when you can’t find a comb (because your toddler son LOVES combs and brushes right now and hides them away like a little hair care squirrel), so you are forced to improvise and find yourself parting your hair with the pointy end of a plastic dinosaur’s tail.
this, this is when you say (in the immortal words of my oldest son): “what has happened to us?”
Take 1 nearly 5 year old, full of energy and having recently undergone a growth spurt. (This will ensure that he is all bony knees and elbows, with absolutely no sense whatsoever of where they are in relation to his body and the space around him).
Add one 21 month old, all muscle and determination who has somehow captured the secret of perpetual motion (but who has not yet figured out the consequences of gravity or looking before you run head first).
Mix in one gung-ho in spirit but apparently not in body mom who wants to be cool and get all physical and wrestly and huggy with her kids.
Have children run at mom full-speed while she is either sitting or standing, while she braces for the impact. Next, have them fight for territorial rights over her lap, while she continues to insist that there is enough room for one on each leg. Following that, have the toddler lay on mom’s lap to read, while thrusting his iron skull back against her sternum and wriggling in space to get everything “just right” (and throwing a couple of elbows in the process). Afterwards, when the mom is attempting to lay down on the ground, the toddler should come and sit on her chest, in an attempt to create yet another lap. Lastly, the 21 month old and the 4 year old should then climb up the same tall and hard to access ladder at the playground, leaving the mom to panic and hurl herself on a fireman’s pole adjoining said ladder in attempt to reach toddler who is unaware that they are not actually equipped with a padded suit in case they fall.
Mom will then wonder for a week and half what happened to her, until she figures out that she is battered by her children. Mom will then ruefully smile, acknowledge she is getting older, and resume the wrestling once more.