There will be no picture today.  You really don’t need that.

I’m of mixed opinions on bunk beds.  The boys like them and they give us a bunch more floor space, which is nice.  But, its difficult to do the sheets/blankets under good conditions, let alone when someone is sick.  This time I decided to clean from the floor up, which might seem kind of backwards but which allowed me to get closer and closer to the heart of the problem without having to touch/cross the mess.

But, there was the full bedding on top, plus the quilt on the bottom (removed from sleeping child and replaced without waking him up!).  We lost one stuffed animal, but its recent and can be reordered; the others in his bed were saved.  We threw out four stuffed animals that got hit a bit, but nobody actually uses anyway.  I might have been able to clean them, but it was a good reason to reduce our stuffed animal count.  Thankfully the furniture nearby was easy to clean and the waterproof mattress cover almost entirely spared the mattress.  Finally, I tossed the rug from that side of the room.  It’s 10 years old from Target and the matching one from the other side of the room is worn too so I may just replace them both.  Either way it wasn’t worth the effort of cleaning it.

The rug and animals were the biggest casualties of this illness.  My two year-old did hit the couch when he had it, but I already had the fabric on order to reupholster it so its sanitized, but I’m not worrying about it much.

My 4 year-old required I take some interesting pictures this week, so I thought I’d share.

The first is his birthday cake, which was inspired by the Wegman’s bag of flour (but had to have chocolate sprinkles).

The second is his spaghetti.  They were doing a color mixing project at school, but I think it all just ended up black/brown.

And, finally I was told that I just had to take a picture of the hole in the back of his pajamas.

The morning after that picture was taken he proudly showed me that he could flip the tag through the hole like a tail.

I find myself waiting for one child or another multiple times per week.  Sometimes one can watch the children, in which case my preferred waiting activity is to watch them while talking with the other adults.  But, my toddler usually doesn’t let me stay in one place so we watch briefly (if I’m lucky) before watching someone else’s child (always more interesting) while I follow him around so he doesn’t leave or otherwise get into trouble.  When the weather gets nicer I will take him for a walk in the stroller, but according to the Weather Channel that is no time soon.  Maybe next year when he can be dropped off for these 30-45 min activities I’ll bring a book.  It’s not really long enough to leave and actually get anything done.

The trickier one for me is the 5-10 minute wait before picking someone up.  Honestly, I play Candy Crush.  Yes, that’s a bit cliché.  But, I spend no money and I bother no Facebook friends.  I like puzzles and am willing to try again (or wait) until the Tooth Fairy comes along and promotes me to the next level or the lives regenerate.

I’d like to do something more productive, but what.  I used to keep a magazine in the car, but that’s not much better.  I do try to think up quick errands, but unless it’s a drive through nothing is quick with a toddler in tow.  I’m open to suggestion.

A short post today to thank the school for thinking about those of us with multiple children.  I had noticed that my kids’ teachers offered conferences staggered by 10 minutes so one doesn’t have to rush from one conference to the next, but also doesn’t have to wait the full duration of one.  I learned this week they offset some of the grades on purpose for the very reason of multiple children.

A big thank you to whoever thought that up!

I also thank whoever made the switch to online conference signups this year.  It is so much easier to arrange conferences for multiple children when one can look at all the teacher’s availability at the same time vs picking a time in one classroom and then going to the next and hoping for the best.  My goal is to always get them all on the same day so I only have to arrange one day of childcare.  That is much easier to achieve now.

We changed up our after school activities this week.  I was happy that the boys were excited to return to swimming lessons.  We’d taken a few months off.  One, the 3y class was full.  Two, it’s tough coming out of swimming in winter, in the dark, and with a wet head.  Of course, I made this decision last November not knowing what sort of winter lay in store for us.  That decision worked out very well.

Today is also the last day of skiing lessons for my oldest.  This is actually a make up day for one of the bad weather days earlier in the winter.  The snow will be around for a while to come though.  Unfortunately, we’ll miss his new Thursday afternoon class as I wasn’t expecting skiing to run this long.  The twins start drawing class this afternoon.  It’s a bit colder again today, but I’m hoping to get the younger two out in the snow while we wait for the older ones’ classes.