Life and Other Stuff

There are days.  Then there are days.

With the beautiful spring days comes more sunlight, longer daylight hours, and a ton of squirrelly energy from the kids. On the second to last day of preschool, I was looking forward to chatting with the other moms after picking up our children and letting them get some much-needed energy spent by running around the grassy field at the school. My daughter had other ideas.

Upon arriving for pick up, I was informed by one of the teachers that my dear daughter was complaining at the last part of class that her nose hurt. When they looked up her nose, they couldn’t see anything, and she went off to play. She sneezed and complained that her nose hurt once more, but again they couldn’t see anything. She then told the teacher she had a bandaid up her nose.

What?!

I arrive and get her out to our car and lay her down and I see the culprit lodged WAY UP inside her nose, past where fingers fit. I am not the best person to have on hand during an emergency because time slows down for me and I tend to freak out and chase my tail in circles. Knowing this about myself, I promptly call the hubs at work and he meets us at the base hospital. Hannah isn’t crying, but she’s pretty subdued at this point. I get her buckled in the car and realize that I now have to extract the dear son from his favorite activity – running around like a wild banshee after school. With moans and wails of protest, I wave a sad goodbye to the other moms as I feel the same way as Jacob – wanting that precious after-school hour to hang out, play and engage in mom-versations.

Off to the hospital, we are informed that we no longer have an urgent care/emergency room, that we need to travel to the other hospital on our island that is 30 minutes away. Have I mentioned that none of us have eaten lunch yet? Bring on the attitudes! Oy!

We call it being hangry. Hunger + anger = hangry.

We get to the emergency room at the right hospital and get her all checked in. We are waiting in the waiting room and the kids are playing quietly with another girl. I overhear this girl who I estimated to be about 10-12 years old saying something to my son about something or someone being “stupid”. She also exhibited other behaviors and spewed other awesomeness toward what I assumed to be her mother so I promptly extracted my son and told him to come sit by me where we engaged in a full on tournament of thumb war. Everyone may parent the way they wish (or not), but sometimes I feel compelled to limit the influence of crazy.

I then heard the build up of a sneeze coming from my other side. What does a mom do when faced with vomit, snot, or spit out food? Of course – we hold out our hand. Somehow we choke back the urge to vomit while we look at what our dear darlings have deposited for us. Today it was a snot-coated, rolled up, dirty bandaid.

I sent her to school with three bandaids on her ankle for various owies. She still had 3 on her ankle. This rolled up bandaid now in my hand was probably someone else’s. Awesome. The good news was that we were able to leave right away and skip the whole visit with the doctor. Hannah proudly smiled as we walked out of the hospital exclaiming, “I sneezed it out! I sneezed out my bandaid!” I walked over to the hand sanitizer and applied it liberally.

Getting the hubby back to work, I decide we’ve all had a rough day, we’re all hangry – let’s grab something to eat. Against my better judgement, we found an ice-cream shop and had some. It was yummy. It was hot out and totally hit the spot. On our way back to the car, we see a little toy store that was filled to the brim with all kinds of toys, games, books, animals, and candy. After our stop, we’d go grab some real lunch and then head home.

The kids did great in the store, looking around at all kinds of things not normally found in toy stores. Jacob had his heart set on a cool stuffed squid (his current obsession is all things octopi), and Hannah was still searching for that “just-right” thing. I had managed to steer them past the over-loaded candy counter and keep a close watch on both kids. My main concern was Jacob, as his love of chocolate knows no bounds.

We’re winding down our visit and I look over at him chewing something. I walk over and ask him what he’s eating. He found some loose gold foil chocolate coins and was helping himself.

Can I start drinking now?

After our lesson in what stealing is, that we don’t take what is not ours, nor do we take what we don’t pay for, I haul both kids out of the store screaming. Jacob was wailing that he wanted to get his stuffed squid. We went home empty handed and the lesson was burned into his memory that stealing is wrong. These lessons are so hard, but what struck me was the way in which the store owner looked down her horned-rimmed glasses at me, nearly tsk-tsking me. Seriously?! Parenting in process here. Kids make mistakes. That’s how they learn. And learn he did. (It should go without saying that I did pay for all chocolates consumed. While my son decided to take what was not his, he is by no means stealthy and left all wrappers right there in the box.)

I know this will be one of many days where I will have the urge to spike my coffee, drink at 9am, or do other not-appropriate things because of this parenting journey. I write this blog as way of laughing at the not-great days as a parent, thus preventing myself from becoming a drink-in-the-morning sort of person.

Cheers!