First 4 Days Alone

We knew that moving back to the US was going to be a huge adjustment especially from a work/life standpoint.  The bottom line is that we will see a lot less of Ryan than we did in Belgium.  I decided to document his first nearly full week gone...and from how it went, I should be able to look back during any future weeks and think it could be worse :).

Day 1:
By 9:30 this morning I was ready to give away Kevin.  Lets see, while I was showering he unlocked the front door and started running around outside the apartment.  While I was trying to hurry to get dressed, he stole Kherington's boots and locked himself in their bedroom with them (I don't have a key to unlock the doors).  I was trying to figure out if my doctor's appointment was cancelled due to ice and turn to find him up on top of the counter.  After he got down, I'm was just finishing up and look up to find him sawing on the wall with a sharp kitchen knife.  Are you kidding me.  Luckily I go t a little sanity back by Facetiming with Jenny.  But while I was chatting, he got himself some cereal fine, but then topped off the bowl with a pile of brown sugar.

We eventually made it out the door.  I needed to run a couple errands that I had planned on doing on the weekend, but the ice storm made it impossible.  First up was Kohls.  Kevin kept running away from me, hiding behind clothes/belts and throwing some plastic ball with electronics inside (not a toy) down the isles.  I decided to just buy a kids shower curtain and finish my shopping online.  As I was trying to hurry and checkout, Kevin started running in and out of the automatic doors.  At one point security came over and asked who's kid that was.  My cashier, while nice, seemed oblivious to my need checkout (with my 1 item) quickly and want to tell me about reward cards and other sales pitches.  Next as I was walking out, Kevin snatched some books from the display at the end of the checkout, ran outside and threw them in the snow.  Are you kidding me?  At this point I was just mad.  I dragged him over to the books, made him pick them up, put them back and apologize then dragged him to the car.

I was going to drop the kids off at Aunt Cindy's while I had my doctor's appointment and the roads were looking fine until I was about 10 minutes out and then the freeway became a parking lot.  I was on a bridge and about 500 yards ahead of me I could see the plows and salt machines slowly clearing the road...the only problems was they stopped all lanes of traffic.  Change of plans, the doctor's office was just 4 minutes away so I decided to go directly there.  It took me nearly an hour.  Luckily the kids did awesome.  I had an ultrasound and blood drawn and they sat and watched...including the blood being drawn.

After the appointment we went to visit Aunt Cindy.  It was so nice to get out of our place.  The kids played with toys and Kherington cuddled right up next to her with a stack of Christmas books.  The favorite toy was definitely the shape sorter with a set of keys to unlock different doors.  The kids enjoyed some snacks before we loaded up to head home.  It was so nice for all of us to get out.

We ended our day with dinner at Pei Wei (with a buy on entree get one free coupon).  The kids only ate the fortune cookies, rice and pieces of cut up cucumber.  They tried out the chopsticks which was pretty entertaining.  Just as we were getting our food, Kherington said she need to go potty.   How do you do that with 2 little kids, 1 adult, a table of food?  We just tried to be quick and hoped they didn't clear our stuff.  It was fine, but eye opening as to what single parents go through on a normal basis.

Day 2:
Today was a pretty lazy day.  We didn't make it out of the house until noon and in the end we only walked over to the apartment business center to print something.  I had planned on taking the kids to the library right then, but they were already acting up so I opted for lunch and nap time.  After nap we did head over to the library.  First we all got library cards.  Kherington even signed the back of it herself.  Then we wandered over to the kids section and read stories together.  We reviewed a couples rules including where to put the books after they were done and no running and they both did great.  They each got to checkout 1 book and 2 DVDs this time.

Bed time was pretty rough.  Kheringotn was especially whiny and Kevin just flat out doesn't listen.  They didn't actually go to sleep until nearly 11pm.

Day 3:
I'm not sure how many times today I thought it couldn't possibly get worse and was then proven wrong.  Kevin came in my room at 1am but was a very restless sleeper.  By 7am both kids were up and ready for the day.  We had some breakfast and I tried to get ready for the day.  When I came out all the kids kitchenware was scatter around the main room and Kevin had locked the kids bedroom door.  We don't have a key to unlock, our screwdriver was slightly too large and a card/jiggling the handle didn't work.  I was frustrated but figured if I kept it locked for a little while Kevin would learn that it's not funny to lock door so I wasn't in a huge hurry to head over to Walmart for a smaller screwdriver.  Well, within 15 minutes, Kevin had peed his pants. Main problem with this being that ALL of his clothes (clean and dirty) were locked inside the kids room.  Now it was a little more urgent but I didn't have any options (I even check to see if Kherington had some stray dirty clothes laying around...no such luck).  While I started trying to figure it out, the kids helped them selves to a bag of carrots which promptly ended up scattered all over the main room floor.  I spent at least 30 minutes filing down the edges of the screwdriver that was too big with a knife sharpener and was finally able to jam it into the hole and open up the kids room.

I put the kids in their room for timeout and within a couple minutes of that Kherington came running out saying Kevin had peed again.  I went in to find he had climbed up onto the very narrow windowsill ledge and peed down the closed blinds.  Seriously?!  I put him in a diaper which I haven't done since potty training and took all his underwear away.  This was a huge deal for him.  I'm hoping it scared him enough to actually go pee in the potty.

The rest of the afternoon was just steadily crappy.  By 5pm I had dinner on the table was ready to put the kids in bed.  It sealed the deal with Kevin throwing Kherington's chicken nuggets across the room.  I thought I was done for the day when I heard a sink on and went out to find Kevin throwing a cup of water on the ground as he ran to their room and locked the door.  Another mess to clean up, and it just got worse when I unlocked the door to find him jumping the bed bragging that he had dumped water all over it (and he had).

I really don't know what to do with Kevin.  We get into our apartment this weekend and will hopefully get our stuff but there's no guarantee on that.  I'm hoping that once they have toys and a permanent living location we can start trying to have a 'normal' life and things will get better.

Day 4:
It wouldn't have taken much to have a better day than the last couple.  The first hour or so was great.  The kids both climbed in my bed and we watched some kid shows.  Then they had baths and breakfast.  Next up was the fighting and whining.  I had told them they could open the box they didn't get to the night before because they were acting so horrible, however I ended up just taking it away completely.  We made it out the door to Walmart to pick up a prescription and back without any drama then had lunch and naps.  Naps were a little earlier which ended up being nice because Kevin actually woke up on his own and happy at a decent time.  Ryan got home while we were out at the playground.

A couple other moments to remember:
1.  Kevin likes to climb and is quick at getting it done.  I turned my back and had a the kitchen table pushed over to the fridge and was helping himself to the Bueno candy bars I had stashed on top.
2.  Kherington watches way too much tv here.  It is kind of funny though that she gets frustrated whenever a commercial comes on and the show disappears.  Also on a TV note, there is a TV in the kids bedroom (we went from no tv's to 3 with cable in this temporary place).  One night she came running out saying she found a kid tv show (aka cartoon).  I didn't think much about it until I heard what they were say...I went in to find the simpson on...not quite a kids show.