Fleas, Rain, Three Year Olds, and a Vanilla Latte I Could Not Drink

Pen enjoying a homemade popsicle

Playing at the water table

This was about where I noticed the first flea.

At the Beehive before things went bad.

My latte, isn't it pretty?

Here we go!

Bring on the drama.

Full out arms flailing, legs kicking, tinkerbell underpants in your face kind of intensity here!

This is where she realized I was documenting all the ugliness with the camera and tried to slap it out of my hands. I love the baby bow in her hair, kinda reminds me of so many 90's photos of Courtney Love behaving in the same fashion. Come to think of it, the previous picture reminds me of Courtney as well! Hmmm.

Later in the day when she turned cute again and decided to wash the van with the kitched floor mop.

So, the last couple days have not gone so well. First of all it's been rainy - which is good, we need it, but it is making our days hard. There have been many fits and screaming sessions on the part of Pen. I don't know who came up with that terrible two crap, two is nothing compared to three!

Yesterday we went out for a walk early before the rain to the playground of Pen's choosing. That went pretty well despite the humid, yucky weather, but on the way back we were passing an artist's fair and Pen said she wanted to get out of the stroller and look. I said o.k. and she hopped out only to immediately begin screaming that she was too tired and couldn't walk. Uhm, o.k., hop back in then? She screamed the rest of the way home, I still don't understand. Anyhow, not about to let that fit ruin a perfectly wretched morning I decided to set up Pen's water table and let her have a popsicle for a snack. So for about 10 glorious minutes she was happy, eating a popsicle and playing with the water. Violet and I were sitting on a blanket in the yard when suddenly I see a flea - that's right, A FLEA!!! jump onto my newborn daughter's face - YES, HER FACE!!! And then one jumped on my leg. And I noticed 2 more on the blanket. That's right, our yard is suddenly infested with fleas, and we don't even have a dog! Oh my effing G! Fleas send me into a panic, just so you know. So into the house we go. The rest of the day kinda went downhill from there (where else could it go from that point?) and the baby never stopped crying, which made my milk keep leaking (sorry if TMI) and between crying baby and screaming 3 year old I kept not getting a chance to change it. Much of the day is a blur but I do distinctly remember sitting on the floor with Pen trying to play Hi Ho Cherry-o with one arm as Violet screamed in the other and thinking to myself "Steve will be home soon,I should really go change this shirt because now I smell like yogurt and that's gross". But I never changed it. And as it turns out he deserved to smell the stinky mama he came home to because even though he gets out of work at 2:30 and he took the car he still didn't get home until after 4:00! But never mind that. He did take both girls out for a walk so that I could take a shower and feel enough like a person again to get dinner on the table by the time they got back!

Today may or may not have been worse than yesterday. I'm not really sure, mostly because so much of my days are a blur and also very similar to each other. But anyhow, deciding upon rising ( or more accurately upon being loudly awakened by Pen who was demanding I get her something to eat but then decided after I got out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen that she wasn't really hungry yet) that this day would be better than the previous one, I got us all ready for a walk. It was raining, but just a gentle sprinkling kind of rain that was o.k. to walk in. We headed down to the Beehive, a favorite place of Pen's and mine. It is darling and has great food and coffee. Pen is fond of their cocoa and toast. I had a latte on my mind, personally. I had been desiring one for nearly a year, all pregnancy long, in fact. I had decided that today was the day. We were happy to see that the Beehive was not yet crowded and our favorite couch upstairs was free. Pen got a juice and asked for a veggie pot pie (she calls them veggie burger pies) and I asked if she was sure as she had told me on our walk down that she was getting toast. She assured me that she was in a veggie burger pie kinda mood and would get toast another time, so that was that and I ordered my latte and we headed for the couch. Now, based on the kind of days we have been having I'll admit it might have been crazy for me to actually believe that we were going to have anything close to a civilized morning, enjoying a wonderful latte and chatting with one another pleasantly, but I swear! We have been hanging out at this place together forever and it's always been nothing but a delight ! So, o.k. first the veggie burger pie was sooo good and she chowed on it merrily, then like halfway through the pie she stops as if someone flipped a switch and starts to loose it because she actually wanted toast! It took me a while to understand what she was even saying, she was that upset. Now I guess I could have gone two ways with this, I could have saved myself the awfulness of the fit and said "sure you can have toast, we'll just save that veggie burger pie for lunch instead!" or I could have said "you picked veggie burger pie today, next time you can have toast" and because I don't want her to think she can just have everything she wants all the time, and also because I'm not currently working and really had no buisness buying veggie burger pies and lattes in the first place, I said the second. I wish I had just gotten the damn toast! It was one of the very biggest fits ever! So I have to get the baby back in the sling, clear our place, gather our things and get us out the door while she screams "I changed my mind! I want toast!" Over and over again she said it. Screamed the whole way home. And the real tragedy here is that I didn't get to have my latte. I paid for it, yes. With money I shouldn't have been spending on lattes, mind you. I got a picture of it as well, and that's special. But the worst part of today is not that I had to walk home in the pouring rain with my three year old screaming bloody murder the whole way, or that the rest of the day was no better. The worst part of today is that I had to leave my latte sitting there on the coffee table, next to our favorite couch. And I guess if that is the worst part of today it really must not have been a bad day. And tomorrow Steve is home and we are planning a trip to the zoo. And I will try really hard not to threaten Pen with feeding her to the bears that live there if she has a fit at the zoo. And no matter how wretched she can act or how horridly she behaves, she still looks like a baby angel when she's sleeping, and I'm really glad she's my little girl. Never mind the fact that if I wasn't currently nursing Violet CONSTANTLY I would have SO had a double margarita as soon as Steve got home today!