If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

Monkey3 fell asleep during the car ride to drop the Monkeys off at school and Dad to work. At home I transferred her to the bouncy seat while I started making granola.

3 cups of oatmeal

1 cup of nuts

1/2 cup of maple syrup

1/3 cup of olive oil

Monkey3 woke up. I sat on the floor with the mixing bowl to talk to her and stir the mix. I got up to turn on the oven, spread the mix on a cookie sheet, put it in the oven, set the timer for 23 minutes, and since Monkey3 was smiling and cooing at the colorful refrigerator magnets, I started to unload the dishwasher. I was almost done when Monkey3 went from happy to screaming. So I sat down on the sofa to nurse her. Comfortable and quiet, my mind wandered back to breakfast, when I had orally shared the latest draft of our evolving version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

If you give the baby Mama's milk,

She's going to want to snuggle,

Until she has to burp.

Once she sits up to burp,

She does squirts,

So then she needs a new diaper,

Unless she does mega-squirts,

And then she needs a bath,

And the Mom needs to change her clothes too

And do laundry.

While the Mom puts together the wash,

The siblings sing to the baby

Which the baby likes until the notes get too high

And the baby cries

For Mom.

So the Mom gives her snuggles,

And chances are, if the baby has snuggles,

She's going to want some Mama's milk.

The Monkeys think this is hilarious.

Monkey3 finished nursing, I propped her up for burps, and then she squirted... and I noticed brown went up her back, up the side, yup, and on me.

I carried her upstairs to the baby bathtub, put her in clothes and all, and while I was trying to get the cute hippo baby sprayer nozzle attached to the water spout of our bathtub, the timer went off in the kitchen. I carried the baby in the baby bathtub downstairs, put that over the kitchen sink, pulled the granola out of the oven to stir it, put it back in the oven, reset the timer for five minutes, and gave Monkey3 a bath in the bathtub over the sink, with water showering everywhere because the surfaces were too close to the sprayer nozzle. I wrapped her in a kitchen towel, put her in a new diaper, and the timer went off again. I put her back in the bouncy seat while I took the granola out of the oven and scraped it off the cookie sheet, because if I let it cool on the pan it would harden there and then I'd have granola ricocheting off the kitchen walls when I later try to take the granola off the pan. Monkey3 started to wail. I took her upstairs for clothes, dressed her, and she got more upset by this, so I sat down in my great-grandfather's rocking chair to nurse her again, and she got distracted by the pattern of the back of the rocking chair she could see over my shoulder. And then she cried again. So I put her in the Bjorn and walked her to sleep.

Let's see...I...

Need to clean up the kitchen post-baby bath

Finish emptying the dishwasher

Put the soiled clothing in the washing machine

And have my morning snack... yogurt smoothie with granola.