The Never-ending Day

[I had a wonderful bloggy break, thank you! And after taking a whole week off, I feel refreshed and ready to blog now in earnest. In case you’re wondering, THIS is the promised new post, really, since technically I've had the Before & After: Girls Room post (below, in case you missed it...for some reason feedreaders didn't pick it up) finished since July. And after not hearing from me for a week, I’ll expect comments from every last one of you. Fair is fair.]

Today was one of the craziest mornings I’ve ever had, which is really saying something considering I have a separate category for ‘Morning Mishaps.’

I mentioned before that Andy is running a marathon in New York, and it happened to be this weekend. He had signed up (and paid) before we moved and we were able to find a really cheap flight. So, in the end, he was able to keep his commitment with a friend.

However, since our city is about two hours from any major airport (although several to choose from), he was scheduled to take a shuttle today in the wee hours of the morning so that I didn’t have to drive him to the airport.

And for some unknown reason, he set the alarm for 4:10. He was supposed to board the shuttle at 4:30. It takes around 10-15 minutes to get there.

We woke up at 4:40.

(!@#*$%^&!)

In a groggy panic, we surveyed our options – none of which were even remotely appealing. We do have two cars; Andy’s service engine light is on, however, and he wasn’t comfortable driving it that far. I couldn’t even think straight enough to come up with a plan; I just knew I did NOT want to load the kids and drive Andy two hours away to the airport.

Especially at 4:40 in the morning.

A fleeting thought suddenly crossed my mind – he’d been dropped off from that same shuttle service on our side of town before after returning from an out-of-town trip… maybe they’d be willing to stop and pick him up?

I frantically grabbed the phone book, looked up their number (cursing my tired brain that would not churn out my ABC’s) and finally got a hold of the operator. He was pretty sure that the driver had already passed us on the highway.

I asked him if he could please check, just to be sure. Turns out the driver WAS willing to pull off and pick up Andy, and hadn’t passed us quite yet. I practically threw Andy his cell phone on his way out the door and then waited on pins and needles by my own phone to hear if he had made it.

I talked to him right as he was pulling into the gas station; no shuttle in sight. We figured out he was one exit down from where the driver was waiting, at another BP. He hopped on the interstate, sped over to the right place, and got on the shuttle.

[Cue the Hallelujah Chorus in all of its splendor.]

We could not have orchestrated it any better. It was totally and completely a God-thing. I laid in my bed afterward, my mind still racing and not wanting to think about what would have been necessary if Andy hadn’t made that shuttle; my eyes tearing up at the Lord’s mercy and silently repeating “thank you, Jesus,” over and over.

Even when I woke up a few hours later, my head was still spinning from that close of a call.

But the morning, it had only just begun.

First, Adelaide dumped her million pumpkin bread crumbs all down herself, her chair, and the floor – I saw her lift up her plate and felt myself switch into slow-motion as I moved across the room to try and stop her. It was too late.

Moist bread chunks and crumbs are not exactly easy to sweep up, turns out. I took the whole chair, booster seat and all, out to the back deck and turned it upside down.

(I let her out first, in case you are wondering.)

Then, after breakfast, Madeline came up and handed me several locks of hair – her own – asking me if I could put them back. I knew there would be a day where she tried to cut her own hair; I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.

I explained that it doesn’t work that way, that I can’t just fix her hair and put it back the way it was. She cried. Thankfully, they were mostly small cuts, and none of them right next to her head. She’s got a head full of layers, so it blends in fairly well.

Several times throughout the morning she said “I’m so sorry for my hair, Mama,” and would cry a little. It was such a delicate balance in responding because I wanted her to know that it’s just hair, after all; it will grow back. But I also don’t want her thinking she can just go chop off her hair whenever she happens to spot a pair of scissors.

Meanwhile, we’d tentatively planned to go to the children’s museum and all morning I had been trying to move in the direction of getting everyone out the door. So far I had only managed to change Adelaide out of her pajamas and into a clean diaper before Madeline’s hair cutting spree.

Next thing I know, I’m looking down at Adelaide, still wearing only a diaper, sitting in a dirt pile in the backyard with a shovel in her hand. And she was filthy.

She needed a bath, no way around it.

As I was getting myself dressed after that, I came out to the living room where Madeline had spilled the sugar bowl all over the place. It was a grainy, sticky, dusty mess. And then my head, it suddenly exploded into tiny little pieces.

Kind of like the sugar.

After THAT mess was taken care of, what do I do but go outside, and Adelaide is BACK in the dirt! This time only her hands needed washing, and boy, it’s a darn good thing.

[Also, all of this mayhem caused me to completely space that it was trash day, and I totally forgot to get our can out to the street. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but forgetting is one of my pet peeves. Now we have to wait another whole week and it was already almost full.]

Sarah and I did spend a couple of hours this afternoon at the children’s museum and although really fun, it totally wiped me out. (I got up at 4:40am, remember?) I had the kids nap for an hour when we got home, gave them an interesting collection of foods and called it dinner, and then attempted to get them all down for bed before I suffered a nervous breakdown.

Once in bed, Drew wanted a children’s Tylenol because he said his head hurt. Whatever, fine. A few minutes later, I hear him wailing because he squished it and the tablet broke all over his sheets.

I’m so glad I have a trusty vacuum cleaner and I’m so glad that I can go to bed now.