Sorry, this is a real long one.
It’s 10:45am on Friday. We’ve got two cute little boys here (Thomas 3, and Zachary 2) for a playdate while their mom subs at the high school. It’s a much needed relief after a week of rain and being quarantined with Easton's pink eye.
McKay is in hog heaven. He began his day the usual way – waking up before all of us around 6:15. I could see his trail. He’d taken a gander around the kitchen, finger prints now present in the bread dough I thawed overnight. He’d opened this laptop to see what he could see – note to self, put up higher to charge overnight. Then he headed to the toy room to begin his day with a proper hello to his train friends - which is where I found him. He greeted me with his daily, “Mom, it’s morning time.” I think he wants to affirm I won’t send him back to bed.
Our friends got here a little after 7am and after the toy and train room tour, they all headed to the bedroom’s top bunk to see the sights and read some books. McKay was a little unsure of sharing his precious perch but it passed quickly as long as he got to sit closest to the ladder. Morgan had just woken up and watched the show from the safety of her crib all wide eyed and amazed. Yup dear, boys are noisy!
Easton downed three bowls of Rice Krispies to the one bowl each of the others had. Morgan couldn’t quite concentrate on her bottle so her lil tummy gave her fits, thereby raising the decibel level higher than my morning ears were prepared for as we got everyone ready to walk Easton to school.
I hoisted a fussy Morgan into the BabyBjorn and we were off. (Ryan is taking me to Prague next weekend and so I’ve got to get used to hefting my gal around again.) I figured the baby carrier would be easier than the fight over who would get to sit in the stroller. I hope the neighbors didn’t mind me hollering FREEZE and GO all the way there and back every 30 seconds! With four boys all wanting to be the leader and lots of blind entry apartment garages and a street to cross together, a game was the only safe way to do it!
McKay decided to throw the mother of all running and screaming tantrums as we left the kindergarten because he thought it was his time to stay. We’re heading to a BBQ there later today so he was thoroughly confused and MAD!!! Don’t you just love disciplining your children in public? Boy I do! Right up there with having a root canal!
We got home in one piece and I had a serious case of LowBloodSugarCrankyPants. Remedied by a new favorite. I really like hot meals but I don’t really like to cook, especially first thing in the morning when hunger rules. Luckily I’d branched out yesterday and tried my hand at making these sausage, pepper, swiss and onion quiches which never made it to the oven so it was more of a scramble with lots of leftovers. I LOVE leftovers!!! I slapped some of that scramble in a warmed corn tortilla and was in HEAVEN!!! Angels may have been singing it was so good! I think we have a winner here folks! Between that and some brownie nibbles, I’m one satisfied customer!
The boys continue to play their hearts out with firetrucks, Rescue Heroes, GeoTrax trains and a smackling of Buzz and Woody wars and fighting bad guys. Life is good on this homefront while Morgan gets her much needed morning snooze. Now I’ll go tackle my laundry room and hope to get in a shower sometime before getting Easton from school, baking goodies for the school BBQ, and waiting on the repairman to arrive. Life is good, much better than yesterday at this time when I called Ryan and pleaded we trade lives for the day!
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You can’t make this stuff up! I thought what I wrote above was a decent real post, but the best is yet to come, in my humble opinion.
1:30pm Put movie on for boys so I can finally take that shower and hoping the repairman doesn't arrive in that interval. BBQ is at 4pm and I still need to finish chopping veggies for the pasta salad and bake cookies. Seems very doable.
3:00pm I’ve now burnt two batches of cookies and the other batch was flat. You’d think I was a first time baker, but there were just too many distractions even for my trusty watch timer! I finally got around to blow-drying hair when Easton runs frantically into the bathroom. One of the kids had unzipped one of the bean bags and teeny, static Styrofoam balls were spreading everywhere and some were even being eaten. ARGH!!! One hour left to go till the BBQ, kids to change and feed, pasta salad to finish – still got time.
4:00pm Our playmates were picked up late due to traffic and I figured I could get us out the door by 4:30 even though Morgan had woken up and was hungry. Easton is hounding me to get us out the door. Thanks buddy, take a chill pill!
Chop veggies, throw together eating kits, pack food stuffs and a few diaper bag items, change the kids – oh wait, Morgan pooped through everything. Great! Morgan’s screaming unless held, still distressed from a little too much TLC and noise with a house full today. Looks like it’s going to rain again so I grab two umbrellas on the way out – it’s just a stroll around the corner after all.
Not even twenty yards from our door it starts to pour. I hunch over with my umbrella to cover me, Morgan and the precariously food-packed stroller. I handed the other umbrella to Easton which provokes a complete meltdown from McKay who sits on the puddled curb and wails “I never get one” because he wants to hold the umbrella and have it to himself (He's been eyeing those umbrellas in the drawer waiting for a chance to use them for months now!). Morgan is screaming because she’s hungry, Easton is mad that there hadn’t been time to play his video game today and walking slow as molasses.
I decide to turn this train wreck around and head back home because we're all soaked and that does NOT make any event fun. Even though I feel like every group encounter I have with the school is something like this for me – when it rains it pours, but this time it’s LITERAL! In this moment, McKay is so mad and wanting to go to the school that he decides to bolt – straight for the busier street we have to cross to the school! Oh he is sooooo busted!!!
I plop his behind in the stroller, we’re all soaking wet still in a down pour and I’d had to move some of the food stuffs below. We make quite the racket on our way down the street, each of us furious for our own reasons. Well, I think Easton might be overjoyed actually to be returning to that blessed xBox, I don't remember having to remind him to get a move on.
We get inside, strip McKay down and get him into dry pjs. I sit him by me on the couch with Morgan who is just about to pop a vein from crazed hunger, start to feed her and try to “love” my three year old to calm us all down. In that very moment of silence, I hear MoTab sweetly serenade, “I feel my Savior’s love, in everything around me.” Laugh out loud, my genius iTunes! Not even two minutes later, all the world is right for my munchkins and once again I wonder why I ever bother venturing out my front door. Today felt like one of those quintessential mom rights of passage, only today there was a soundtrack! I don't know that the first toddler stomach flu could have had one - Anyone? I'd love to hear it! Was it sung by MoTab?
This has been a long day, but a real good day in the end. My boys had a lot of fun playing, I ate really good food, had some great laughs at my own expense, shared ‘em with my Love and a fave gal pal and will sleep well tonight! And it’s true, His love truly is in everything around me and I’m storing up for another rainy day.
