My Day

My day today started around 3:00am when I awoke to an unhappy (but unhungry) little Nora.  I proceeded to spend the next hour rocking and singing her (well me and Mason Jennings that is) back to sleep.  I awoke again a few hours later to hear little feet running around in the hall outside my room.  Knowing Ryan had already left for work, I weighed my options. I could either get up... or sneak a little more sleep and clean up whatever mess would surely await me.  I chose the later.  Surprisingly when I did wake up there really wasn't any mess, just two kids "making themselves" breakfast.  One on the counter buttering herself some bread, or more accurately, eating butter (yep, just butter), and the other just finishing up pouring himself a bowl of granola for fifty. 

And so the day had officially begun. 

About 10 minutes later Grace was telling me she hated me (and doing this new growling thing she picked up from a friend at school).  I was insisting she needed to add some peanut butter to her bread.  When Grace was just a toddler we learned that protein is essential for her in the morning.  Without it she honestly can turn into someone else.  Every so often we forget this about her and are reminded (by a morning such as this one) just exactly how important this is.  Reluctantly she ate the peanut butter.

Nora had her own idea of what she needed this morning.  She was not having the sling.  And she was too uncomfortable to go back to sleep.  I spent the rest of the morning nursing her and switching her from the three positions I hold her in to keep her semi-happy.  Finally around 11 it seemed as though she was going to go back to sleep.  Grace had apologized for the bad start to her morning and had thanked me for making her eat the peanut butter.  The day seemed to be turning around.

And just then, at that very moment when I was thinking just that, I heard from the top of the stairs in a frantic voice, "Mommy! Mommy!"  Suddenly I could hear something (water maybe?) spilling.  No wait this wasn't water spilling because now I could see it spraying in the air, coming from upstairs.  "Mommy!"  I heard again.  I ran over to the stairwell to look up to see Jackson, penis in hand, peeing all down the stairs.  "I'm having an accident Mommy" he said clearly trying to stop what was happening.  Pee was going everywhere.  All down the stairs, on the walls, on the pictures hanging on the walls, on himself.  I looked down to see I was standing in a puddle.  "It's okay I said, just stay right there and I'll clean it up."

I proceeded to clean up all the pee and piled the towels and his jammies up to bring down to the wash.  The house now had a lovely nursing home smell to it. 

Just then Nora woke up again. 

I'm not sure the order of things after that.  I know it took hours for Nora to go back to sleep.  Somewhere in there was a chicken emergency (Ryan called to say chickens desparately needed water, I couldn't go out because of Nora and kids couldn't get the coop door open).  Somewhere in there I got a call saying I would be on my own for bedtime.  I know I ate a lot of cookies.

But alas, it wasn't all bad (alas? I don't really use words like that).  Somewhere in there Nora did sleep.  Somewhere in there I got the 6 boxes of clothes in our bedroom put away into our furniture that finally came back yesterday.  Somewhere in there I took a shower.  Somewhere in there I joined Grace, Jackson and all their dolls for a picnic on the living room floor.  Somewhere in there was another yummy dinner that I didn't have to cook and a great newly made up dinner game called "favorites".  Somewhere in there everyone went to bed perfectly.  And I ate a lot of cookies.

And tomorrow I get to do it all again. 
Thankfully I still have more cookies.