Studying with Dani

It's been a few days. I had a final exam yesterday, and I spent the last few days almost studying.

The kids were sort of, mostly good about it. A and N spent their mornings playing Fairy Princess Ballerinas who are Also Mommies, or whatever it is they do.

I felt kind of bad about spending so much time doing math problems (it's not like they're used to me doing homework, I was worried that it would all be too new and different for them), so I at one point I stopped and offered to read to them. But they just rolled their eyes, because what book could have a better story than Fairy Princess Ballerina Mommy Sparkly Magic Sisters?

S was also mostly good. Or more, relished the chance to not be good. She got to crawl around getting filthy in whatever she wanted, and it often took me upwards of 20 seconds to realize that she was stuffing things into her mouth.

For babies, life is one big game of Quick, Shove it in Your Mouth.

It just occurred to me that Quick, Shove it in Your Mouth would be a gross but excellent board game.

Anyway. The problem was with D. (Is anyone surprised?)

D is very sweet. She is a very affectionate child. She likes to express her affection physically. Usually by climbing, but sometimes also through grabbing, or squashing.

Oh, and she's also often naked. I'm not even going to get into that one right now. Suffice to say, it's not worth the bother trying to get her dressed and keep her that way unless we're in public.

So my attempts to read usually looked something like this:

I didn't add speech to that. So for the record, when there's noise, the noise is usually "Mooommmmyyyyyy. Look. Mommy. Moooooommmmmyyy. Look!"

I read, she climbed up my back and back down my arm and swung from my legs and bounced on my stomach and tackled my feet. But as they say, it's all fun and games (and naked toddler backsides in your face) until someone gets hurt. "Someone" was usually me, getting a quick jab to what in a normal person would be stomach muscles, but in me is just internal organs, guarded by nothing but a layer of pasty flab. So there was also the occasional intense flash of pain.

It actually wasn't so bad. Something about knowing that I could be kicked in the gut at any moment helped me stay alert. I learned a lot in the last couple of days before the test, and I'm pretty sure I did well.

I'm not going to start a toddler rental business for students trying to cram anytime soon, though.