While I'm away...

It's official.  December 6th at 11:30am the red curtain (aka my uterus) will part and Mayer Child #3 will make his or her debut onto planet earth. 

While I'm spending my 5-day vacation in Percocetville catching up on celebrity gossip, Nick will have a lot of one-on-one time with the girls.  A thought which makes me a little uneasy considering when I left for a girls' weekend in August I came back to find about 40 Hershey's wrappers in the trash and noticed Ellie had developed a permanent eyebrow twitch.

Also I'm sure you all remember that other time I came home to find he had safety pinned my baby to the sheet while she slept to protect her from SIDS.   

So I thought it might be beneficial to leave him with a list of helpful reminders.  A public list of helpful reminders so I have some sort of legal leverage should something go terribly wrong. 

1.  I don't care if they are baby teeth "and they're just going to fall out anyway."  Brush them.  Twice a day.  With a toothbrush.  And toothpaste.  Lila loves to have her teeth brushed.  Ellie can get a little squirrly sometimes about brushing her teeth and occasionally we have to do it "the hard way":  First, sit on the toilet stool and wrap your legs around her hips so as to render her immobile.  With your left hand, pin her arms down while you lock her head into place between your ear and shoulder, making sure to pinch her nose shut with your chin, blocking the airway good and tight.  Once her mouth opens and she gasps for air, brush like hell.   

2.  Comb Ellie's hair every morning.  I usually do this after the brushing of the teeth because if you do in fact have to brush the teeth the hard way it will inevitably mess up her hair as she tries to wriggle free to breathe.

3.  I know they think it's the !most fun ever!, but please don't run around the grocery store pushing the cart up and down the aisles like a NASCAR ass hole.  The grocery store has become my primary channel for a social outlet and many days the workers provide my only adult interaction.  I've worked very hard over the past two years to establish a reputation there for myself and I don't want it tarnished because you accidentally plow over some old lady.

4.  Dance practice is in the living room from 3pm - 4pm.  No exceptions.  Lila has a lot of work to do on that booty slap.

5.  You know that thing you do where you hold them upside down by their ankles behind your back and swing them around and I always say "please please please for the love of Christ stop doing that you're going to give me a heart attack?"  Yeah, don't do that. 

6.  Open all pieces of mail.  If something has an envelope inside it usually means you're going to have to do something with it.  First, log on to our bank account and click 'online banking.'  You know what?  Forget it.  Just bring these pieces of mail to me when you visit.

7.  Sesame Street is on at 9.  You're probably going to want to feel like drinking vodka about 15 minutes in.  But you can't because there's a good chance you're going to run out of milk at some point during the day and have to drive to the grocery store.  If you can, try to wait to drink until 4pm.  Now that daylight savings time is over you can usually trick them into going to bed at 5:30.

8.  Lila says 4 words and does 1 sign - down, yeah, vitamin, yellow and signs more.  At first I thought her choices foolish and impractical.  Personally, I would have opted for something more self-serving or at least helpful, like please give me food (middle finger sign), or the house is burning (loud whistle).   However, you'll find that observing the context and paying close attention to her varied inflections these 4 words pretty much cover all the bases.

I could go on for days but really, this is all just gravy.  I would be thrilled beyond belief to come home and find they're both alive and in one piece.  That's really all I can ask of myself each morning when I wake up.  I consider each day a victory if someone didn't swallow a penny or starve to death.

This is my last pregnancy and I can't go through this again to make any replacements.