The one where being the fun mom bites me in the butt

Alternately titled The one where I perform surgery on a vacuum cleaner

or Aprille and her no-good, terrible, very-bad, horrible, awful idea

or Never let your 4-year-old play with packing peanuts no matter how fun it seems.

(You pick.)

So, first of all, pregnancy is doing very very weird things to me. Like aliens-are-taking-over-my-body weird. Whatever hormones that are making baby grow like crazy and making me want to eat everything in sight have also given me lots of energy and pointed me in the direction of HOUSEWORK. Blogging has become a drudgery, I have nothing to say and no words in my brain, social media is just meh…but I’ve gone to bed with a clean kitchen every night for the last three nights.

Pregnancy craziness I tell you. This. is. not. me.

I tell you this because it’s only mildly important to the story.

So I had a super-awesome day, in which my floors got cleaned with sun and warm air wafting in my windows all while listening to podcasts about birthy stuff. I’m also riding on this high of going to yoga three times this week already. So I’m pretty much a domestic-pregnancy-mommy goddess at this point.

I picked up Ezra at therapy who had a really good day, minus learning the B word from a peer and testing it out on our very favorite provider as we exited the building.

We came home and instead of relegating him to the basement to watch Netflix, I sent him out on the unused-for-months sunporch with his Star Wars cars so I could, you know, load the dishwasher and scrub pans.

I had just about finished with Mount Dishmore when his cute voice asked, “Mom, what’s these?” 

I looked out and saw that he had a box of packing peanuts which had been sitting in the corner of the sunporch since November.

“Can I play with them?”

“Sure baby!”

I mean, come on. He’s had a good day. He deserves a little fun, right? What could possibly go wrong?

The box was dumped and said child went to town having a blast. I congratulated myself on seizing a great sensory moment for my child and being the fun mom and continued washing dishes…until I heard the stomping.

This is where my brain started to realize that maybe this wasn’t the best idea. But then I peeked out and saw this adorable face:

So instead of freaking out (which is what I should have been doing), I snapped pictures. And Instagrammed them.

Then, because I’m all about teaching my children responsibility (ahem), I went downstairs and got the vacuum and asked Ezra to start cleaning the mess up himself, while I then ran to the bathroom to pee for the 427th time today.

I came back and realized that this wasn’t really working, so I took over. Instead of using the hose, which looked like it might have been clogged, I was just going to vacuum this stuff like normal.

{In other completely unrelated news, in one of my past lives I was a very very very dumb blonde.}

Back and forth I went, shredding peanuts into smaller teensy weeny pieces that just…went…no where. So I started wondering what was wrong with the vacuum.

Commence vacuum surgery.

Meanwhile, Ezra, who was now playing with two butter knives that I had used to try to unclog the vacuum hose, went outside and started digging in the dirt and trying to cut down trees…with butter knives. Miraculously, this kept him occupied during the duration of the surgery.

If there was a screw on the vacuum, it was removed. I now know what a vacuum motor looks like. Also, pass the allergy meds please because my throat and ears are itchy.

When it was all said and done nearly an hour later, the vacuum was put back together, freshly unclogged, with only one extra screw lying around. I swept up the biggest pieces with a broom, tried to vacuum again, which did absolutely nothing and may have clogged the vacuum again but la-la-la-la-la I didn’t just hear that thought.

Now the sunporch is still covered in shreds of packing peanuts (which have also made their way into the house all over the floor that I swept today when I was being a domestic-pregnant-mommy goddess. I was covered head-to-toe in vacuum dust and packing peanuts (before using tape to get off the biggest chunks and having a nice hot shower).

When Russ asked how my day was going before driving home, I said this:

“Currently I’m covered in packing peanuts and performing surgery on a vacuum. Ezra is playing in the backyard. We had some sensory fun that went very very wrong.”

Then sent him this selfie:

Tomorrow, he’s watching Netflix after school. End of story.