Suckered

Do I have "Fool" written on my forehead?

Last night ended badly. After a crazily over-booked day (nothing new, I seem to be doing this regularly-- but it's really bad to schedule yourself to feed two young missionaries on the same day you've accepted a dinner invitation, have a play date booked for one child and a football match for another), the hubby decided it was in the best interest of everyone that he mess with my computer.

He discovered at 11pm when I was incoherently babbling about not getting a break from the kids (more specifically a certain head-strong toddler) in 7 straight days, that he may have made a bad choice.

Do NOT feel sorry for the man. I stayed home from watching Simon Lappin Norwich City play so that one kid could attend a birthday party. Three joyful hours of blaring disco music and sugar-high children-- in the company of Miss Ky, the Talk-a-tron.

So, last night, in my already fragile state, the toddler decides that bed is just not the place for her and because she's exhibiting signs of impending illness, I let her get away with it...
until 3am or so when I crack and can't take anymore of her whinging.

(I'm a much more empathetic mother when I'm rested, honestly).

At 7am when the 11 year-old complains of killer headache, I basically let him know that he would suck it up and go to school. I gave him Motrin and a banana to go with his breakfast, because I'm kind like that and at 8.03 we barely make the bus stop.

At 8.20 am, middle child is declaring he has no school trousers. I insist he does and send him back upstairs. This argument continues until 8.30, leaving me no time to shower myself.

Laundry is done and mostly put away, so I look elsewhere for missing trousers.
I start with the small space under their bunk beds that is not taken up by drawers and discover not only enough lint to recover a bald cat, but that smallest boy has been declaring his love for Norwich City Football all over the wood of his bed. In pen.

In the meantime, toddler is going full speed ahead with her whinging process despite only a couple of hours of sleep. She is riding her bike through the house complaining that her eyes hurt (allergies).

Sometime after I've loudly stated that I quit and I am officially turning in my resignation as mother of these children, middle son is miraculously wearing trousers. Buoyed by this new turn of events, I try to plunge ahead, knowing that the bus has been missed, but that we still have time to get there in the car-- with me un-showered. Not great, but workable.

That is the time that middle child decides he needs to find a hat for "Hats for Haiti" day.

He's known all weekend he needed a hat, but chooses this time to look for one. The kid is his Dad's child 100%. He stands there and wills a hat to come find him. Amazing.

Those 2 children were late for school and don't you know that when all other mothers (and dad's) are back home drinking their coffee or off to their busy jobs, there has to be someone who knows me there at the school gate to greet me in my bed-headed glory?

Toddler falls asleep on the way home and the evil me wants to shake her and shout, "Don't you dare sleep!"... I'm not confessing whether or not I gave in to that urge.

We are home for precisely one hour and thirty-three minutes when the phone rings and the nice lady on the other end politely tells me that the child who now needs to come home because of the terrible headache, "said he had this headache before school...". Point taken woman, but I've had a headache for the last 22 years and no one has ever sent me off the pitch.

And now,

whinger toddler and child suffering a brain hemorrhage are laughing it up and eating Jalepeno Cheez-Its while watching Ice Age.

I've yet to take a shower.

Do I have "Fool" tattooed on my forehead?