I learned this week that there is no air conditioning on the second floor of the house.
Since I don't sleep up there and it hasn't been unbearably hot until this week, I didn't notice how uncomfortable is was upstairs. The kids' room and the bathroom both have working AC ducts, but apparently, that's it.
The heat and humidity have been smothering and the entire second floor is like a sauna. Today I had to break between making beds (it's laundry day for the sheets, I don't actually make beds every day) because it was too hot to stay up there for more than five to ten minutes at a time.
T put the baby down for a nap in a diaper with his fan on and he still woke up in a nice layer of sweat with his hair matted to his face. No wonder his diaper rash won't quit! He's never really dry.
When I come up the stairs in the mornings I turn on the AC for the day. It's always hot and stuffy on the first floor for the first half hour of the day but once the air kicks in, the house is perfectly comfortable as long as you don't need to do anything upstairs.
I was struck for some reason with the urge to sweep out the garage today.
So even though it was in the 90s outside and in the 100s upstairs, I went from making beds in the steam room to sweeping leaves and dead spiders in the...other steam room. I swear I lost five pounds today in sweat alone.
While I cleaned the garage I put the baby in the stroller with some toys. He dropped them all and sat there, resting his chin on his hand and looking bored. When I called to him he straightened up and shrugged at me.
His communication skills are astounding.
He's using sentences quite often and surprisingly correctly.
He ate breakfast while it was still a bit stuffy in the kitchen and I think he just wanted to get out of there so he threw his cup on the floor, called Willie over ("Wiwi!"), threw his breakfast to the dog and then yelled, "I don't want anymore!"
E was in the kitchen and couldn't believe his ears. Only T and I have had the pleasure of hearing Baby say real words.
I let Baby I go into the playroom and ten minutes later when it was considerably cooler in the house, he came back and ate every bite.
I have not had such luck with J.
J is severely underweight and T's solution to the problem is to just let him eat whatever he wants. I think she's in a panic about it, but that is not how I feed kids and I just can't bring myself to do it.
Last night E barbecued at least four different kinds of meat and J wouldn't eat any of it. T made him pasta and a chocolate (Nutella) sandwich. Now, I love Nutella as much as the next girl, but it's not a meal! It's not nutritious and I don't care what the commercials for it say! Adding hazelnut to chocolate does not equal real food. Yet this seems to be what J is living off of.
Tonight I had the kids for dinner (I'm taking off tomorrow in case you're wondering) and I made chicken nuggets, green beans, corn and pasta. The deal was that they had to eat chicken and one veggie and then I would give them the pasta, which they never have a problem eating.
R ate everything. J sat and did nothing for the duration of dinner. My rule is that after everyone else is done eating, he has to sit until he eats. Normally I can get him to eat at least most of his food when T isn't home. If he is left alone for a minute or two he gets bored and agrees to eat.
Not tonight. We left him at the table. He did nothing.
I finally caved and let him eat his pasta first because he's on antibiotics for his ear infections and he has to have something in his belly to take it. Not having dinner is not an option right now (another reason I think T will so easily cave and give him chocolate sandwiches).
When he starts acting up and getting out of his seat I sit him on the counter so he can't leave. He knows this and doesn't really mind it. Again, usually leaving him for a minute will inspire him to eat.
He sat there for twenty minutes telling me he wasn't going to eat.
We talked and he ate two bites of chicken.
Then he killed another twenty minutes.
By this time R and the baby had already eaten dessert and watched a DVD. They were playing and R wanted J to join them. She came into the kitchen to try to talk to him. Most often that works well. He loves his big sister and will do what she asks just so he can appease her.
He told her no and repeated his mantra for the evening: "I'm not eating!"
We left him again.
In the end he ate one bite of corn in addition to the two bites of chicken and the bowl of pasta.
I've never been defeated quite so substantially by a not-even-three-year-old. He's awakened the beast though. If he thinks this is going to happen again, he is severely mistaken.
When the whole episode was over, I took the kids up to the sauna for a bath. The baby actually laid right down in his crib and went to sleep with no argument. It's too hot to cry upstairs.
And so even though last night I killed a centipede and the night before that a silverfish ran out of my CLEAN laundry when I dumped it onto the bed to fold it, I am excited to go downstairs to bed tonight, where it's a decent temperature and the humidity has been sucked out of the air.
I believe my basement quarters are one of the two reasons my hair isn't as frizzy this summer as usual.
The other reason would be that Jessica, the sitter before me, was a very, very Spanish girl (she actually hardly spoke English and I think that was a key factor in the problems between her and T) and she left behind some very, very magical 'fro conditioner.
I've been using it after the pool and my hair looks and smells UHmazing.
Snobby Thursday tomorrow!
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