We had a wonderful, busy, active weekend with Grandma in town. And by "we," I mean Chris and I...my Mom barely left the house b/c she was stuck watching one or both of the kids most of the time, but hey - the important thing is, for a few days I actually got to do some adult things. The highlight was the totally ferocious play we saw at Chicago Shakes Friday night - and let me just tell you, for real, Funk It Up About Nothin' was da bomb and anyone in Chicago who is able to see it before it closes Aug. 3, you need to seriously go. Like, now. Go Get Tickets Now. Go on. You can read the rest of this lame blog entry anytime, what are you waiting for people...GO! Anyway, the weekend also consisted of WallE and Em's first soccer game (she lost by a score of like 4 gazillion to 1 or something, I'm not sure b/c I stopped counting after the other team hit their first gazillion, but who cares, she had fun) and nature walks and birthday parties and festivals and cotton candy and puppets and mini roller coasters and Denzel Washington...yeah, it was a nice weekend. But the most memorable part, of course, involved Emma and some covert activity.
So it's Saturday night, Chris is out with a friend, Sophie's asleep, and Mom and I have just put Em to bed. We settle in with our BW3 wings to watch The Great Debaters and enjoy ourselves a little Denzel. About a half hour into the movie, we both think we hear something. I get up to investigate, but Em's bedroom door is closed, lights off, sound machine on, so all seems well and I shrug it off. Fast forward another half hour, and we hear sounds again. This time when I get up, I see Em's bedroom door is open and the light is on. Steeling myself for a rumble, I push open the door and come face to face with the preschool version of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Emma has lipstick smeared all over her face, circling both eyebrows and blackening her mouth, and her eyes are all huge and blank because she's shocked to see me, so the entire effect makes her look like a drugged raccoon with a fat lip who's been drinking a ton of grape Kool-aid. It's kinda creepy, kinda funny, and way way way annoying. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or run screaming from the room. Ultimately, like the good and patient mother I am, I opted for total flip out. Turns out Em had gotten into my Mom's makeup bag and smeared everything all over her bed, her face, the bathroom, you name it. She even wasted an entire package of Kandoo (and that stuff is NOT cheap) trying to clean the mess up, which of course only made it worse. Once she recovered from the shock of discovery and registered how much trouble she was in based on how loud I was yelling, she immediately reverted into classic Emma defense mode - by which I mean she started crying at the top of her lungs. So she's sobbing and snivelling, I'm shouting and shaming and forcing her to apologize to Mom, Grandma's trying to comfort her granddaughter but also support her daughter but also bite her lip to keep from laughing, and Denzel is just sitting there on the TV, freeze-framed, judging us all with that superior, all-knowing, infuriatingly sexy look of his.
After Em was cleaned up and tucked in and threatened with the old "wait until I tell your FATHER" line and finally fast asleep, Mom and I came back into the living room, sat down, and had ourselves a really really really good laugh. How can kids drive you insane and bust your gut at the same time? I tell ya, The Great Debaters was a really good movie once we were finally able to finish it, but it had nothing on the evening's main entertainment. Can't wait to see what next Saturday brings.
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