Rain, Rain, Bugger Off.

It's raining. This sucks. The weatherman did tell me it would rain, but I wrote him a letter saying I didn't want it to, and included a petition signed by more than a thousand fictional people who agreed with me. He obviously didn't read it, because it still rained, despite my protest.

Mia seems convinced it would still be a fun idea to go outside, where it's absolutely gushing down rain and there are gale-force winds blowing at about three-hundred miles an hour. I'm afraid if I let her go out, she'll either be swept up by a gust of wind and carried away to Kansas, or a house will blow down right on top of her, showing only her curled-up red-and-white-striped socks.

Bram is so stir-crazy, he's bouncing off the walls. I decide to take them for a drive to distract them, and on the way back from going nowhere, I think it would be fun to make a sort of roller-coaster ride out of it by applying the breaks a few times in a row so we'd all lurch forward, as I cry over-enthusiastically 'Weeeee! So much fuuuun!' I find out the hard way that this was a very poor idea because Bram barfed his breakfast all over the floor as soon as we walked back in the house.

Now, Bram is creating a 'no-environment' for himself by doing all the naughty things he knows he's not supposed to do in a row. Mia is complaining that she has an owie on her foot and needs a band-aid pronto. Upon inspection, I see that her wound is nothing more than a freckle. I try to explain to Mia what a freckle is, by showing her the one on my face. She persists that it still hurts, and is now convinced mama needs a band-aid too. Mia is pleased, since her owie has miraculously healed once the band-aid is applied. I am not so pleased, since I'll be wearing a band-aid on my face for the rest of the day.

I decide now to preoccupy them by reviving the toys in the toy box in the kids' room. It's something I've been procrastinating because the toy box is so full of toys, it's actually quite dangerous to try to take one out. All the toys are piled on top of one another so precariously, that if someone were to disturb the pile by, for example, breathing too close to it, the toys would in all likelihood cascade on top of them and bury them alive. The only way to actually play with any of the toys is to dump the entire contents of the toy box onto the floor. This on its own provided some entertainment, and the kids actually started playing with stuff they hadn't seen since they were newborns. Success!

Now is a perfect opportunity to get some mialeentje marketing done! I switch on the computer and am about to go online when I realize I don't hear anything. Oh my god, it's silent... Have they killed each other?

I go in the room to check, which I should never do. As soon as she sees me, Mia decides her owie hurts again and starts crying. Misery loves company, so Bram decides he too is unhappy with the current activity. They both need a hug simultaneously, but do not feel like sharing mama or taking turns, resulting in some pushing, a significant amount of screaming and a whole lot of discontentment in general. I need to come up with a new activity, stat.

Jumping on the bed! They love to jump on the bed. I lure them to the bedroom and initiate the fun by jumping on the bed myself. Mia joins me without hesitation, but Bram looks a little apprehensive. Suddenly, I am regretting this idea, for fear that too much verticle motion might cause him to repeat this morning's barfing incident. I decide to take the risk and help Bram up onto the bed, figuring if he spews, it's about time I change the bed sheets anyway.

So we start jumping. Giggles and smiles fill the room and, for about thirty-five seconds, things are good. Then, I witness the inevitable - Mia and Bram bump heads. I should've seen it coming, since their heads are proportionally huge as it is, and the way they were cavorting all over the place, it was bound to happen. There was a millisecond of silence before Mia started wailing like a banshee. Bram (who is blessed with a titanium alloy skull) simply shook it off and immediately began jumping again, which caused Mia to fall off the bed and wail even harder. One more band-aid, coming up.

Now it's finally time for Bram's nap. Best case scenario, Bram goes down for a couple hours so I'll only have one child's needs to cope with. But Bram is two, which by definition means he will not do anything I want him to do. He has his own agenda, which would be fine if he were a 42-year-old man in a suit and tie, but not when he is a two-year-old boy who needs his diaper changed. Naturally, on this particular rainy day, Bram did not agree with my plan of going down for a nap. I put him to bed anyway, and subsequently listen to him lament for an hour from the confines of his crib. If he had an aluminum mug, you can bet he'd be banging it against the rungs of his prison-like confinement. I, on the other hand, was ready to pull my hair out at the sounds he was making. After much suffering and plugging of ears, I give in and take him out of bed. He was a free man.

A DVD it is, then. Which Disney favorite will it be this time? I may be the one with the remote, but Mia is the one with the power:
Me: 'Okay, kids, time for... Wall-E!'
Mia: (throwing her head back in protest) 'Noooooo! No Wauweeee!!'
Me: 'Okay kids, time for... Toy Story!'
Mia: (rolling over in agony) 'Nooooo! No Toyshoriee!'
Me: 'Okay, kids, time for... Finding Nemo!'
Mia: (getting impatient and irritable) 'Nooo-ooooo! No Nee-moooo!'
Me: 'Okay, Mia what do you want to see?!'
Mia: 'Doggie.'
Me: 'Sweetie, we have fifty different movies about doggies - which one do you want to see?'
Mia: (disappointed in mama, who is obviously not good at mind-reading at all)'Dogg-gie!'
Me: 'Okay kids, time for... Bolt!'
Mia: (throwing her head back and close to tears) 'Nooo! No doggieeee!'

Rather than going into a discussion with her about her definition of a doggie, I decide to put on a more challenging movie to get them completely engrossed: 'The Dark Crystal'. (If you don't remember this mid-80's movie because you were either too stoned, or not interested in the whole Jim Henson-plus-Brian Froud-equals-mystical-muppets thing, it's a semi-dark, rather weighty fantasy movie with extravagant muppets and Frank Oz does his falsetto voice for about 98% of the characters.) 'The Dark Crystal' works like a charm. Both kids are glued to the TV, overwhelmed by the bizarre puppet-critters and trippy colors. This should hold them for a good half hour at least. Okay, back to that marketing I need to do.

Instead of doing any marketing, though, I write this blog post. I am aware of the precious time I am wasting, but I can't seem to stop writing. They say you should never snuff out the flames of inspiration, and knowing me, the content of this post will keep me awake tonight if I don't get it off my chest. It's still raining, the kids are quickly losing interest in the freaky muppets and I am running out of ideas. On top of that, the weatherman is predicting rain all week. I'll just have to write another letter to him. Will you sign my petition?