Thirty-Year-Old Exhausted Mother Wears Pigtails

It has been a bad day. It started out with profuse whining at the crack of dawn, and the whining never really did stop. Mr. Perpetual Mess was just devious from the get go, and managed to figure out how to climb over the gate I use to trap him in his room when he needs time to himself. While I thought he was napping he really squeezed and ate large quantities of pink Dora toothpaste (he double loves that toothpaste because it’s not only pink, but has a picture of Dora on the tube) and poured out a large portion of my shampoo into the potty training potty. He also took down a couple window shades, emptied out a few dresser drawers, and managed to place all books in his room underneath his bed, and well as step on nearly everything he was not supposed to step on all day. He never did fall asleep, which led to a tumultous series of major meltdowns from 4:00 p.m. onward, complete with a particularly nasty tantrum that lasted over 45 minutes. However, after the tantrum, he was so exhausted he didn’t bother with supper, and went right to sleep, waking up only briefly to find some pajamas.

So, why am I wearing pigtails, you still wonder? Well, there are a variety of reasons, the first being that I was too busy chasing my lovely little toddler (and he still is lovely, even though it has been an extremely trying day) to manage to take a shower. Secondly, because The Banana comes unglued every time she is left alone across a room from me, I have to carry her everywhere I am chasing the toddler, and I finally just stuck her in the backpack on my back for a few hours. This works just fine except that she pulls my hair! So I stuck two pigtails in my hair that stick out at asymetrical angles to my head, and this deters her chubby little fists, for some reason. It really, really looks bad because there is still about one fourth of my hair too short for pigtails that sticks out funny in the back. But there is something about pigtails, even bad ones, that seem a bit spritely, a tad cheerful, even in the middle of a miserable day.

Needless to say, many things we had planned on doing today did not get done, including a hike that I was especially excited about. However, in the middle of the afternoon, Ms. Crazy Preschooler came bouncing down the stairs and thrust out a stapled wad of paper at me. Sensing my maternal distress, she found a stapler on my desk and decided to write a book about animals for me. There were wonderful pictures of bears, giraffes, fish and particularly active dolphins complete with phontetically spelled writing to go with it. It pays to have a messy desk and an office strewn with writing paraphenelia! I was so thrilled. So there were a few bright spots in my day, possibly the best being that everyone in the household is now snoring.