I Give Up!

Our day started out wonderfully...a chat with the husband, some coffee and strawberries, then I loaded up the boys for a nice long run on this beautiful morning.  We headed towards the water to enjoy the views...

The boys were pointing out all the sailboats to each other.  I'm sure they were thinking it was much easier to see them before I turned their stroller around to take their picture.  Woops!

So much for any shots of the three of us these days.  I officially take the worst self-portraits!  Who really wants to see me anyways when you have views like this...

Gotta love Stuart!!  It was so peaceful out there this morning.  I enjoyed every minute of my 7 mile run.  We probably should have stayed out there forever because things quickly went downhill after we returned home.  

The boys have been on a mess-making missions this morning.  I walked away from  the boys for literally two minutes to wash some dishes while they proceeded to spilled their "chocolate milk" (which I really make out of a chocolate-flavored super greens powder mixed with unsweetened almond milk) ALL OVER the porous stone fireplace and then decided to play in it to be sure we had as big of a mess as possible to clean up, train table and all it's 100 pieces included.  I hate vacuuming with my household vacuum so needless to say, having to bust out the shopvac on a Saturday morning almost put me over the edge.  

 I'm hoping once it dries it looks better than this or I'll be heading to Home Depot to research my options...

 

Lesson learned--never walk away from the boys when they have spill-able beverages in hand.  

Thank goodness for our little play pen to contain them while I cleaned up the mess...

Colton has no clothes on because his clothes were covered in chocolate milk splashes...I guess it could be worse.  In crying the blues to another mom with a daughter the same age as the boys, I learned that her daughter loves to take her messy diapers off herself without telling her mom and she doesn't do it in a neat way to say the least.  This age is TOUGH!!!

Always on a mission to make a mess, the boys threw all of the blocks from inside their playpen into the hallway...

At least they helped me clean that mess up and it didn't require any cleaning products.  Phew!

For snack time, I gave them some pretzels along with some of their M&Ms for Valentines Day thinking it would be a fun little treat for them.  They saw it as an opportunity for another mess and decided to dump their snacks onto the table and then fling everything onto the floor...

Well boys, I guess you taught me that you can only handle snacks from the confines of your booster seats.  

All this cleaning up before noon helped me to finally decide what I want to give up for Lent--I'm giving up trying to get ANYTHING done while my boys are awake and unrestrained or otherwise contained. I can't walk away for even a minute without risking disaster.  I'm throwing in the towel!  I give up!  No more trying to "do it all."  This phase of our life will be about making it through with smiles on all of our faces and if that means the dishes and the e-mails have to wait til nap time, I guess I'll have to be ok with that for now.  My go-go-go personality is going to have to learn to relax a bit...wish me luck!  I know it's going to be easier said than done.