November 2007

Drumroll please. The moment you have all been waiting for…how will she fare by herself with four kids under 5-years-old? A quick reminder, Zach is nearly three weeks old, Tommy is nearly 1-and-a-half, Sarah is 3-and-a-half and Lydia will be 5 this weekend.

I spent Sunday mostly alone, my first day with nobody around since we came home from the hospital. All four kids and I made it to church, everyone who had teeth had ‘em brushed, everyone who had hair had it brushed, and everyone’s shoes matched. Can’t ask for much more; we were on time for 9:30 church, the ladies helped with the service which was kind of a pageant. Tommy, Zach and I held down the pew. Half way through the service Tommy wanted to run in the aisle, so a nice lady took him to the nursery. Our church is really small, so the nursery is not staffed, but you can watch though the window and listen to the service.

Monday went fairly well, we stayed home all day. For supper I managed to have a meat dish, a vegetable dish, and fruit slices, on the table at the usual time.

Tuesday the ladies had school at 8:45. As they were getting dressed, Tommy decided to finish off Sarah’s dry cereal. Lydia came out with capris on. After explaining that it was 19 degrees outside I finally convinced her to put on long pants, and admonished her not to do everything Sarah told her to do (this is a new thing, as Lydia is usually the boss). I put Zach in the nursery and laid out some clothes then went to get Tommy. I helped him off the chair and asked him to come to his room so he could get dressed. I then went to dress Zach. When Tommy didn’t show up I sent Lydia to see what was going on in the kitchen. She called out that something was wrong with Tommy’s tongue. I finished dressing Zach and went to investigate. Sure enough, Tommy was staggering around with his tongue hanging out. He had spilled the pepper on the table and I could see fingerprints in it. Two plus two equals “pepper is not meant to be served by itself, or on cereal.” He didn’t want to drink water or milk from his sippy so I left him alone to fix his little problem, and he did, somehow.

We were running on schedule and I had three kids buckled in the car. When I went into the house to get the last of my stuff I found out Sarah had taken off her coat and was trying to stuff Sad Baby into her backpack. I hit the roof, she doesn’t have a clue where her library book is, but she wants to take her polar bear to school! On the way into town, I was informed by Sarah that she was “going to live in her pink house, and she was taking Zach with her.” The as yet unbuilt pink house is across the street from Grandma.

We made it to school on time, then I went to run some errands. I put Tommy on his leash (which looks like a puppy backpack) to go into the grocery store, as he had dirty pants. They were cleaning the bathrooms which gave me a chance to check out the dark chocolate selection (lacking) and peruse the wines (well stocked). Once everybody was back in clean undies, I put Tommy in the cart and headed down the aisles. I was looking for a greeting card when out of the corner of my eye I saw Tommy take a nose dive out of the cart. I caught him by his beltloop as he was headed for the floor. That could have been ugly.

I picked up the ladies and fed the baby in the school parking lot. I hope their surveillance camera doesn’t go that far! We then drove to the newspaper office, to place an announcement of Zach’s birth in the local tattler. I parked on the street, as the parking lot is about two blocks from the front door. Keep in mind the weather here.  (The street is one-way through town, if the next part doesn’t make sense) I took all four kids into the office with me, then visited with a friend for a while. When it was time to leave, I put the baby in the driver’s side door and told the others to wait for me. We waited until traffic was safe and then proceeded as a group to the passenger door of the van. I lifted Tommy in and turned around to find Sarah dancing in the middle of Highway 30. Well, you can imagine how that went. She is getting a leash too, a monkey one.

A side note, Zach is the pottyingest kid I know. He has tinkled on me no fewer than six times. I gave him a nice warm bath the other night and he pooped in the towel! Then he tinkled! I have learned that tinkle follows poop fairly shortly, and it is best to wait a few minutes before changing him.