Huh? Whaaa? How?

The weekend?  One word... Awesome. 

Fun Saturday night at a friends (the men watched some fight on pay-per-view upstairs while the moms watched a movie downstairs and the kids ran around the whole house like savages - minus any face paint), grocery shopping alone (yay), Jake and Katie playing "chef" with my pots and pans while I made caldo de res (which was DElicious), the kids running around in their matching Sponge Bob jammies and eating uncooked pop tarts for a snack (somehow this has become their favorite food), and silence at 8 p.m. on Sunday night because Jake went to bed early after a nap-less day leaving me to watch Glee (with Katie snuggling and half asleep next to me) in peace.

Something big also happened this weekend and even though I knew it was coming, I suddenly realized that my baby wasn't a baby anymore.

No way. 

Jake can.not be 2 years old. 

It's like I blinked and went from c-section recovery to chasing an active crawler, another blink and I went from crawler to climber (um, scary), and I blinked again and went from baby to BIG boy (with a lot of other blinks in between just speading the growing up along).

It went so fast.

I mean, sometimes I'll admit that I'm watching the figurative clock waiting for the day when these kids decide that I'm not the best thing since sliced bread (or Sponge Bob) and they're okay with me leaving the room for the minimal amount of time it takes me to use the facilities... 

~ Start tangent ~

I almost long for a day when Katie doesn't open the door and wander into the bathroom to see what I'm doing and to have a very important, right-that-minute-urgent, long discussion about favorite animals. 

Which leaves the door open for Jake to wander on in and check things out. 

Which usually leads to a fight over who gets to sit on the step stool (situated less than 1 foot away from where I happen to be trying to do something I don't ever need company for). 

Which usually leads to me getting stressed out over the potential for injury on the many hard bathroom surfaces (not to mention the scary possibility of one kid pushing the other into the tub during any scuffles).  Which makes what I'm trying to do very difficult to do quickly. 

Which leads to many a sigh over one of the great injustices of mommyness.  Why is it (at least in our house) that the kids feel the need to follow mommy into the bathroom on almost every occasion, but daddy can wander about, even looking like he's got something important to accomplish, and NO ONE feels the need to follow him around?  If I look like I might have a purpose for leaving the room (not including picking up toys... somehow neither of my kids even twitches when I get up for that purpose), I've got two shadows attaching themselves to me.

~ End tangent ~

So, yes, sometimes I'm clock watching... but other times, the other 90% of the time, I'm hoping they stay right where they are for the next 10 years... maybe longer.  My babies.  Smelling sweet from their bath, cuddling next to me on the couch, running over to give my leg a hug before they shoot off to another adventure, heads together talking... all of those moments that make me forget the not-so-fun stuff (like throw up and spilled milk and the quickly resolved drama of the weekend that came when Katie, upset that it wasn't her birthday, told me that "all she wanted was for me to say Happy Birthday to her so she could stop crying" which I did, and she did.)

Oh, back to Jake.  We sang Happy Birthday at Katie's urging (a few times) but we're having the official birthday party later this month so I don't have any pics yet.