Koimoumon labe (damn these are getting long)

Woke up to a phone call from the ex again this morning. She wanted to know if I still had the gray tie in which we got married. I answered sleepily that I did not. I'm normally fully supportive of her right to wear masculine clothing, but not when it interrupts my sleep. Son of a butch.

Well, I never got back to sleep, partly because by then the 2-year-old had rolled to the back of the futon (as usual, she's woken in the middle of the night and I had to bring her out to sleep with me).

When they were both awake, not too too much later, it was breakfast time. I was pleased with myself; I'd thought ahead the previous night and made veggie broth, and cut the veggies and strips of beef for soup. I got that ready and put it on the table, whereupon the 5-year-old expressed dismay announced that she wanted to make breakfast. I said, okay, phyne. (Bitter? A little. What's it to ya?) While she did this, the other one nibbled at the soup, but mostly had fun separating the broth and solids into the two bowls. I ate my yummy, vitamin-rick soup alone; having no crackers, I ate it with grumbles.

With minimal help (oiling the pan, washing the spatula), the five-year-old made breakfast. She brought out three plates for us, each of scrambled eggs and frozen peas. No, not cooked or thawed frozen peas, but frozen peas. This has long been a favorite snack for both of them, you see, and they can't seem to understand why anyone would need them unfrozen. I ate half of mine before I pleaded being full of soup, and the toddler ate the rest.

There was little request for Family Guy clips today; the two did a lot of playing together, when not fighting over the doorway swing and rope ladder. The stuffed animals are a big thing for them.

See, ever since she was present for the other one's birth, the 5-year-old one has been regularly having babies of her own. She announces some days beforehand (usually; sometimes the same day) that she's going to have a new baby. then as the time nears she starts telling me it's going to happen, and she hopes Mommy will be home in time so she can be the midwife, and eventually stuffs a stuffed animal under her shirt/dress for several minutes. Then she lies down on the bed or gets in the tub (where the 2-year-old was born) and in the shortest labor ever the baby pops out.

That's never the end of it, either; they each get a name, and some time later there's a baptism (which gets more elaborate every time), and they have birthdays which she expects us to celebrate with a cake and candles, and, preferably, hats. They have these birthdays a lot, since she now has 6 or 7 "children" and the oldest one, born about a year and a half ago, is now somehow about 9.

Anyway, one of the oldest is Ressie, a huge and very cuddly cow that a passing stranger gave the older one at the State Fair last year (the younger one was asleep in the bottom of our rented wagon). She is the favorite, and gets dressed in their clothes and carried around and pushed on the swing. They bond around Ressie a lot.

The 5-year-old got dressed up to go to a party. It was to be in the hall. I told her to leave the door open, but that meant the 2-year-old would follow her, and she was insisting on a no-clothes day. So the 5-year-old hit on the idea of having the party in our apartment. I made a potato pizza (do not try this at home. I never will again. it was a disaster, but they didn't know it so they ate it anyway) and a bowl of apple wedges.

Once again, no nap form the toddler today. She decided to just have a meltdown around 5:30. Started crying, "Dah-deee!! ::sniff:: I wan' ::sniff:: go ooooutt!" and I said, "Great, let's do that!" Do discover that the sister had fallen asleep. Out cold; I tried for several minutes to wake her to no avail. Finally, I hit on an extreme solution; she was sure to wake up for McDonalds! So I tempted her with Micky D's, prodded her and poked her and tickled her until she sort of agreed to get up some time soon.

Then I was reminded that, in a home with small children, anything not used for a day is to be considered lost. (This varies, of course. With toothbrushes, it can be as little as three hours). The warm weather of the past two days meant we had not worn coats. Now it was 45, and the two-year-old's coat was missing. I searched all over. I went up to the ex's apartment.and searched that. Nothing.

I know I'm eventually going to find it in the vegetable crisper or something.

So, unable to leave the apartment, I did the next best thing and ordered Chinese. This was a disappointment to the 5-year-old, who offered her usual counter: "DADDY!!" It was as effective as ever. We had veggie lo-mein and sweet-and-sour chicken.

After dinner, I checked my email and read the new articles on MIT Tech Review. The other two wanted Peter Pan (again). I looked up and saw it was 7:54; bedtime is 9. Okay, they can have an hour to wind down. I tell the 5-year-old, "Okay, you an watch it in six minutes," but she haggled brilliantly: "SEVEN!" I blinked. "Okay!"

Seven minutes later, I started up Peter Pan... and the 2-year-old pushed the power button and shut it down. After repairing the bite wounds I left in her scalp (joke), I fired it up again, and decided to take a little doze on the futon while they were mesmerized. No danger of that; I was woken every 3-5 minutes by one or the other. As before, 15 or 20 minutes into it the 2-year-old needed rock-a-byes, and I fell asleep with her on the futon.

I woke to the 5-year-old saying, "Daddy, I'm bored." Which, at that time of night, and that tone of voice, means "Daddy, I'm tired." Then I had an intuition: "What time is it?" I asked.

She looked at the computer clock (our only clock, really). "Ten-Four-Four."

"Uh-huh. you restarted the movie."

"What?"

"You restarted the movie when it ended."

She justified this by saying she's tried to wake me and couldn't. Not quite sure how true this is in fact, but I'm sure it was true to her at that time, anyway, so I let it go. A toothbrushing and speed-read of The Subway Mouse later, and that was it. Here I am.

Ready to drop off, myself, which was not part of the plan.

[Oh, sorry, the title, I forgot: "Koimoumon" is (probably badly conjugated) Greek for "Having slept." It;s supposed to be a play on "molon labe". Referring to my just having woken up. It was funny when I started this. But then I'd just woken up.].