April 15, 2010

Ponytails Are Safer!

Some young, single, fashionable women may wonder why it is that mothers with young children tend to wear their hair in ponytails. Well, I'll tell you...

Once upon a time (exactly 48 hours ago) in a place very close to here (approximately 8 to 10 feet from where I now sit), I attempted to take a quick shower. Now I only had two young ones in the house and I let them play in the fenced-in backyard thinking that perhaps there would be less screams of bloody murder if they had more room in which to entertain themselves. Well, I was right on that account.

As I am enjoying the warm water washing away the tiredness and dirt and stickiness and, well, you get it, I get so far as to finish shampooing when Nathan knocks on the door. (No surprise there.) "What?", I ask. Nathan's voice comes through the door, "Noah got out the gate!" "WHAT?!", I repeat. "GET HIM! GET HIM!" Yes, I did sic my son on his brother. I hurriedly rinse off and grab a towel hoping to God that I don't have to run out front in this state or that the neighbors are gone or inside or something, anything other than outside to witness this spectacle that is unfolding.

I rush to the side door and, thankfully, am able to stop short. Noah is in my car. No, he's not allowed to play in my car but he's not in the street and the neighbors can't see us! I tell Nathan to shut the car door. Yes, I did. I had Noah shut inside the car because he doesn't know how to open the doors from the inside yet. Now with Noah under wraps, I commanded Nathan to stand by the door and keep an eye on his brother.

With my children once again contained, I could rush through getting dressed before promptly retrieving Noah from the car, yelling something about never leaving the backyard without permission until enough loud words had been spoken to satisfy my angst.

Then I took a dog leash and tied that gate shut.

The end.

P.S. My hair just had to go without conditioner until the next available shower. No hair was damaged during this story.

6 comments:

Jessica said...

Bless you for sharing this. The world must know. And I very much applaud your use of kid-on-kid management. Excellent!!

JenHartNSoul said...

HAAAAAAA!!!!! This is fabulous. The not-knowing-how-it's-going-to-unfold is both the worst part of motherhood AND the best part of telling the stories of motherhood!!!!

Hilarious, and ... brilliant title :)

Alissa said...

Hahaha! What an awesome post. You have two goofy kids!

Shell said...

OMG, the things we have to go through, just to take a shower!

I thought my boys were playing downstairs this afternoon and 2 of them were outside instead. In our NOT fenced in yard. Little punks.

Busted Kate said...

I'm pretty sure this exact same story must have happened (or something similar) to the woman (I assume it MUST have been a woman) who invented Shampoo + Conditioner in one!

Jennifer said...

LOL! I loved this story!

"Get him..get him" I hope you don't care but I think I am going to print it off and give it to my internetless (that isn't a word is it?) sister. She has one 9 month old that is running her a little ragged these days and a common complaint of hers is that she can't do ANYTHING, even take a shower hardly. And to think he isn't even walking yet!