Whew.

There are some days when life just wears me out.

I seem to be having more of those than usual these days, but then, you all knew that was coming, didn’t you?

But right now I am taking a nice, deep–super-duper-deep–breath.

This is pretty easy to do, though, from where I sit at the moment. I’m curled up in a comfy chair at my parents’ house, a fire crackling beside me, both my babies are gloriously asleep at the same time, my brother is doing schoolwork at the table, my daddy is taking a little snooze after a long night at work, and my mama is across the room blog-hopping along with me.

(We’re not addicted, oh no we’re not. Why would you think that?)

I drove out here on Tuesday. I was originally going to come out for a couple days, beginning Monday, but my brother woke up sick Sunday morning and the LAST thing I wanted was two sick kids. I know, I’m weird like that. So, I told myself, we’ll be okay. We’ll just find other things to fill these couple days. We’ll be JUST FINE.

Ha.

Let me tell ya a little about our day Sunday. Indulge me for a minute. Or twenty.

The day started the night before, as they always do when you’re a mom, with getting clothes and diaper bags and the purse and Bible and music for the offertory ready, etc. etc. etc. I was feeling pretty good, well-prepared, and looking forward to a week full of great activities to keep us going. (I shoulda known right then.) I stayed up ridiculously late for a Sunday night, instant messaging a friend and crocheting the never-ending-afghan I was supposed to send John last week.

Then I went to bed.

Mistake Numero Uno.

Just as I began to doze, I heard that sound we all just relish. A toddler crying in the night. No biggie, I thought. I’ll just cover him up and rub his back for a minute. He’ll go right back to sleep.

But it was not to be.

Troy didn’t want to go back to sleep. He was crying for his daddy and didn’t want Mama to be the one to comfort him. In his half-asleep state, he thought Daddy should be holding him.

Sorry kiddo! He’s only on the Other Side of Planet Earth. Mama will have to suffice for tonight. So please go. to. sleep.

That wasn’t working, so brilliant Mama took the toddler into her bed, hoping that maybe half her brain could sleep while the other half cuddled with and sung to the toddler. Provided, of course, that the toddler would allow himself to be quietly snuggled with and sung to. Ha. Fat chance.

Thus began the cascade of events: Toddler didn’t want to cuddle, or be sang to, or be quiet, or lay down. He preferred sitting up and crying for Daddy. Which, of course, woke up 3 month old Infant-in-Bassinet. Which meant that we spent the next several hours with a baby in each arm, one nursing half the time and then falling asleep, only to be awakened by his crying older brother, which made the now-frightened infant scream his head off in terror.

Welcome to Cry Fest ’08.

A little before 3am, Troy finally fell asleep for a bit, waking again for a minute around 3:30, after which I put him back in his bed, hoping to catch a wink now myself.

A few minutes before 6am, I groaned at the sound of more crying coming from Troy’s room and I stumbled in there to hopefully just pat his little back and make him think it was still the middle of the night. After all, it was still completely pitch black outside.

I reached down to rub his back and realized that I was touching skin… he must have taken his pajama shirt off. Then I remembered that he’d been in a sleeper. Wondering if he’d taken that off too, I felt his legs… and realized that not only had he taken off his sleeper, but his diaper too. And he’d peed. In his crib. And was laying in his wet bed.

The only thing that went through my head was the fact that he was now going to need a bath before church that morning. Since it’s already a MAD DASH to get the three of us ready in the morning, without John around to help, I wasn’t too thrilled about this fun little tidbit.

But, I must seriously do some condensing here, being that this story has already taken approximately ten years and thus far relates nothing but the fact that I had a typical night as a mom. And has demonstrated the fact that I could have probably called any number of you with small children and would have found you doing the same thing.

So, to stuff it all into a nutshell and the world’s longest run-on sentence–

Troy ended up getting cleaned up, it was POURING rain that morning, our doggie decided this was a perfect morning to need to go outside about five million times (which, due to the black mud caused by the rain, meant a five-to-ten-minute clean up session each time she finished doing her business–a term which, by the way and completely off-topic, I hate), John called and we talked to him for a little bit, then his mom called with a question, then my mom called to tell me Zach was sick and asked if we still wanted to come–to which I said, sadly, no, then I realized the only disposable diapers we had were the ones in Troy’s diaper bag (there are days now and then when I just can’t tackle cloth diapers, as much as I adore them), things calmed down temporarily when I realized there was no way we were making it to Sunday School and could thus slow down a tad, we went to the later service at church and headed home, planning to go over to our neighbors’ to watch the Super Bowl and have lunch between services at church, went over to their house to tell them that we were going to change clothes and would be right over, only to find out that their daughter was sick, too, so they didn’t think we would want to come over either, which meant we had a whole afternoon by ourselves, which isn’t exactly what the three of us call fun these days, then Troy decided this day was as good a day as any to toss a dish on the ground for the first time in months and months, the dish happened to be glass, Merritt woke up from a long nap just as Troy was going down for one, I put Troy in his crib, went back downstairs and picked up Merritt, the dog was barking to go outside again (thankfully it wasn’t pouring at that moment, so I thought she could stay out there while I fed the baby), and then I heard a THUD!

My heart stopped for the split second between said THUD! and the commencement of screaming, at which point it started racing.

I ran up the stairs, fairly confident of what had happened, and found Troy curled in a ball on the ground, NEXT TO his crib.

Oh, wait, sorry–details–now back to nut-shell mode.

Merritt was placed in the cradle in Troy’s room, both boys screamed, I checked Troy out and was oh-so-thankful to find that other than a fat lip, he was unharmed from climbing out and falling over the side of his crib, calmed him down, gave him a firm talking-to regarding NOT climbing out again, put him back down to sleep, looked outside and realized it was pouring rain again and the dog was still outside, no doubt drenched in our shelter-less backyard, cleaned her up, fed Merritt, our sweet neighbors came by with a plate of food for me (which I still never had time to eat), rushed like a crazy person to get to church on time, realized that since I hadn’t played an offertory at this church since we moved here, I hadn’t really payed attention to the order of the Sunday evening service and had no idea when to go up to play, found out the answer to that question, sat in the appropriate place until it was time… and then the craziest thing of the day happened.

I went up to play the piano (which, in fact, I HAVE been doing for ten years and did at nearly every service for several years at my home church), wasn’t even feeling too nervous to play someplace new at that moment, got halfway through the song… and my fingers curled up.

They actually curled up into my palm and I had absolutely no control over them. In a panic, I figured out where to end the song very quickly, not even glancing out to see if the ushers were done taking the offering. I literally played the last several measures with my knuckles. After I was done, and safely secluded in the side room, my friend had to actually straighten my fingers herself, and as soon as she let go, they curled back up. I could hardly feel them, save for the strange tingling sensation. After about twenty minutes and wrapping them in a warm cloth, I could finally start moving my fingers again.

Weird.

That’s all I have to say.

After church, a family friend was kind enough to go with me on a quick trip to Walmart to get some diapers, because if ever I needed some ‘sposies, it was now.

Then we went home. And WENT TO BED.

Monday dawned a bright new day, no rain in sight, and we loaded up to make an impromptu trip to the Wild Animal Park with my friend Nicole and her little boy. A good, fun day. A loooong day, too.

Then came Tuesday. Ah, Tuesday. We were doing pretty good. Just kinda laying low, planning a trip to the grocery store after nap time. Until I walked down stairs around lunch time and found Troy standing at the bottom of the steps, hands on his knees, saying, “Eew-y! Eew-y! Yuck!”

And I saw the trail of ants that were making their way from… somewhere, though who knows where that is… into my hall closet and were feasting on something that was apparently in the canister of our vacuum cleaner.

I had no bug spray. So I grabbed the can of Lysol, put Troy (who, by the way, was hungry for lunch and in need of a nap) on the couch, turned on Sesame Street, put Merritt (who, by the way, was also hungry and in need of a nap), grabbed the phone… and called my mama.

Zach answered the phone, told me to breathe–it would all be okay, and then handed the phone carrying the voice of his overwhelmed, tired and dramatic emotional sister over to his mother. She told me to go ahead and use the Lysol, to breathe (do I seem to have a problem with that?)and to remember that it was a good thing the ants were loving the food in the VACUUM and not the food in the KITCHEN.

A couple hours later, after cleaning all that up, I got an email from a friend with whom I was supposed to be going to the gym the next day and watching her children the day after that, saying that her little ones were sick and neither would be happening now.

So I called my mama back.

And here I am now. Everything is all better.

Oh, wait, no–not quite. Troy had a bit of an accident yesterday. But, whew, I just don’t have the energy to tell that story. And this is already probably the longest post I’ve already written… for no reason other than that I’ve written it in so many little snippets that I’ve forgotten what I’ve already said. Imagine that. Me? Wordy?

When we talked to John yesterday, he asked if I was sure I wasn’t going to move back home while he’s gone.

I said… Nope.