Fridge on Lockdown

A few weeks ago, on an inauspicious day and without much fanfare, my accident-prone old laptop died. Finally! I was more than a little relieved. The thing just kept crashing and Hubby kept breathing life back into it somehow so it woud limp along feebly for a few more days, then the stupid thing would just crash again. So I'd wait and wait until Hubby had a couple of minutes to look at it and... you know where this is going. It's been that way for the past year, I guess, and I've gotten more and more disconnected from the rest of the world as the days clicked by.

But no more! Now it's 11:05 on Tuesday night and I can sit here and cruise along wherever I want to go on the Internet and actually arrive at the destination in the address bar. It's crazy!!! Because it actually works!!!!!!

So, I'm sure you're wondering how the kids are. They're splendiferous, actually. Biscuit just returned home from his dad's this afternoon since he's on Spring break. Oh, the Beans were overjoyed to see him. Parki ran up to him and gave him a huge hug and just cuddled on the couch with him for, like, twenty minutes. Piper waited about an hour and, when Biscuit was on the couch by himself, walked up to him with Xylophone Dog in hand and a little smile on her face. Biscuit thought she looked really cute and he asked if she wanted a hug. Pipsi just kept smiling and whacked him on the head with Xylophone Dog, then ran away laughing. I think that sounds a lot like a normal sibling relationship. Don't you?

It's funny, but there's always a learning curve every time Biscuit comes back home. We have locks on all the kitchen cabinets, which he's pretty much used to opening but rarely remembers to close, and today he was a tad dismayed to see one on the refrigerator. That is, after all, just another thing for him to forget-- and then I see it and get all exasperated and ask him how many times I'll have to remind him to do this and... yadda yadda yadda.

I really haven't wanted to put a lock on the fridge. It just seems like if I do that, I'm conceding the point that my children truly have no self-control and that I assume they will not listen to me. It felt like my last little bit of civility in the kitchen, that unlocked fridge. I could ask the Beans to grab the juice and put it on the counter, then to put it away when we were finished. They liked being my big-girl helpers. That last little bit of kitchen civility today has, like my old laptop, decidedly died.

It happened in a span of about four minutes. I was on the phone with my brother for one of our five-minute check-ins and I was multitasking, tossing a load of my smelly clothes into the washing machine when my MommyRadar started going berserk. I slammed the washer lid shut and let the empty laundry basket clatter to the floor, then swung around to the open door into the kitchen and stepped inside. No Beans. As I quickly scooted through the kitchen and dining room toward the family room I caught a whiff of my dad after lunch which was the last thing I expected to smell and was defnintely a sign that something bad was happening. At the threshold of the family room I spied my little Beans, twin partners in crime, silhouetted side by side in front of the semi-opaque sliding-glass door, all four of their little hands moving in mad little circles on the glass.

"Oh, no, Day. I gotta go," I said to my brother.

"What's wrong?" I heard through the phone. He sounded far away, like I was talking to someone who was living in another world which, in a way, was the truth.

Several years ago, in my life before twins, my dad and I worked together at the same company and we would have lunch together a couple of times a week. Frequently lunch consisted of sandwiches and Dad absolutely loves a mustard-slathered sandwich. Loves it like nobody's business. Hubby and I, bonded strongly and forever in our mutual disdain for condiments, keep a bottle of mustard in the fridge for Dad but otherwise generally eschew condiments. Today I learned that there's a possibility that a penchant for mustard is a hereditary trait that skips a generation.

"There's mustard all over the place," I said miserably.

"'Kay. See ya!" my brother chirped.

"What did you DO? Why would you do that?!?" I stood looking stupidly at my daughters and the mustardy finger painting masterpiece covering the patio door.

Parker turned and looked at me with her hands out in front of her, then focused her attention to her hands and gave one palm a tentative lick.

"Ew, guh-lowhs," Parki smacked her lips and wrinkled her nose and looked at me with those great big eyes. Pipsi turned and smiled that great big smile right at me, sunshine glinting off her golden curls. I wondered for an instant how two such divinely beautiful creatures could make such a hideous mess.

"Don't touch anything!!! Stay right there! Do NOT move!" I barked as I ran back to the kitchen for the baby wipes, paper towels and glass cleaner.

"This is disgusting! Don't ever do this again. Yuck, yuck! Now Papa won't have any mustard when he comes over," I tried to sound sad but really, it was all I could do not to scream like a wind animal. A wild, totally freaked-out wild animal.

"Oh, that's okay Mommy, there's more! See?" Parki showed me the mustard bottle, still terribly full.

"Papa has lots of mustard, Mommy. He has more at his house, too," Pipsi chimed in.

Parker's shirt, her brand-new shirt that she'd worn for maybe thirty minutes, had several yucky yellow streaks on it. I wiped the rest from her hands and face, then Pipsi's, then peeled off Parker's shirt and got to work on the door. Fortunately, mustard is surprisingly easy to remove and within a minute, it was like the mess never happened.

"I'm going to go clean your shirt so it doesn't stain. You stay RIGHT HERE and don't get into any more trouble, you little monkeys," and off I went, thinking that it was fortuitous that there was a load of clothes already in the washer. I was in the garage for a minute, wondering what could ever compel a couple of two-year-olds to smear mustard all over glass. Really, what was it? The texture? The color? Was I letting them watch too much tv? Was I not nurturing their inner artists enough? Were they, as I've kind of always feared, just evil?

I was pondering these and other deeply troubling problems during my return to the family room. I was figuring that I needed to get Parki into another shirt and prep the girls for a trip to Target when, for the second time in less than five minutes, I stopped dead in my tracks at the family room to gasp and stare at my daughter.

In the less than two minutes I'd spent cleaning her mustardy shirt, Parker had managed to clear everything off the surface of the coffee table, pull off her pants and Pull-Up, climb up onto the table and empty the contents of her bladder. I found her standing in the puddle of said contents stark naked with her head between her knees and her wet hands up in the air behind her in a display so bizarre I seriously thought that maybe, just maybe she really was possessed. Pipsi was moving over toward the table to play in the puddle too because, after all, what's more fun for Beans than water toys?

"Pipsi, do NOT touch that, baby! Parker, what are you doing? Wait, stop! Red light! You freeze! Don't move!" I bounded back through the kitchen and prayed fervently that Parker wouldn't do her old standby trick with weewee on the floor, the one where she stomps her feet, then stands on one foot and kicks the other one back and forth like a little motor, sending weewee spraying about in all directions.

Pipsi got her hands in it by the time I returned but we were able to avoid making this horrible situation far worse. I went over with Parker yet again the proper receptacle for bodily wastes and then asked whose turn it was to ride in the cart and who got to be Backpack Buddy. We all cleaned up, went back to their room, and dressed Parki and changed Pipsi's Pull-Up. While we put on Parki's pants she turned around and put her hands on my shoulders.

"Mommy love Parki so much?" Parker asked me, smiling.

"Of course I love Parki so much!" I do. It's gonna kill me, but I do.

"Mommy happy?" Pipsi came up behind me and hugged me, a big smile on her pretty Pipsi face.

"Yes, I'm happy! I have my Beans and I love them so much! Are you happy?"

"Yeah, I'm happy. Pipsi, you happy?" Parki asked.

"Yeah, I'm happy." Pipsi said.

At least we were all in agreement on that. And I think that we will remain so, now that the fridge is locked.