Naptime wraps up around 4 pm, which is when I close up shop for work & things start to get crazy. It always seems like these last two hours of the day are the hardest, Harper wakes up with her second wind & I am just about cashed on energy.

I lay Harper down on the living room floor to change her diaper. She extends her go-go-gadget arms & reaches under the couch to pull out some sort of cat hair covered cracker that she immediately eats before I can stop her, then scissor kicks me in the chest & escapes without any pants on. I spend the next few minutes chasing her around, which is obviously just a game to her since she is much faster than me at this point. We end up in her teepee playing “peek-e-goo” with her stuffed animals & spend at least fifteen minutes getting her doll’s hairbrush tangled in my hair. I get her a bowl of grapes, a fresh water & we begin our afternoon routine of searching for missing alphabet puzzle pieces. (The W is her favorite. Or maybe it’s the M?) Once the puzzle is finally complete, she tosses it into the abyss of other toys in her toy basket & grabs us a pair of her plastic golf clubs that we will use to putt last year’s Easter eggs around the house. This is also when “Harper, don’t hit mommy in the knee caps with your golf clubs” starts to play like a broken record.

We set up shop in the living room with crayons to do some coloring. She asks me to draw cats, balloons & pumpkins, approximately five hundred of each, we make paper hats, paper airplanes & sort all the crayons by color before she decides she is over it. She packs up her crayons (and hides a few in the couch cushions for safe keeping) while I head to the kitchen start cutting veggies for dinner. I can hear her chasing the cat around,”kiddy! sit!” as she kindly instructs Izzy to take a seat at the play table.

Eventually she joins me in the kitchen, where she proceeds to unload the entire tupperware cupboard & scatters the contents throughout the entire first floor. I give her a wooden spoon & an oven mitt so she can “help mama?” She whips up some imaginary guacamole then decides she wants a banana. I hesitate, because I know she will probably only take one bite, but give her one anyway & within minutes, banana mush covers her hair & half the kitchen. She hates being messy, so now she has half the tub of baby wipes pulled out do a little damage control. I can’t help but laugh, “I got it!” she assures me.

“Oooh! My-Meow!!” Harper squeals & brings me the remote. This is toddler gibberish for “Nemo.” which means she is going to sit down & be entertained for a short seven minutes. I start to wonder how medical professionals can get away with writing off the idea of having a drink when you’re pregnant. They are unsure about what would be an acceptable amount so they just recommend against it all together. I may be pro-more-research on that topic. Haven’t they ever been pregnant before? A few sips of sanity during this little happy hour of toddler trickery is all I’m asking for. But I don’t. So I pour myself another glass of pineapple orange juice, which the cat (who now has a Mickey sticker on her back) promptly tips over & spills everywhere.

I half-assedly clean that up & get back to cutting veggies when I get rammed in the back of my ankles with a toy shopping cart. My knees buckle & slam into the kitchen cabinets, but that’s ok, I’m just thankful it didn’t cause me to cut off my index finger. Finally!! I hear Brandon unlocking the garage door, “daddy’s home!!” I yell to Harper & she runs to the door. Brandon is happy to see that we are both still alive, tosses me a bag of peanut m&m’s & scoops up the toddler.
Time to tag team this biz.