Jeana is out of town for the weekend with Simon. I was doing my own thing on the computer when Audrey walked up and asked, “Do you want to make a movie?” It was one of those rare moments when I thought, “I’m going to do whatever she wants.” The result? The family feature film: “The Two Dancing Princesses”.
I’ve found that sometimes I just have to look for the simple pleasures of life.
Sunday was supposed to be Simon’s blessing day, but after I woke up through the night puking, we decided to call it off. Scott, Audrey and Kate went to church, but Simon and I stayed home. My head hurt like crazy and Simon just wasn’t sleeping well, so I went and got him to hold in bed with me. Eventually he fell asleep and I just lay there staring at him. He is so stinkin’ cute! I just love him. At that moment, I was just wishing time could stand still. Since it can’t, I decided to take a picture. I was originally in the picture too, but decided to crop myself out based on what I had been through already that morning.
This morning was another rough one. I’ll spare you the middle of the night feedings and start at 5:00 when Scott got up for the second day in a row to get on a three hour phone call for work. Since he usually drives Audrey to school and helps get things ready for her to get out the door, his early morning phone call prompted some extra planning on my side. I knew to be able to get it all done, plus to be able to teach at the gym later in the morning, I’d need to wake Simon up early so I could feed him. So, after snoozing a bunch of times, I got up at around 5:45 and fed Simon. I then went downstairs and made Audrey some french toast for breakfast. I decided I needed to make a good breakfast to fill her up since she was going to have a pretty skimpy lunch. I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while. At 6:30, I quietly crept into the girls room and picked Audrey up out of bed and carried her downstairs. I was trying so hard not to wake up Kate. Kate was the wild card to my plans. If she woke up, she would be a lot more work to get out the door, but if she stayed asleep, I could leave her at home while Scott was on his phone call. So far, so good. Kate was still asleep. While Audrey ate breakfast, I made her lunch and ran upstairs to get dressed. Audrey got dressed and was ready for me to do her hair when the wild card woke up and she was a little on the cranky side. So, I sent Kate into the bathroom while I ran upstairs to get some clothes for her. I came back down, threw Kate’s clothes into her, did Audrey’s hair, while I also helped her finish up some homework, told Audrey and Kate both about 50 times to put their shoes on, had a few more verbal struggles with the grumps and finally we were off. Just as I opened the garage door, I heard the doorbell ring. So, I went out through the garage to see who it was and our little neighbor was out there. I asked him if he missed the bus which he did which also meant that he was going to miss getting breakfast at school if he didn’t get there soon. So I told him to hop in the car and I sped to school. As we got out of the car, Audrey and I realized that she forgot her backpack. Suddenly she was dragging her feet with tears in her eyes telling me she can’t go to school without her backpack. I kept trying to explain to her that I would bring it back, but it took about 40 times of saying it for her to finally hear me. I got into the office, asked who to make a check out to for their class pictures and then headed back to the car. It was Kate’s turn to drag her feet. So, I picked up Kate, ran to the car, drove home, grabbed the backpack, drove back to the school, got to the office and waited in line to get my guest pass. And while I was waiting in line, Audrey’s classmate who often invites herself over to our house, and her mom walked in. Despite all my efforts, I walked away from a very long and confusing conversation agreeing that the little girl could come over to our house again tomorrow. There’s much more history to this whole situation than I’ll go into here, but I’ll just say this was not the outcome I was hoping for. On with my story… I got my guest pass, took Audrey’s backpack to her and headed back home. On the way to the car, Kate kept whining to me about all the things I was doing wrong which I mainly tuned out. In the car she started the regular whine of, “How many minutes until we’ll be home.” I told her that I didn’t know and before I could get it out of my mouth she’s whining again and getting mad at me that I didn’t tell her a number. So I said, “Well it depends on how long this light stays red. Oh! It just turned green.” Kate yelled, “MOM! YOU STOPPED AT THE LIGHT AND IT WAS GREEN!” So, I told her that the light had been red and then it turned green. So she yelled, “Well, I didn’t see it red, because you were in my way and that is not respectful to get in someone’s way when they’re trying to see the red light!” SERENITY NOW!!!! We got home and I had one hour to get breakfast for me and Kate, feed Simon, finish getting Kate and myself ready and head to the gym for my 9:30 yoga class. I got Kate’s french toast ready and she fell on the floor screaming about how she wanted cheerios and she wasn’t going to eat waffles. I informed her that they weren’t waffles and that that’s what there was for breakfast. I ate my own breakfast and was feeding Simon when I heard Kate say something actually nice about the french toast. Ahhh….finally some recognition. Don’t worry that wasn’t the simple pleasure from my whole story. It came after Audrey got home from school. She told us that they had been talking about Easter at school and she told her teacher that she knew an Easter song. So, Audrey being the brave girl she is sang Hosanna in front of her whole class. What an awesome girl! She has way more guts than I do.
