Survival!

I would have titled this success, except, it wasn't a totally successful day. I am, as I anticipated, completely exhausted and ready for bed at 9:30. And, if you know me, normally at 9:30, I am just gearing up for the night and a probable post-midnight bedtime.

In the middle of the night, we listened to a big storm, loud enough to wake us, but not thankfully the kids. The baby almost slept through the night, up only once and that was at about 5 so I did get a fairly good stretch of sleep. Gabe crawled in bed with us at about that time and so the three of us shared the bed for the rest of the night. It's one of those things they tell you you shouldn't do in the parent magazines that I do anyway and later on feel guilty about. It's one of those "chalk it up" kinds of things. I was going to go running this morning. Was. Didn't happen. The plan was to get up and go at about 6:45 so that I'd be back in time for Matt to leave for work at 7:30ish. Well, Matt left for work at 7:30ish and I was still snoozing in my warm bed with number one son. We managed to get out of bed at about 8, at the wailing insistence of Lyndee, the baby, demanding to be fed.

My plan after that was to get the kids up, fed, dressed and in the van by 10 so that we could do my short list of errands. I found out after today that a short list of errands would be one thing and not four. Although we did accomplish all four, it was not without pain on all of our parts. The first hitch in the plan was the Ben, number two son, didn't wake up till after 9. Then I needed to clean the kitchen and one show of Wonder Pets became two and another show that I don't know the name of. And then, to top it all off, the fence guys came (four days late with nary a phone call) to put up our chain link fence.

I should have known then that I was setting myself up, if not for failure, then at least for frustration. My first mistake was in telling Gabe to help Ben put his shoes on. Gabe was already wearing his camo crocs and wanted Ben to match. Ben did NOT want to match. He did NOT want any shoes on at all, he wanted his bright blue rubber rain boots on. I would not let him wear them because he has been wearing them every day for the past 10 days, wherever we have gone and I wanted the boys to match too! And darn it, it was going to be my way or the highway today! When Ben would not allow Gabe to put his shoes on, Gabe fell to the floor in very dramatic fashion and wailed, "If he won't let me put them on and he won't match me then I don't want to go ANYWHERE!" I should have agreed with him and never left the house. But darn it again, I was going to win today and accomplish my errands. I don't know how, but we did get the camo crocs on, topped the baby off with a little breast milk and headed to Proex. Proex was a successful over $100 dollar stop. Then, it was on to the bank. And finally, we made it to Wal-Mart.

The boys were saying, "Yay, Wal-Mart." and I was saying, "Oh No, Wal-Mart." Have you ever tried to play I Spy while shopping for groceries, price comparing, looking through coupons, pushing a cart filled with groceries and two kids and holding a four year old's hand all at the same time? Not an easy task. And for the most part we did make it. I was just incredibly tired at the end. And since the boys had been reasonably good, I had told them I would buy them an icee at Sam's club. Another parenting magazine no-no that I have ignored on many occasions. We returned two swimsuits and stood in line at the icee station. And stood in line. And stood in line. Finally, the harried clerk shooed aside the people in front of me and when I said two cherry icees, he tried to let me down gently. "It's not working today Ma'am." "What?!! Not at all, not even a little bit?" "Nope, not even a little, maybe in a couple of hours," he added when I must have started looking frantic.

By this time, it was way past lunch time, and definitely past Diet Coke and Icee time. "But I wanted an Icee, " wailed the four year old, "And I was so good!" like the good behavior was all for nothing. And me saying, "I know, I wanted it to work out too," like it was some relationship that we had failed at. I decided that I would get them an icee, even if I had to drive to BK to get one. And get one, no two, I did! Only I didn't realize it would take 15 minutes in a slower than slow drive through. And I didn't realize how much my talking to other cars has rubbed off on the four year old. "What is taking so long? What in the world did they order? I wish they would hurry up!" he says, "Don't they realize we are THIRSTY?"

We arrive home, at long last, in one piece, at about 1 pm. An hour and half after I intended on getting home. The afternoon was fairly uneventful. I checked my email, worried about money, wondered if anyone at school was missing me, you know the usual. It was peaceful playing cars in the living room while the little ones slept down the hall. I should have known it was the calm before the storm.

Then, Daddy came home, the little ones woke up, and suddenly, it became the arsenic hour. Only it lasted about 2 hours. It was sibling rivalry at its worst, or best, depending on how you look at it. My two boys could fight about the color of the sky or what the number one means. It doesn't matter, they always take opposite sides. And fight they did, about cars, about animals, about supper, about boots, about big or little, about ants on a log, about yogurt, about EVERYTHING. The only respite was taking a walk with the whole family, yellow lab included and coming home to put the kids to bed. My husband helped all he could today. I know he's tired too, so now we will go to bed and hopefully no little four year old will come between us so we can get a good night's sleep for a change. Or maybe not.