was born, I used to think days like this or this were every-once-in-awhile craziness. Now, they're pretty much the norm. You need only read a few of my "Not Me!" Monday posts to figure that out. Ahhh, the days when I only had one baby. What were those like?

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While I'm nursing the baby, simply playing with toys is often replaced (at least temporarily) with the more favorable (and less boring) "see-how-many-of-these-boxes-of-toys-so-lovingly-organized-and-labeled-we-can-dump-on-the-floor-before-Mommy-catches-on." As you can tell, Mommy caught on rather quickly, and now tries to minimize the damage by distracting the demolitionists with VeggieTales. It sort of worked:

While I'm nursing the baby, Cameron frequently gets a hankering for some sort of snack or drink. I tell you, this kid could survive alone on a deserted island for weeks on end. If he's hungry, he'll go to untold lengths to find something to eat. The child is not bound by silly little things like the height of the shelf where we keep the cereal bars, or the weight of the we-just-bought-it-yesterday, wholesale-club-size tub of animal crackers. I'm pretty sure he'd be perfectly content to make himself a grilled cheese sandwich or scramble up some eggs if I'd leave him alone in the kitchen long enough.

While I'm nursing the baby, the boys inevitably get involved in some sort of brotherly skirmish. A few times, it's been an all-out offensive, complete with bloody casualties, like the time Cameron knocked his older brother upside the head with a large block. There was so much blood on the paper towels I used to mop up Kayden's injured head, he actually thought I was "putting red" on his head to help it feel better.

While I'm nursing the baby, Cameron often sets out in search of new media for expressing his artistic creativity. Three weeks ago, he grabbed a crayon and began coloring in the hard plastic eyeballs of every stuffed animal within reach. Two weeks ago, he created a masterpiece with various colored pens on the back of the sofa. Last week, he found his inspiration in my makeup bag:

 

And while I'm nursing the baby, Kayden often announces that he has to go to the bathroom. Under normal circumstances, I'm thrilled with this new-found independence. Recently, he's taken the unchaperoned opportunity to "wrap" the entire bathroom with toilet paper, which he gleefully (and silently) unrolls while he purports to be doing, errr...other business.

Stay tuned...undoubtedly there will be more to come...