Remember how I went to an amazing conference this past weekend? It's sort of like how you pray for patience, and then, wham! You find yourself stuck in the longest line of traffic ever when you're late for your own wedding, or your great-aunt Mabel shows up for an unexpected 3 week visit. You know: you pray for a virtue, but instead of handing it to you on a platter, God gives you the chance to develop it. Then you remember that you really didn't want to be patient after all.
So I went to a conference on being a great mom, and God thought it would be nice to let me develop those great mom qualities when I walked in the door at 10 p.m. Saturday night and was greeted by Addie throwing up in her bed. I hadn't even hung up my purse yet.
A word about Addie's bed--her covers consist of a comforter covered with a duvet cover I made (It took me something like two months, but who's counting?), quilted pillow shams, and hand-made quilts. It takes forever to put it all together, which is why I'm glad she's such a clean girl. If she went to bed dirty, I'd have to wash that thing all the time, and she'd sleep in a sleeping bag instead.
Anyway, she threw up all over the pillow shams, two quilts, the duvet and cover, and of course her sheets. And her lovey and nightgown, for good measure. I hauled them all to the laundry, remade her bed with other quilts, pillows, and covers, and put her back to bed, thinking it was a fluke vomit. (I was so tempted to make that sentence rhyme, but the "p" word is just gross.) And of course she threw up again, all over her second set of covers, sheets, pillow, and nightgown.
I, in the quest to fulfill all my plans and oaths and whatnot from the conference, considered it a gift from God to nurture her, rather than mutter under my breath that I just wanted some time off, for Pete's sake! That resolve was slightly tested when she threw up more than 10 times over the next three hours, and I slept on her now-stripped bed with a pillow and thin blanket. I was freezing and woke up every 15 minutes to help her to the bathroom. Lots of nurturing went on, as well as praying and the laying on of hands--totally serious here--and when she finally stopped getting sick sometime around dawn, I was exhausted but victorious.
Monday was a good day, too. The children played nicely, we read and drew together, and everybody was happy and cheerful. Except for taking the puppy out four times in the middle of the night in our scary backyard with possums and such, it was great.
Tuesday the road started to veer downhill. I started the day with a migraine but powered through, until I got a second one before bedtime. That just seems cruel, doesn't it? I haven't had migraines in almost a year, but sleep deprivation always ushers them in. A week of getting up with a puppy evidently counts as sleep deprivation to my brain. Anyway, if I remember it right, Caiden put Addie to bed, and the boys tucked themselves in. And I again got up with the puppy, feeling slightly like a new mother all over again, except for the slight variation that I don't have to breastfeed the dog, and he sleeps in a crate. Getting up to take out a puppy in the pouring down rain at 4 a.m. isn't as charming as nursing a sleepy newborn in the night, however.
Wednesday we went to the science museum, and that was fantastic. The kids loved every minute of it, except for the overzealous lady in the Innova rooms, who wouldn't let Grayson touch the marbles game because "it's only for 8 and up," despite the fact that we were the only people in the entire wing, I was there to supervise and make sure he didn't eat the marbles, since we all know near-6 year olds still eat toys (seriously?) and we have the marble game. She was very nice about it but was unyielding, and we were very nice about it, but I'm thinking perhaps the children's museum might not be her best fit. Gray did love, however, the Tinkertoys room where he got to play with electrical circuits (the lady in there was much more relaxed), and it was indeed fun watching my 5 year old play with electricity yet not get electrocuted. That's always a winner, in my book.
By the time we got home, I realized I was exhausted, and so we ate breakfast for dinner, and then we pretty much crashed. I literally went to bed at 9:30 and let the dog cry it out, figuring I needed sleep more than he needed out.
I was rewarded for my strong approach with poop in the crate this morning, and henceforth I'll take poop in the crate as a sign I should just go back to bed.
By 11 a.m. I was ready to give away my children to any willing relatives, and then when Caiden came in crying that he'd broken the puppy's leg, I wanted to sit down and cry. Instead, we begged the vet to let us come in, and we hopped in the car. For the record, none of my kids matched or had brushed their hair, and mine was straight from the shower, no stying at all. Come to think of it, it still looks like that, 13 hours later.
$118 later, the dog is perfectly fine, and I gave in to the kids' cries of starvation and took them through a drive-through for lunch, which is a first in literally three months. I cursed myself about five minutes later, when Saint not only peed but also pooped in my car. That is a first for me, and I think we've had oh, about 7 dogs. Even Shadow, the formerly-worst-dog-on-earth, has never pulled that one. I had to pull over and wipe up dog urine with Caiden's sweatshirt, then use old napkins to pick up poop, and it seemed wildly unfair, considering I don't have any kids in diapers and haven't actually touched poop in a long, long time. This tickled the boys greatly.
We got home, had a relatively calm afternoon (possibly because it was naptime), then drove to Half Price Books and Pei Wei for an evening outing. Neither one went particularly well, by the way.
As an aside, do you know what we noticed yesterday? Lots of dead skunks on the road. We meant to look it up, to see if it's skunk mating season or something, because we smell them every morning around our property, and there are new ones on the roads every time we leave our driveway. Caiden mentioned tonight that if the dogs ever get sprayed--we've lived here nearly two years and they've never gotten sprayed, so I have no idea why he was worried--we don't have enough tomato juice to bathe them. That was 8 p.m.
I put the kids down, after delivering a stern and un-great-momlike lecture to the boys for their typical rowdy nighttime behavior, and then I went upstairs to sew and listen to Moby Dick. (I've never read it and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I was shocked to find myself actually giggling by chapter 4! Who knew there was humor in there??) I came downstairs at 10 p.m. to let the puppy out and was greeted by two frantic, thoroughly-skunk-soaked dogs. Have mercy, they smelled so badly that when I fled from them, puppy clutched to me so he wouldn't stink, too, I literally reeked just from being in their presence! What are the odds that they'd get sprayed tonight, of all nights?? I couldn't believe it.
So now it's past midnight, and I'm pondering this last week, realizing I've come nearly full circle from last Saturday's end-of-conference-greeted-by-stomach-virus drama. On the good side, my husband is finally over his severe bout with the flu, nobody currently has bronchitis, and the puppy's leg isn't broken. I didn't have a perfect week of achieving all the things I'd hoped for while at the conference, but I will say this: considering I dealt with mass quantities of vomit and laundry, a puppy with a tiny bladder, taking the kids out in public a number of times, a trip to the vet, dog poop in the car, extra rambunctious boys, and now a skunk spraying, I think I did okay.
And some weeks, okay is pretty good.
Imagine what would've happened if I'd prayed for peace, after all.
