All About the Allemans

I've been having a few too many mommy meltdowns lately.  I have a lot of buttons to begin with, but Alex knows just how to push them all.  Every. single. one.  Alex LOVES the word no.  And he loves my angry face, and my stern voice.  He loves doing bad things because he gets my attention and gets to see me angry.  I've tried everything I can to babyproof this house, but there are just some things I can't baby-proof - and Alex knows exactly what they are and constantly goes for them.  He bites.  Oh, how he bites.  He attacks Owen all the time, making Owen scream.  He spits. Oh, how he spits.  He rips his bib off over, and over, and over.  During diaper changes he kicks and screams and contorts his body in every possible way making it almost impossible for me to get a diaper on him.  Every time.  He screams like no other baby has screams before.  He pulls hair.  And he thinks it's all SOOO funny!  He walks toward those curtains looking over at me with a smile on his face saying "look Mom, I'm going to pull on these curtains, and you're going to chase after me saying 'no! no! no!' and it's going to be so fun and we'll do it again and again!"  I can't ignore him.  He's going to break the curtains, which belong to the landlord, which we will have to pay to replace.  Or he's going to throw Owen to the ground, smacking his head on the floor.  The kid is 12 months old - I'm pretty sure that's too young to discipline him in any way.  It's constant.  And it's making this mommy CRAZY.  Please any words of advice would be very welcome.

So, I'm getting to the point where I really, really never want anyone to ever ask me the question "so, are they twins?"  (obviously referring to Owen and Alex).  Every time we leave the house, the question is inevitable and leads to 10 more questions and I really just want to go about my daily business like a normal person and NOT answer those questions over, and over, and over.  The question is very normal.  I get that.  I  would ask me that question if I were them.  They are just being kind people and trying to strike up a conversation and I appreciate it and I'm not annoyed at them or anything.  I just flat out don't want to explain it.  Again.  Lately when we get asked that question we answer with "no, but they're close" or "no, they're 5 months apart" and we just leave it at that.  But by doing that  we're basically saying to them "I know that doesn't make any sense and I know you have all sorts of questions, but I don't really want to talk to you right now, so leave me alone."  And I don't want to come across as totally rude.  And I actually do enjoy talking to strangers, but just not about my children's ages and their adoption story.  But when we say they are 5 months apart and don't say anything else, they usually just sit there for a minute and let the wheels turn.  Then one of the following: "which one is yours?",  "are they both yours?", "so, how....?".  Ya, they're both ours.  They're adopted.  And then the next line of questions... We've thought about just saying "yes, they're twins".  But that's lying.  And with potential follow-up questions I could really dig myself into a hole.  And soon enough the boys will understand us and will either a) begin to think they are twins or b) know that their parents are liars.   I love our babies.  I love that they're adopted.  I love their story - I think it's pretty cool.  But after telling it 5, 938 times, I just want to talk about something else.  Thank you.

Did I mention in my last post that I was over-the-moon excited for cool weather?  Well, the 2-day cold front was awesome.  Then summer came back and hasn't left and I'm super duper grumpy about it.

I'm such a downer.  All the stuff I write about is negative.  I'm really very pleased with life right now.  The good stuff just isn't exceptionally interesting.  I'll try to come up with something happy to write about next time :)