Downloading Momma

Well, we survived the weekend. Despite the record breaking heatwave trying to melt us, and the lack of maternal presence in the house, everything turned out just fine. Saturday morning my mom came over super early so that I could get to my mud run in Lake Elsinore, and she got the girls and fed and then carted them over to her house for the morning. She got to experience first hand the joy of getting two babies to the car. I think she thought she'd be able to carry them both like Gina and I do but she doesn't have the same upper body strength or experience juggling them that Gina and I have built up over the last year. So she took one and then the other, and as she relayed it, had a panic attack the whole time about leaving one in the car unattended while she fetched the other. She and my aunt then took the girls to the mall to play in the kid zone (which they loved) but didn't calculate for the walk there and back and the girls ended up going down to their morning nap way late - and late nap usually equates to short nap. So when I got home from my run (4 miles or sand trails + 101 degrees = exhausted) and realized they'd only slept 30 minutes I had to immediately pack them up and head home to try and get a good nap in their cribs. Two minutes into the car ride they passed out, so I spent the next hour holed up in the car waiting for them to wake up. Decided to at least catch part of the UCLA game (an amazing win over 7th ranked Texas) so I headed to my friends house a mile away, parked in their drive way and left the girls in the car with the a/c full blast so I could watch on the TV in their garage 3 feet away. The good nap lasted us the rest of the day so, aside from a poop in the bath tub by Genevieve, the afternoon and evening went off with out a hitch. Let me talk about this poop in the tub for a moment; only Genevieve seems to have this problem. I let them play in the tub for a while and when I came back in and started to scrub Genevieve, I noticed the water was awefully dirty. I lifted her up a bit to scrub her legs and I saw a small little floater escape from it's hiding place under her bum. I lifted her all the way up and, to my horror, discovered an entire U.S. Navy Flotilla readying for a beach landing at Normandy. Now the question: who do I leave in the tub while I rush the other one to the sink for a second bath. For fear of retribution by them should they read this later on in life I will forever keep this fact to myself. Needless to say we took two baths that night; one in the poopy tub and one in the kitchen sink. After bed I then got the pleasure of cleaning and bleaching the tub, at which point, I will mention, I finally got my first much needed shower of the day - I'm sure everyone I came in to contact with appreciated the smell of sweat, mud and lake water that was permeating from my body. Sunday morning was even more fun. Gina couldn't stand being away from the girls this long so we set up a Skype account that allowed us to video chat with her from our computer (she borrowed her sisters laptop). The girls were mesmerized (once they realized that it was Momma on the screen and that her voice was not coming from behind them) and spent the whole time trying to figure out how to get her out of the box she was trapped in. After that Genevieve spent the rest of the morning glancing back at the computer waiting for Gina to reappear. We headed over to my mom's again, to escape the heat, and Gina needed one more quick fix so we did another quick video session. Gina really appreciated it, but I think it messed with the girls a bit - being able to see her and then having her disappear again just as quickly. When I was a summer camp counselor we didn't allow parents to call their kids (and vis-a-versa) for the whole week for this very reason. We found that out of site out of mind worked great for the homesickness issue, but once they heard their parents voice, suddenly they couldn't take it anymore and often had to be picked up early. But we did our best to make it through the day despite the Momma-sickness, cooling off at the wading pool and then on great Yiayia's cold tile floor (went over there for dinner). My mom came over again this morning at 6 so I could get to work, and with any luck Gina will be home before dinner so everyone can get some much needed hugs from Momma before bed. That's the plan anyway. And hopefully Grandma will improve on Saturday's morning nap - maybe she'll even get them out of their pj's and in to some day time clothes today. But hey, it's Grandma's house; anything goes at Grandma's house.