A Tiring Morning

Whew! I am craaaabbbby today. What has put me in this mood? I don't know. Who ever really knows how we get to these places? Ted let me sleep in a little (7:15 am instead of the regular 6:30am when the first child gets up). So I guess my day started off good. But then different elements came in to make it frustrating and I must have been on a mushy foundation to begin with because I feel like a weak, negative woman. For some reason I really wanted to get the bathrooms cleaned first thing this morning. They've been bugging me and have been needing a good cleaning for a while now. I started on my first bathroom (1/2 bath...easy one) when Mary decided to "help". This meant she needed her own scrubbing pad. I proceed to get her one. Then I notice she is getting her pad soaked under the running water and then slops it on everything she wants to "wash". My socks get drenched as I walked around the floor while working on the bathroom. Ted "senses" (hears my loud, guttural cries of frustration and Mary's cries as I try to shoo her away from the bathroom), and steps in to rescue me by grabbing Mary and whisking her from the room.

Now that she is under his watchful care, and I am behind the shut door of my bedroom, I move on to the master bath. As I'm cleaning the bathroom, I'm reminded that my parents and in-laws will be using it this coming weekend while Ted and I go on a Marriage Encounter. They will each take a night watching the kids. I scrub with renewed vigor now that my cleaning has a bigger purpose. I clean the baseboards, the floors, the shower, and wipe down the door (darn those crayola marks that won't come off!). As a reward, I take a shower in my sparkling, clean shower.

I come out of my room with renewed confidence! After all, I had two clean bathrooms, along with my own clean self and was ready to face the day. That should make me happy, right? I relieve Ted and decide that since Mary is going to be clingy, I will just sit with her on the couch. I take my new Catechism and a highlighter because I think this will be a good time to prepare for my first meeting with my CRHP group studying the Catechism. Before I start the introduction, Mary says she wants a "crayon" too. She has already grabbed "her" own book (our Magnificat) and is ready to do what I'm doing. I go get her a highlighter, praising myself on being flexible and letting her mark up a book that will be finished at the end of the month anyway. As I start reading, she is happily highlighting away. Mary loves to color. Anything. Ted and I will often joke about this. We'll say she is making her own notes and will pretend she has something important to say. We'll especially do this when she is marking up one of our own papers. Recently, Ted made a chart of his monthly sales compared to his quota for each month this past year. It looked really important. Mary scribbled all over it. I brought it to Ted and told him Mary had some thoughts on the subject. It brings a good laugh. Anyway, I digress. So Mary decides she is board with her book and wants to color mine. She reaches across and swipes my page with a big, pink, highlighted stroke. *sigh* I can't even read!! I push my Catechism away with frustration.

Mary gets bored and starts doing her usual calisthenics over my legs. She falls back and bumps her forehead on the edge of the coffee table. I curse to myself as a see a raised ridge already forming, knowing that I'll have to put off her 2 year old portraits for yet another week (they've already been put off a couple of times for various marks on her face).

While I sit with Mary in my lap, stewing over my lack of freedom, Ben comes upstairs with his legs spread apart like one of those kids who wears corrective shoes with a pole connecting the two feet (remember those?). Anyway, he waddles in with a big wet spot on his pants that goes down to his knees and even up to his belly. "Mommy I pooped!", he says. I take him back to the biggest bathroom that will handle this mess...my newly cleaned master bath. At first I delicately try to strip him, keeping myself away from the mess, but soon found that was impossible. Pushing out the poop caused a flood of urine so he was drenched with both. The poop was so mushy it had exploded from his underpants up his lower back. And as I peeled off the layers, the poop slides all the way down his legs, smearing the back of them with a thick layer. YUCK. Even Ben was holding his nose, it smelled so bad. Mary had to come in and watch of course. She has to be a part of the action, ALWAYS. She often makes her little observatory comments like, "Ben poop" and "That's messy", etc., etc. I should have thrown him directly into the tub after that, but I knew that Mary would have to jump in with him and I didn't want to deal with that. Instead, I sudsed up a washcloth and drenched him with it to clean him up as best as I could. I threw his underwear in the toilet to soak. While I'm working away on Ben, Mary decides to flush the toilet..."NO!!!" I yell. I saved Ben's underwear before it got flushed away. Ted comes in again to rescue me. Sometimes I tell myself how nice it would be to sit at the computer looking for a job all morning like he does. It looks so peaceful. But I know I'm telling myself lies in the heat of frustration. He takes Mary out of the room (once again) so I can finish the task at hand. Ben is crying and disgusted by the whole thing. My bathroom now had a new sent that replaced the clean, fresh one. It wreaked with the smell of poop.

After cleaning Ben up, I washed my hands as good as I could, but nothing could erase the faint smell of poop on my hands. I resumed my position on the couch with Mary. Ted walks in the room and tells me that his friend from the old job wanted to go to lunch. Ted is well aware of my poor mood and was treading very carefully. "Whatever, that's fine", I say...knowing that my tone was negative and downtrodden. He promises to give me a break this afternoon before quickly taking a shower and heading out the door before I can change my mind. Not that I would. I know he needs to get out just as much as I do.

I fixed my lunch as well as the kids. I confirmed Ben's order of Peanut Butter and Jelly, cut in squares instead of the usual triangles. When I put it before him, he said, "I wanted triangles!" and refused to eat it. I told him he was not getting triangles when he asked for squares and he needed to eat it the way it was. He then cried and said he wanted a hot dog. Not today...I thought to myself. I have nerves of steel and I am NOT budging. "No, you need to eat your peanut butter and jelly". Crying ensued. I listed through my whole lunch as waves of the poop smell still radiated from Ben. He left the table and went downstairs. I ate the rest of my meal in a grumbly mood. Ben comes back upstairs and wants a brownie. "Not until you eat your sandwich", I say. I cries some more...until finally backing from my former resolve, I make him the cotton pickin' hot dog just so he would eat something. All is well and peace is restored. And somehow, blogging about it makes me feel much better. Even though, this whole time has been interrupted filling up sippy cups, making a hot dog, changing Mary's poopy diaper (looked just like Ben's...mushy and orangish), and watching Mary remove all the contents of my purse and doing who knows what to my Palm. It was worth it.