A Day in the Life

7:00 am. Ethan, Ryan and Jen are still asleep. Ethan is a world champion sleeper most of the time, unlike his brother. When Ryan was 2 he normally started the day sometime between 5:45 and 6:15am and when he woke up he would pound on his crib and yell until someone came in to get him. Ethan is the exact opposite. Even if he wakes up early, he will sit in his crib and talk to himself until he exhausts all possible conversation topics.

8:00 am. I think everyone is still asleep. Ethan might be talking quietly to himself. Either way, he's not requiring any services and so Jen and Ryan are free to sleep. I am currently at an eye exam but I would rather still be in bed. This represents the last time I schedule anything before noon on a Saturday.

9:00am. I am now home and Ethan is now awake. He runs to the door to greet me and grabs my legs so that I either have to pick him up or risk tripping. He's got quite a grip and the best bet is simply to lift the little dude in the air and carry him around for a bit. He knows what he is doing and he knows how to get what he wants.

9:30am. Ethan and Ryan are downstairs watching Elmo on the TV and sitting peacefully next to each other on the couch. They are sharing a blanket that is pulled up to their laps, and Ethan is enthralled with the little red monster on the screen. This has got to be one of the best brother moments I have witnessed. Two seconds later, Hope, our 35 pound (and growing!) dog runs downstairs and leaps onto the couch, scattering little Doyles and inflicting at least one tongue swipe on Ethan, the slower of the two boys. He wipes it off and pushes her away. "NO, Hope!" he says. "Bad Grill!" He still calls her a "grill" rather than a "girl". I don't think I am ever going to correct him on that because it is just so darn cute.

9:45am. Perfect brother moment ruined, Ethan makes his way up to the living room where he sits on the rocking chair and watches me pick up all of the paper that Hope has shredded while the boys were downstairs. He then, inexplicably, shouts "Daddy! Watch this!", stands up and attempts to leap off said rocking chair. Unfortunately for him the concept of action/reaction has not crossed his young mind and when the rocking chair moves back as he pushes off from it he ends up diving face first into the coffee table. I see this from the other side of the room and the only thing I can do is rush over to console my now crying son. Jen and I attempted to put ice on it, but trying to put ice on a 2 year old's face is kinda like trying to give a cat a bath - there is a lot of squirming, scratching, and anger and in the end the only thing that was accomplished is that you are now slightly more tired than you were when the ordeal started and the cat/kid is now more upset. His face is puffed up and he now has the first of what will be, given his propensity for climbing and then leaping off of tall things in the house, many black eyes.

10:30am. Dance party. Thanks to the Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce, and a little Bob Schneider, the coffee table incident is forgotten and we commence with the getting down. "You don't know me but my name's Eileen!" screams Ryan as the first line of "The Californian" by Schneider comes out of the speakers. Ethan jumps around like he has no cares and is simply enjoying the moment and I soon join him. Soon I am tossing the boys into the air and swinging them around while the stereo plays at a level almost certain to produce hearing loss. Eventually I run out of gas and fall to the floor, which Ethan takes as his cue to jump on my testicles. Immediately after Ethan rolls off me laughing his little head off, Ryan leaps onto my stomach in what appears to be a coordinated attack. I roll onto my stomach and tell the boys to go find mommy because daddy needs to lie on the floor for a while.

10:45am. The boys are "helping" me to fix the switch in a ceiling fan. This "help" consists of Ryan taking my tools away as soon as I set them down and handing them to Ethan while Ethan repeatedly hits my knee with whatever tool Ryan has just given him.

11:30am. Lunch. Nothing terribly exciting. Sandwiches, applesauce, water, and the occasional demand for cookies, cake, ice cream, or all of the above at the same time. Request denied.

1:30pm. Ethan's nap time and Ryan's story time. As mentioned before, Ethan sleeps like a champ. Apparently so do mom and dad because after Ryan's stories, Jen and I both laid down to rest while Ryan colored on our bed. Thankfully he had coloring books. Had there been no coloring books, I am fairly certain that he still would have colored on our bed. I think that he thinks our white comforter is like a giant blank canvass.

1:40 to 3:30pm. Ryan is done with his books and had now switched from artist to politician. Almost immediately he began lobbying and pushing for his "Halloween Decoration" agenda. Jen and I were behind this proposition, but we felt that there was room for negotiation, mostly as it pertained to the time frame. He felt that immediate action needed to be taken on the item while we were more in the mood for a slow deliberation on the matter. He began more aggressive negotiation tactics which consisted of expounding on the merits of pumpkin carving while pulling my eyes open, while Jen and I preferred the silent filibuster route to put off voting until a future time to be decided later. Finally after much negotiation, with Ryan conceding ground on the "pick-up-your-room" amendment as well as the "put-away-your-toys-in-the-living-room-first" provision, a consensus was reached and we all got moving. By now, Ethan had exhausted his list of solo conversation topics and was now yelling for us, so it was time to get up anyway.

4:00pm. Before pumpkins could begin to be carved, Ryan and Ethan jumped onto a large Thomas The Tank Engine riding toy, taking turns being the rider and the pusher. After a few rounds of pushing each other, Ryan accidentally (for real - I saw it) pushed Ethan too hard and Ethan fell off the train and banged his head on the kitchen floor. After a little comforting he was back to normal and ready to carve the pumpkins. For Ethan, carving pumpkins consisted of sitting on either my lap or Jen's lap while the other wielded the carving knife. He didn't really get into the whole pumpkin carving thing, and his sole contribution to the process was to make a face and say "Yuck," while pointing at the insides of the pumpkin.

5:30pm. Ryan is hungry and Ethan is getting cranky. Ryan deals with his hunger by asking for something to eat and then playing with his maze books until dinner is ready. Ethan deals with his crankiness by moving furniture around. Chairs, tables, drawers - whatever he can push or pull, he moves it. His favorite thing to do is move his wooden high chair to the sink and play in the water, so he attempted to do just that. However, since there were pumpkin guts and knives in the sink I quickly moved his chair back to the table before he could climb it and hurt himself. Unfortunately, he then climbed into his chair at the table and then tried to push both himself and the chair away from the table. This was successful up to a point, but the point where it became unsuccessful is also the point at which he fell face first into the edge of the table. The rest of the injuries suffered today were all bloodless, but this one more than made up for those others. He had blood on his hands, his face, my shirt, and the floor. Looking back on it, the amount of blood was rather impressive considering that it all came from two little cuts on the inside of his lower lip, but I guess if you are an already cranky two year old a little blood is going to go a long way. We got him calmed down and gave him a little pain killer, and by now dinner was ready so he sat and ate fairly contentedly.

7:00pm. Bedtime for Ethan and Story Time for Ryan. Ethan drifted off to sleep uneventfully just like almost every other night and Ryan moaned a bit about having to get ready for bed just like almost every other night.

8:00pm. Ryan has brushed his teeth and is in bed "sleeping". Normally he grabs a book and looks at the pictures or listens to music on his little radio for a while before falling asleep.

8:30pm. The first of several nightly visits to either mom or dad explaining that he has a "small problem". This small problem can be anything from needing more water to needing the clock set to the correct time ("Because my clock says that it is 100 o'clock and I think that it is wrong.") to needing his pillow fluffed.

9:00pm. Now he needs "A healthy snack" because "I haven't had enough fruit/cheese/yogurt/etc. today." This is a nightly thing.

It is now 9:27pm and I still hear him occasionally upstairs. I expect at least one more "small problem" before the night is done.

It may take an hour or two after we officially put him to bed for him to fall asleep, but he is adorable when he sleeps so it is well worth the wait.