Wordy Wednesday

The boys make me laugh on a regular basis.  Rather than jumping on the 'Wordless Wednesday' bandwagon I thought I'd go the opposite:

Recently all three boys had dentist appointments.  As I was checking out and making the next appointment (and trying to get everyone to pick just one sticker and explaining that the basket of dental floss was not more stickers and that the Toy Story tooth picker was not a necessity), Seth loudly says, "Oh by the way, Moooommmm - thanks for not packing me a lunch so I had to eat a nasty hamburger."  My mind starts racing and I'm thinking that it's not possible.  I double check the lunch menu/packing schedule every morning.  Did I change out the menu for the week?  Oh no.  I feel awful.  Seth had, apparently let me suffer long enough so he said, "Ha!  Can't believe you fell for that."  Oh Seth.  Seth, Seth, Seth.

Luke got a toy snake from the dentist.  Seth was in the backseat, doing this whole bit about the snake needing to eat chocolate chips.  I made some crack about never realizing that snakes eat chocolate chips.  Seth's response, "Fine, Mom.  Hey, I'm a snake, give me a dead rat.  Mmmm."  Yeah, chocolate chips are good, I guess.

Max has decided that sleeping is not his thing.  As such he runs through the gamut of options to delay the inevitable.  My current favorites are when he gently strokes my arm and says, "You my best f'iend."  Also, when he gives me the, "I need snuggles in the chair."  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  So much for consistent parenting, huh?

Max and I took the other two boys to school one day and it was snowing a little.  Max said, "It's very snowing.  I'm so exciting!"

Max isn't a fan of rain (or wind or cars, etc) when he's in bed.  But he took it to a whole new level earlier this week.  We were driving down the street and he pointed toward the front of the car and asked me "to turn it down."  I asked if he meant the radio.  He said no and pointed again.  Umm, the rain?  Yes, that was the problem.  I told him he'd have to take that one up with God as I was unable to quiet the rain!

Luke was telling me about some prank he had pulled.  I think he was confessing to sneaking food and telling me how he did it.  He concluded with, "I'm so smirky."  Of course, he meant sneaky but smirky sounded so much cuter!

Luke and Max have a strange thing about needing to hang on me while someone prays at mealtime.  After a local tragedy where a second grade teacher died (NOT at Seth's school), Seth would often pray for the kids not to be sad.  I think that whole situation upset Luke and he would need a hug while Seth prayed about it.  Then I think Max just didn't like that Luke was getting hugs, etc. so he jumped on the bandwagon.  Recently, Max leaned over to snuggle on my arm while one of the other boys was praying.  He didn't quite get to me before the very short prayer ended.  I asked if he needed a hug still and he said, "No, he already amen'd."  Oh boy.

That wasn't how that was supposed to go...

How Monday was supposed to work:

• Get up and get the boys out the door to school with Dave
• Get Max ready
• Head to Target and Toys R Us to finish shopping for Seth's birthday
• Pick Luke up from school
• Go home to clean and decorate for Seth's birthday
• Pick Seth up from school
• Do homework, hang out together,  prepare and consume Seth's birthday dinner
• Open gifts and share treats with Grammy and Grampy

How Monday actually worked (?):

• Get up just in time to get the boys ready.  Struggle to get them to focus on getting ready (early) after two weeks of spring break.  Get them out the door (early) to have breakfast with Dave before school because it's Seth's birthday and Dave's mom is having surgery on the other side of town making it highly unlikely he'll be home before bedtime. 
• Get convinced by a 2 year old (who has been missing his solo mommy time during spring break) that it's time to snuggle.  He walked the older boys to the door, slammed the door behind them, and ran for my bed.

 

• Call pediatrician and make appointment for Luke who tripped on a book Saturday night while running through the upstairs and caught himself on our footboard.  With his face.  [This picture looks pretty good.  As with most bruises, it is now darker purple with some green peeking through, covering much more of his eyes.]
• Call pulmonologist and reschedule Luke's appointment Wednesday as I'm not sure he's breathing right anyway post face smashing.
• Get myself ready.
• Get Max dressed.
• Go to Target where they have NONE of the toys Dave and I decided on on-line Sunday night.
• Head to Toys R Us and get a few toys while Max whines that he is "so so so thiwsty!"
• Run into Walmart to look for what Target didn't have.  Max whines more but since Walmart didn't have the toys either and I was running late to get Luke from pre-k I didn't have time to stand in line to buy a bottle of water.
• Pick up Luke and his friend from school. 
• Take his friend home and chat with his mom.
• Run to Meijer to look for the toys that Target and now Walmart didn't have.  Score at Meijer!
• Realizing I don't have time to get home, unload the boys and the car, and get them lunch, choose to stop at Chick Fil A instead. 
• Eat lunch.
• Take call from Dave who is supposed to have an appointment on the other side of town at 2, after which he will go to the hospital to be with family during his mom's surgery.  Instead, his earlier appointment ran late and later appointment got cancelled.
• Meet Dave in a parking lot to give him the gifts out of the back of the car and have him decide which ones Seth gets now and which ones will be saved for later.  Dave takes them home and decides then he heads up to the hospital.
• Max and Luke (did I mention it is now Max's naptime?) head to the pediatrician's office.  I adore our ped.  She's pretty laid back and I actually texted my sister and said, "I'm guessing she will laugh and we will be done."  Joke was on me.  She looked him over and had him do some things and said we needed x-rays as it might be broken.
• We leave the office and head to the car.  Once at the car I fielded a text from Seth's teacher re: the ingredients in the brownies I made for his school birthday treat (I get this as Luke causes the same questions).  I called my dad to ask him to pick up Seth.  I texted the teacher again to let her know Grampy would be getting Seth.  Then I called the insurance to make sure I could get the x-rays where the doctor suggested.  Except that I didn't have a name of a place, just directions to the place.  So I had to hang up from the first insurance call.  Once there I realized the building was empty so I looked it up on my phone (the name was on the empty building), figured out where they'd moved to, drove there and called the insurance back.  By now, Max is thirsty again (and letting me and the woman from the insurance company on the other end of the line know and thus drinking my coke leftover from lunch) and Luke has uncharacteristically fallen asleep in the back seat.  After what felt like forever, it was determined we could indeed go inside for x-rays.  Unfortunately, this meant waking Luke who was not interested but finally relented if I would carry him inside.
• Once inside he was a trooper (after a bathroom break during which they were calling our name and waiting for us to come out of the bathroom).  Three x-rays later we were done and on our way.
• Another Target was just across the street so two overly tired boys and one strung out mama headed inside to check one last place for Seth's birthday presents.  No go.  But everyone got a bottle of water and we headed out to get Seth.
• Arrived at Grammy and Grampy's and told the younger two that they were NOT getting out of the car as G&G would be over a little later.  SO thankful that my dad had Seth do his homework!
• Finally we got home, about 5.  I begged the boys to clean up some of the mess around the house before G&G got there.  Everyone, including me, was miserable so that ended in yelling and sending the birthday boy to his room for a little break while I at least cleaned up the kitchen enough to make the next meal. 
• Fielded a call from the doctor's office that the nose is, thankfully, not broken.  Fielded some texts from Dave re: his mom's surgery starting late and taking longer than expected.
• Started Seth's requested dinner of chocolate chip pancakes.
• My parents came over and I headed up to wrap Seth's gifts (I like to do these things way ahead of time - ha!).
• Finished making dinner.  Seth refused to eat.  This was a bit frustrating.  And confusing.  He sat at the table with my parents and the other two boys and looked at some strawberries while being very rude to my dad.
• I finally took him for a little chat where he broke down sobbing and let me know that if dad was there it would be okay but nothing was okay without Daddy.  Trust me, bud, I was feeling it too but he was where he needed to be.  I told him that Daddy had met me and picked out which gifts he should get and was waiting for Seth to call him at the hospital.  More crying. 
• Finally I got him calmed down and brought the gifts down and he started unwrapping.  There were quite a few toys to play with so he was sufficiently distracted.  We did call Dave and they talked for awhile.

 

• Finally it was time for treats.  I bought the coolest candle/sparkler.  It was shaped like a number 7 and we lit it up and Seth announced it was going to explode and headed for the other room.  Max sat across from it and cried and said that we would NOT be doing this at his birthday.  I'm pretty sure Luke never even came into the kitchen as he was so busy playing with Seth's new toys (cue the eventual wrestling match).

• Finally, I got everyone ready for bed one at a time while my mom and dad attempted to help me/entertain the overly tired others.  I promised everyone that Daddy would come and check on them when he got home and they all went to bed.  Aaahhhh...
• I think I heated up a pancake about 9pm.  Dave got home around 10 and I collapsed onto the couch with a dirtier house than I had started with that morning.

 

 

Why do I share this?  Mostly for the humor purpose.  And so that I can look back on it someday and think, wow, glad today was SO much easier.