I am so freaking tired, I can’t believe it. Well, maybe “worn out” is closer to what I mean. Yesterday I woke up at 9, cleaned house a little bit, plunged my first toilet ever (although I hear it is Murphy’s Law that the toilet will be clogged with shit when you have to plunge it, that did not make me feel better at the time), and then walked across Prospect Park the the Brooklyn Museum. It was a much longer walk than I had anticipated, and since I live in a basement where I have no real access to outside, I wasn’t expecting heat or humidity. Pleh.
Once there, Rick and the girls and I waited for my friend Tony and his wife and kids and Jordana and Thabiso (the artist whose work we were there to see). Took a while for everyone to assemble, but the landscaping outside the museum is nice with a grass terrace to sit on and a fountain to play in, so we didn’t mind. We went into the museum, and if you have never gone to a museum with four kids ranging in age from 11 to 8 months, I don’t recommend it. The 11 year old was looking for ways to destruct all the art, the 8 year old was wanting to touch everything and bouncing off walls, the 6 year old was doing fairly well but had a predictably short attention span, and the 8 month old…well, she was amazingly well behaved.
After an hour and a half, we took the kids (who were extremely happy to get outside) over to the park to fly kites. Problem. No wind. So Tony comes up with the brilliant idea of making the kids run and yank the kites behind them. They do get airtime this way, but have to keep running to keep the kites up. This followed a half hour of yelling “Run! Run faster!” and “Run, Bullet, run!” at the 6 year old and the 8 year old. The 11 year old had enough sense to sit down and watch her sister run around. Her father did not have that much sense, and Rick and Tony ran around almost as much as the kids.
A fun thing I learned this weekend. Kids forget that they told you they were “starving” 30 seconds ago. They forget that they told you they were “starving” 500 times. And when they have to go to the bathroom, they have to go now. It may surprise you that I hadn’t learned that before. But the 11 year old is generally past that point, and we’re not often away from home for hours on end, forcing us to use public bathrooms and scout for food. Today at the Mets game, I re-learned this. I made a rule where they could only go to the bathroom every fourth inning. Because as the only woman with them, you know I had to make the bathroom trips.
It was a good weekend, despite what all the bitching might imply. It was just looong. And when we’re with five million other people and kids, Rick and I don’t have a lot of “us” time. But I guess this is part of the parenting thing, huh?
Alright, going to continue watching “Far and Away”. Yep, my Sunday night ends with a Tom and Nicole movie. So sad…
