Typical Day

So I was trying to figure out where my time goes. I thought, "hmmm, I will take note, clock in, log my time and see what today brings. Maybe I will have some clarification as to why my house is a wreck and my kids look like ragga-muffins (is that a word?)"
To begin, it is my fireman's day to "fight fires and save lives". His alarm goes off at 6:03am and he quietly showers, brushes his teeth, eats a quick bite of whatever he can find and leaves by 6:30am. He always kisses me good-bye. Sometimes this kiss begins my day and other mornings I can roll over and steal a few more minutes of sleep. This morning I rolled over... for 17 minutes. I heard Jack's heavy footsteps drop out of his bed and his door slam (the new skill: opening and closing doors). He ran in to my room and wanted up in my bed. Jack is not a snuggler, so once he is in my bed, I can kiss sleep good-bye. We rolled around and kissed each other and giggled- all the while I am shielding my face from his sudden, spontaneous head-butt game (the other new obsession). I have a serious phobia that he is going to break my nose or teeth.
Seven minutes later I am joined by the eldest child. She asks me to scoot over so she can snuggle on the opposite side of the bed from Jack. I think she shares my head-butt phobia. We try, unsuccessfully, to chat about her night and dreams while Jack is body slamming us. And guess who appears? My precious middle child. It's Saturday morning and they remind me that they didn't get to have our weekly Friday Night Movie Night since I shuffled them to kids-night-out at a local church. So I caved and turned on a few minutes of cartoons.
I rolled out of bed, leaving the three of them to duke it out. By now Jack has started sliding off of the bed and running to the end and climbing back in. Once on top again, he attacks the girls and I hear frustrated screams of panic and pain.
I quickly threw a nutritious breakfast of Honey-Nut Scooters (off brand Cheerios) and milk on to the table and snatched the kids out of the bed. Jack immediately started digging in and by the third spoonful had scooped the entire bowl on to his lap. I pulled off his soaking PJ pants and diaper, wiped up the sticky milk, and poured his second bowl. All the while I am hearing, "May I have orange juice? I need more milk. Mom, I don't want milk on my scooters, I want it in a cup. Do we have bananas? I wanted a bagel. Can I help make your coffee?" Oh, coffee. Good idea! So I filter water and pull out the coffee maker and load the filter... and realize, we are out of coffee beans. Not good. I debated a few minutes about running over to ask the neighbors for a coffee loan, prepared to plead on my knees, but I decide against it. After all, it is Saturday and they might, by chance, be sleeping in like the rest of the world.
Once the girls are settled in to eating their breakfasts, I realize Jack has been walking through the house with his second bowl of cheerios. So now I have little sticky-O's all over and when he sees me coming, he takes off running the opposite direction. Once I grab him, he angrily hucks the bowl on to the floor and whatever was left in the bowl goes all over the wall, floor, and nearest chair. So I get my second kitchen towel and start wiping up. By now the girls are finished and have vacated the table, leaving half-empty bowls of milk and scooters.
I start a load of laundry with the sopping towels and when I come back, the phone is ringing. My best friends is calling from Scotland and I start in to hashing out my week. Minutes pass I realize the house is too quiet so I go to look for the kids. I find the girls stripped down and dressing up as Native American Indians- loin cloths, ribbons with feathers, necklaces, and, best of all, black marker up and down each arm, leg, and all over their torsos. I ask my girlfriend to hold and explain that they have broken a rule and markers are for paper and not our bodies.
I grab the phone again and while chatting, begin to wonder where in the world Jack has gone off to. After a few minutes of looking, I spot a fresh trail of spilled milk and scooters and follow it to his room where I find him on his bed with both of sisters' empty bowls of breakfast. Third and fourth kitchen towel. Finally I kneel down to get one last bit and my foot slips in another kind of puddle left by the diaper-less dude. Fifth kitchen towel. Second diaper. It's 8:13am. (sigh)

Jack chases the girls through the house with fist fulls of trains and cars and hangers. He loves to make them squeal and aggravate them. I encourage them to go to their room and lock the door so he can't get in. Meanwhile I have a couch load of fresh laundry to be put away and I begin sorting and stacking and continue to talk to my friend. We are deep in conversation about life and love and things that matter and, being the multi-tasker that I am, I am putting clothes away and sweeping up the kitchen and dining room floors. When I come down the hall, I see Jack carrying my stack of previously folded kitchen towels, and you know by now how quickly I go through them. When he sees me coming he takes off, throwing them as he goes.
I re-fold the towels and put them away and go to find the girls in hopes that they will have the hearts to entertain him for a few minutes so I can at least complete on task today. I open their door to find a Panty Party going on. They are nude and have panties hanging from everything: pictures, light fixture, door and drawer knobs, blind pulls, bookshelves, bunk bed rungs and ladder, and each stuffed animal is dressed in a pair. My phone dies mid-conversation and I have another discussion with the girls about the broken rule of getting into their clothing drawers without permission. They begin cleaning up and I turn to find Jack.

He smells- it's his 9:35am BM, right on time. So I start a bath for him because that's the only thing to get him smelling like something other than a nursing home after the morning he has had. I hear the doorbell ring. I am still in my PJ's, all three kids are naked, the house is upside down, and it must be someone I don't know because someone I know would have just walked on in. So I hush them up and force them in to their rooms and peek around the corner and out the window. Perfect timing. It's the Jehovah's Witnesses that my fireman let in to our house the week before Thanksgiving. They stop by monthly and it's a guarantee their visit will come at the most inopportune time of the month (and my fireman always seems to conveniently be away from home). I realize I will have to turn them away (again), feeling like a mean, un-Christianlike person for denying them entrance. So instead of answering the door and explaining the illness of their timing, promising to relay their messages to my fireman once more, I admit that we hid out in the back of the house for the next 15 minutes until I was sure they were gone. Jack goes in to the bath and I find clothes for the girls. It's 9:57am.

I explain to the girls that when Jack wakes from his afternoon nap, if their room is picked up, we will go to the park. Excitedly they agree to the terms and begin straightening up. About this time I decide to write down a bit about my morning since I feel like it must be noon by now. I look at the clock on the piano- 1:45. Confused, I go to the kitchen and look at the clock- 4:15. I look at the clock on the stove and it says 10:17. What in the world? The five year old is following me around and starts giggling. I look at her and she stops giggling and innocently asks, "Momma, what time is it?" Is she trying to make me lose my mind?

I go to retrieve Jack from the bath and get him dressed. I lay him on my bed amidst another pile of clean laundry and he fusses and fights me over putting on his diaper. I turn on PBS and the Victory Garden is showing- excellent show. Jack settles down as if I had given him a tranquilizer. I wrap him in his blanket and leave to find the girls. They are organizing their dress up clothes. I feel it's a good moment to preheat the oven for lunch- another nutritious meal of frozen pizza. (I don't usually feed my kids this kind of food, but when the fireman is away for 24 hours, I have to cut corners. The way the morning was going, they were lucky to get food at all.)
After cleaning up the kitchen a bit from breakfast, I go to look for Jack and find him asleep on my bed. Hmmmm. Do I wake him or let him sleep? I opt for sleep and go back to getting lunch prepared. I take a minute to check email, return a couple of calls, and load the dishwasher. The girls filter in and out with tattling and tales of unfairness. I continue to remind them of our deal and they go back to picking up. I have no idea what time it is.

I would like to take a break now. I had a friend yesterday tell me that she can't wait for me to have older kids so I can understand how busy she is. She is a different kind of busy- running her kids around town, shuffling them from school to piano lessons, to track meets, to boyscouts, to art class. Yes, that's busy. But I have to admit that I don't feel sorry for her. (I say this in love because I know she reads this.) That sounds, honestly, a little relaxing. They can sit quietly and play their gameboys and wipe their own bottoms and noses. Wow- let's be honest, that's huge! And while in some ways I long for that kind of busyness, I am learning to enjoy what I have right now. While I was on the phone this morning, I would explain what was going on in my house and my friend would laugh at the craziness and chaos. It is laughable and I need to remember it more often. It is nuts around here and there will come a time before too long that I won't have to screech and fret over the messes- and that's kind of sad.
I need to spend more time celebrating these kids and their world and less time controlling and badgering. There are days I feel are on fast-forward and this is one of them. I haven't done much laughing today between the laundry and spills and body art. But really- could it be funnier?
So forget it. I am not going to write down any more of my day. Just reading through the first 4 hours answered my earlier questions. I am not spending any more time today cleaning up and feeling frustrated when find another sticky spot on the floor or step on another scooter, mashing it in to the carpet. I am going to the playground. And who knows? I might even bust out another nutritious meal from the freezer.