A word problem....

*It's evening now, and having read this post out loud to Steve, I have now recognized several egregious errors in my grammar. Word omissions and substitutions abound, and I will commence immediately to righting the situation.*

One three year old and one four year old (close enough for both) choose (for the umpteenth day in a row) to eat approximately 1/10th of their breakfast. Given the metabolic rate of a typical child this age, calculate the amount of time it will take for their blood sugar to drop to a level where I will begin hearing "MOM!/SARAH!!!!!!! he/she hit/kicked/shoved/didn't share/called me a name/got in my face!!!!!!!!" and/or crying? The answer is not even as long as it takes me to clean up the breakfast dishes and finish my bowl of cereal.

Seriously, people, what do I do with this???????? I'm not going to have them sit there and force them to eat their breakfasts and yet it will inevitably get uglier and uglier as the morning wears on and we progress toward snack time. Here is an equation you may need in working this problem - the increase in number of times they tattle on each other and the wonder twins is directly correlated to the increase in my blood pressure and the decrease in my patience.

I will entertain any solutions you would like to offer up. It does not seem to matter what the breakfast menu is(except for syrupy waffles/pancakes which in their sugary decadence burn off in the same time period as the 1/10 of a bowl of something remotely nutritious), it will yield the same results. (I must also caveat that the wonder twins are at a stage where they will have an enormous breakdown if they don't have the same thing as the older kids, so whatever you suggest must be practical to all. I'm just not up for a screamfest at 7am...) So I cry out - SAVE ME!!!!!

To further my cranktastic mood (which elicited the above rant about the breakfast situation), our dishwasher is broken AGAIN. I'll be feeling the joy of calling "the man" in a bit to see how much financial life THIS is going to suck from us. Being that this is the second time this dishwasher has already crapped out in 3.5 years, I'm all for getting a new one and calling this one a dud. Steve is willing to sink more of our non-existent cash into it and hope for the best. I guess we'll see what "the man" has to say regarding how much this might run us before we make the call. *I didn't call "the man" as I found more than one website suggesting that we might be able to remedy this ourselves without causing any further harm if we fail. We're going to give it a go on Friday. Until then we'll be enjoying the pleasures of hand washing....*

And while I'm whining - I HATE TMX Cookie Monster right now. I thought he was adorable when Colby got him as a gift. Heck, I still think he's adorable. I am such a sucker for big, googly eyes (what do you think got Peanut in the door??) I'd have bought him for someone as a gift, and in fact, I may still do that. There is actually little wrong with TMX Cookie Monster himself. It is the fact that my son is drawn to him like a moth to the flame yet is just as horrifed as the moth when he actually reaches the flame (TMXCM). Colby wants him turned on - all the time. If he could talk, I'm quite certain he'd be saying "please poke this in the belly, Mom...." every time he carries TMXCM over to me (which occurs about every 37 seconds for the entirety of the time he is awake). I oblige despite knowing full well that what will ensue is his alternate amusement and horror with the thing. So he will first laugh at TMXCM laughing and then the moment he moves, run to me screaming with his arms up. While it is indeed a somewhat endearing (and funny) vision, it is NOT funny or endearing for the 850th time today. And no matter where I try to hide TMXCM, he seems to reappear. I ask you - spooky boogy (as my grandma would say) or just coincidence??? As a small aside, and not having actually disemboweled TMXCM (yet), I believe that it works on some sort of a level system, so I am a little annoyed that if he's not standing up perfectly straight when you poke his belly, he will right himself and require another (or more) poke to actually commence with his little song and dance. The requirement of two or more pokes isn't terrible, but the fact that I don't even have the song and dance to distract from the (apparently horrifying) movement. For a busy mom who is already committing to the "calming down period', it's a little obnoxious. Again, for the rest of the world, this would be a fantastic toy. Who knew??

Tomorrow's post will be a much less cranky me bragging about how fantastic Kailin is doing in swim....