Tuesday, January 28, 2014
12:30 AM (I think): Little Guy wanders into our room and hops into bed next to me. I hold his hand and we fall back asleep.
2 AM: The alarm on my phone goes off. The Mister rolls out of bed to do Buddy Boy's nightly blood sugar check and a urine test for ketones, because he's had a cold that has had his numbers running extra high. The blood sugar is 110 {that's good! the cold has saved us from the usual 2AM low!} and the ketone test is negative {also good!}. He carries Little Guy back to his bed.
5:30 AM: Buddy Boy comes running into our room, upset. Little Guy is right behind him. I hop up to help them in the bathroom and hand out tissues for some drippy noses. We all pile into our bed, to wait for 6 AM, when they're allowed to officially be up.
5:45 AM: The boys are playing some game where they lift each other's hand with the edge of the sheet. They find it very amusing. The Mister and I, less so.
6:05 AM: The Mister {who takes the first shift practically every morning! he is amazing and so selfless!} goes downstairs with Little Guy. Buddy Boy stays behind to snuggle with me some more.
6:15 AM: Buddy Boy decides to join the others downstairs. I plan to get a few more minutes of sleep.
7:11 AM: Oops! I overslept! I jump out of bed and into the shower, realizing I won't have time to wash my hair. It's really, really cold outside, so I dress in layers and fuzzy socks.
7:45: The Mister and I swap places...downstairs, I find Baby Girl and Buddy Boy wanting to finish up their breakfasts and Little Guy watching college basketball. He's quite the sports fan these days.
Baby Girl blows her nose.
7:49 AM: Get a text message from our ring leader.
8 AM: All three kiddos go to preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I get out the three lunch boxes I packed last night and put them in backpacks by the door. Little Guy has a tantrum, which includes slinging a doll stroller across the floor, because he doesn't want to take an item for show and tell today. I sing the merits of class participation. He further protests.
8:05 AM: The boys have already dressed themselves in the clothes I laid out last night. I take Baby Girl upstairs to get dressed. She doesn't like the dress I pick out. Says the sleeves are "ow." I inspect them and disagree. Dress stays on. We brush teeth x 3. Comb hair x 3. Put Aquaphor on chapped little faces x 3.
8:25 AM: We go back downstairs to get shoes on x 3. Hem and haw over various outerwear options. Windchill is supposed to be in the negative temps today.
8:31 AM: We are all in the car and headed to the Metro station to drop the Mister off for his commute into the city and then go on to preschool. I sing A LOT of songs for Baby Girl. She has an extensive play list she like to run through during every car ride.
8:52 AM: We pull up to the preschool and I do a blood sugar check for Buddy Boy, just to make sure I am dropping him off in a stable condition. I am. We drop his diabetes kit off with the teacher who handles his care while at school. Realize Little Guy has {intentionally?} forgotten his item for show and tell in the car. He wins this battle, because ain't no way I'm hauling all these children and their backpacks and lunch boxes and coats back out to the car in this cold. I express disappointment. He expresses regret. We resolve to do better next week. Drop each of the children at their classrooms. They were out all last week for snow days, so they're a little weepy this morning, but no big fits, so that's a relief. Lots of kisses and hugs all around.
9:10 AM: I pull away from the school. I always feel a little bit of relief at the reality of a few hours on my own, mixed with a little bit of sadness at the prospect of being on my own. The last glimpse of each of their faces run through my mind. And then the relief wins out!
9:25 AM: I'm home and make myself a faux latte and a few tea biscuits in an effort to gear up for a couple hours of paper work and calls to doctors' offices and the insurance company. There's a lot of this kind of thing to do these days.
{skip over the boring at-home stuff to 12:35, when I leave to get the children from school}
12:58: I get to the school. Get a report at Buddy Boy's class that he was having a hard time adjusting to being back after all the snow days, so his teacher took him down to get a hug from Baby Girl, which fixed him right up. Get a mid-year evaluation from Baby Girl's teacher that mentions that she "knows how to protect her toys." Yeah, I've seen some of that before.
1:45: We get home.
We unload backpacks.
I serve the boys a snack and go upstairs to put Baby Girl down for a nap.
2:00 PM: Back downstairs, it seems Little Guy has said "poopy" and is trying to prevent his little brother from telling on him.
2:20 PM: Buddy Boy adds a snow bib to his ensemble and the boys work together on his speech therapy homework.
2:30 PM: They play more basketball. It's constant, y'all.
2:40: Time for rest.
While they rest, I work on a little laundry.
And edit some pictures of Baby Girl.
And ponder our dinner choices.
I settle on defrosting a meatloaf I made last week and serving it with broccoli and penne.
3:15 PM: I hop on Facebook for a minute and discover that my hometown of Birmingham has been surprised by a winter storm that covered the city in a sheet of ice with a couple inches of snow on top. People from home are posting about not being able to reach their children at school and daycare, not being able to leave their offices, spinning out across highways, abandoning cars in ditches. I start checking in with family members and find that several are stranded. I am most worried about my Mama, who has been trying to get the couple of miles home for about four hours by this point.
4 PM: My camera battery dies, so I turn to my iPhone, which is handy, because I'm already glued to it, texting with family and friends and checking Facebook updates for news from home. The children work on tracing letters and numbers.
4:45 PM: It's time for our early bird dinner and also for Buddy Boy's next blood sugar check. The boys have this little scheme worked out that they think I'm too dumb to catch onto...because they know I make Buddy Boy rotate his prick sites to avoid scar tissue, Little Guy volunteers to do eenie-meenie-miney-mo to choose a finger for Buddy Boy. They've realized that the rhyme ends on the same finger it starts with, so Little Guy whisper-confers with Buddy Boy as to which finger to start on. And somehow, it always works out to be just the finger Buddy Boy wanted!
Buddy Boy doesn't currently like to push the button for the prick himself {instead he shuts his eyes tight, with his other hand on his cheek, which makes me want to cry}, but he does like to apply the blood drop to the test strip. So brave!
Way too high.
A little appetizer of insulin.
Followed by a good dinner, which my camera battery has revved back up for.
5:30 PM: Baby Girl, with marker smudges on her face, sugar-free popsicle on her lips, dinner on her dress, and her sash untied, commences a rousing game of house. She not only likes to play with baby dolls, but also to be the baby doll. All day long, she asks to be wrapped up in a blanket, fed her baby's bottle, rocked, and put down for naps.
After visiting a friend's house and discovering they had dollies named Jack-Jack and Baby Isis, I decided Baby Girl needed to step it up in the doll-naming department. With a little help, she chose Mae-Mae, Coco, and Teeny for her favorite three. This is baby Mae-Mae.
Little Guy is a careful daddy. They take the baby to the potty and then put her down for a nap on the lid of the trash can.
6:15 PM: On to the bedtime routine. No baths tonight. 60 teeth to brush. Three little bodies to lotion and pajama.
A "party" on Little Guy's bed. They declare themselves to be having "parties" for all of life's big events: bedtime parties, getting dressed parties, snack parties, poopy-ing parties...
Story time is followed by their nightly ritual...knocking from each side of the wall that divides them, to say good night.
And then, it's prayers and lights out.
I wash my face, change into pajamas, and await the Mister's homecoming.
5 comments:
I wish I had been there! All those moments are so much fun!
The KNOCKING! That is too precious! And your oldest- he looks so grown up!
Ditto Rachel. The knocking just makes me grin!!
It warmed my heart to see these three in their day with you! And yes, just to echo, the knocking is precious.
precious! i love the knocking. your children seem to get along so well???? mine are animals :)
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