The tale of Wednesday's dinner.

So, from reading my previous post, you know that I am a single-mom in the evenings. Dinner, baths, pajamas, bedtime = me, singular. I get home from work with the kids at about 5:20 every night and all of this needs to be accomplished by about 8:00 for Isaac to go to bed and 8:30 for Evelyn. Let me tell you about last night's dinner fiasco....

So, I arrived home like normal, and had nothing really planned for dinner (I may have fallen asleep on the couch at 9:00 the night before and and therefore did not prep anything.) Anyways, I took this proposition of Evelyn taking a bath at 5:30 as an opportunity to take 30 minutes and make dinner. You normal people may be thinking 30 minutes, wow, what a quick dinner. But listen closely to my 30-minute meal situation, and you tell me if you still think Rachel Ray's 30-minute meals is still a show worth watching. A whole lot of not good stuff can happen in those 30 minutes of dinner cooking.

I got Evelyn situated in the tub and put the gate up in the hallway so Isaac didn't try to go in the bathroom and dive head-first in the tub - I learned that lesson the hard way.... Evelyn is a water-lover. She seriously would stay in the tub for an hour if I let her, so I thought yay, 30 minutes of cooking dinner time :)

I then moved on to figuring out what to do with Isaac while Evelyn was being Ariel and I was cooking. Of course, pretzels! What a way to ruin his appetite so he's not hungry for dinner keep him busy with a healthy snack!

Things are going great, I get dinner made and put in the oven for 20 minutes. During those 20 minutes, Evelyn finds the new soap I bought (and purposely took out of the bathtub so she wouldn't use it) and uses it to wash her hair, gets it in her eyes, and is screaming because they are burning. I go in there to help her flush it out. But of course she won't keep her eyes open for me to flush the soap out - so it's just 20 minutes of screaming. Two bath towels, 1 hand towel and 3 wash cloths later, the soap is out and Evelyn is in her pajamas. Cue Isaac reaching the bag of pretzels off of the counter, spilling them all over the kitchen floor and dancing on them. He thought that was pretty cool.

I get the pretzels cleaned up and pull the enchilada lasagna out of the oven, and realize Evelyn's hair is dry now, but looks so greasy it's glistening in the light...

Apparently when you use half a bottle of Suave Kids tear free moisturizing body wash as shampoo, it leaves a thick coating of grease or oil or something totally disgusting in your child's hair. Also, I didn't realize it actually says "tear free" on the bottle. This is NOT the case. I will never buy this again - lesson learned. If it leaves that much residue in her hair, imagine what it leaves on her body!

So I wash her hair in the sink with her actual shampoo, and it's still greasy this morning. I'll have to use my shampoo and conditioner and wash it again to get whatever it is in her hair, out.

We did eventually eat and Evelyn loved the new recipe. I think next time I'll pre-make it and add it to my list of freezer meals.

You can imagine my delight when this came through my email this morning: Kraft's 30 minute meal ideas. This, my friends, is an email that is going right to the trash.

Baby, it's cold outside.

So, we finally got some snow that stayed on the ground. This is a good and bad thing. Good because our little Evelyn loves playing in the snow. Bad because now we have to add boots, mittens and scarves to our list of things to put on the kids so the neighbors don't think we're horrible parents we know the kids are nice and warm before venturing out. By the time I get them both all bundled up, I'm exhausted.

Here is Exhibit A.

Isaac:

Please note that you have to put on the mittens before the jacket for optimum snow-prevention. And be sure to pull the snowpants over the itty-bitty boots. I'm pretty sure he could not bend his legs or arms.

Exhibit B: Evelyn

Notice the rosey cheeks on both of them? I think I need to add ski mask to the list of things to put on them. Evelyn's cheeks are still red!

Anyways, things I discovered from our first December snow day:

1. Isaac likes to go sledding, and is adorable while doing it:

2. The cat does not like escaping out the sliding door when there's snow on the ground:

3. Isaac does not like face-planting in the snow...

Unfortunately/fortunately I didn't learn anything new about Evelyn this day. I already know she doesn't like her picture taken, she insists on playing hide-and-seek EVERY time we go outside (even in the snow), and she hurts her butt when Andy pulls her over a big jump on her sled. But, there's always next time :) (Yes, that is my cheesy smiley face because I don't know how to make an actual one the in blogging world, so just enjoy the colon and parenthesis I put there.)

Also, I just discovered I can make my pictures bigger at the time of uploading them, but there's no way I'm going back and re-uploading them all. It is a big pain in the tooshy to get these photos dragged to their correct spot. So, I'll make them bigger next time, I promise! Anyone have an easier way of getting pictures to just load where you want them, and not at the top of the post??

Let's try this again.

So I'm starting over, starting fresh! Ignore those posts below - they're from 2 years ago when everything really was uncomplicated. But since then, we've added one more baby - he's 13 months already,

my husband has been through 3 jobs, currently works evenings,

and my mom got married and moved 2 hours away,

So who am I kidding, I know life has its complications. Just hoping that by blogging about the good things that are happening and the things I am interested in, I'll be able to look back one day (hopefully soon, for goodness sake's - haha) and the struggles of today will be behind us. Plus, I need a hobby - so you're stuck with me! Stay tuned for when I actually do something eventful and I'll be sure to let you in on it :)