Deanna and Owen are thawing out in Florida for a few days with her parents, leaving the twins and I to fend for ourselves in this subzero meat locker of a city we call home.
While others may have seen this as unfair or depressing, the twins saw it simply as an opportunity to host that all night "Go Fish" party and tournament they are always scheming to have but that Deanna would never let them do, what with their 8 p.m. bedtimes and all. I can be a bit of a soft touch, and soon enough on Saturday afternoon both boys were making some calls to their little friends on their plastic Mickey Mouse cellphones and sending text messages that to me all looked like "psihPPP7&^$plmmmmm," but which is apparently toddler for "game on" as it was not long before a rowdy bunch of two-somethings was gathered in the basement. The buy-in was sixteen cheerios, a wheel from a hot wheels car, and "something shiny." Beverages of choice were non-alcoholic jello shots and whole milk shooters.
A couple of hours in, hunger descended on the crowd, the plastic cellphones came out again, and next thing I knew, a delivery guy was at the door with the entire contents of the kids menu from the local Mexican place. Not too much later, a fight broke out - there was pushing and nonsensical yelling ("Bubblebutt!" "Bad boy!" "No you bad boy!") - followed by all of the participants and non-participants converging on me for a mass tattle. Having dispensed some of my judge-like justice in the form of timeouts for the main offenders, I returned upstairs to find some female toddlers had arrived - those damn plastic cellphones again, how the hell were they doing this?!? As the responsible parent present, I was initially concerned that a game of strip "Old Maid" might be in the offing, but was comforted by the fact that none of the attendees possessed the manually dexterity to actually remove all of their own clothes.
Instead, it turned into a crazy toddler rave, with some three year old kid wearing sunglasses spinning Ralph's World and Dan Zanes tunes until the pacifier-sucking crowd on the floor was worked up into a well-past-bedtime frenzy. The endless loop of Baby Einstein, Teletubbies and BooBah videos running on the large screen TV in the background lent the scene a surreal quality. As the only adult present, I was for all intents and purposes the bathroom as well, as most of our guests were not potty-trained. The line for diaper changes snaked around the corner into the hallway at times and there was loud complaining when we ran out of wipes. From there, the evening could only go one place: karaoke. Let me just say you haven't lived until you have heard a band of tone-deaf, sugared-up two-year-olds massacre the lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the Alphabet Song at 10:00 p.m. on a crazy Saturday night.
With the crowd collapsed into fits of giggles, I knew it was time to send everyone packing. I made a round of calls to what turned out to be largely surprised parents who had assumed their little bundles of joy were tucked safely in their cribs. By 11 p.m. - the toddler definition of staying up all nite by the way - I had cleared the house of all but my two little troublemakers. After confiscating the plastic phones - as well as the plastic keys to their Step 2 foot-powered cars, just to be on the safe side - it was off to bed for all of us.
Twenty four hours later, most of it spent cleaning up - I swear I will be finding half-filled sippy cups of congealed milk until Spring - I am still exhausted and just now finally able to muster the energy to write this.
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