Today we had nothing to do, so I
decided to take the girls to the store to choose a gift for a wedding we plan
to attend this weekend. Leaving the house can be a major ordeal, and I've
learned that to get anywhere it takes roughly an hour and a half to two hours.
I spend no less than 90 minutes on the
following routine in the morning:
· Step 1: Potty time. Remove overnight
diapers/pull-ups, send Josie to the bathroom, put on dry diapers/panties, and
hopefully get a chance to pee myself.
· Step 2: Feeding. Put breakfast at the table for Josie
and Katie, get them milk, chug what's left of Daniel's cold coffee, sit on
couch to nurse Elizabeth, and pray Josie and Katie don't make too
much of a mess at the table.
· Step 3: Clothing. Chase down Josie and Katie and
dress them (maybe someday I'll video tape this ordeal, I'm sure to an onlooker
it would be rather entertaining, but any parent of children around ages 2
and 3 knows exactly what I'm talking about); change Elizabeth; put on pants if
I have not already. Believe it or not, there are days when pants are kind of a
big deal. Check out this link to know what I mean:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93aA6rAlUAo
· Step 4: Hair. Comb my hair; fight Josie and Katie to
remove breakfast from their hair and run a comb through the bed head. Thank God
that Elizabeth's hair is too thin to deal with. If she's lucky she'll get a
headband (today she wasn't).
On days, such as this one, when we
actually leave the house I get to deal with shoes. I wear flip-flops, they
slide on, match everything, and are always sitting next to the door. The girls
do not wear flip-flops. For small people they are trip-flops, and quite frankly
I don't have time to pick them up off the ground and kiss their ouchies 800
times on a short trip. Therefore they have 2 pairs of shoes that they wear
pretty much all the time. A pair of sandals with rubber soles that are
basically breathable tennis shoes (these were invented by one smart mother) and
a pair of Twinkle Toes (ridiculously over priced kids shoes purchased for them
by my mother). I knew exactly where the sandals were and went to wrestle the
girls to the floor to put them on. Katie is docile and I usually take care of
her first. Then there's Josie, who suffers from the Thrashing Three's (props to
Anna and Kristin for this name). She refused to wear anything but her Twinkle
Toes, but fortunately they were easy to find, so I went with it. However, what
one has the other NEEDS. So of course Katie had to have her Twinkle Toes
as well. (Insert profanity). After 15 minutes of digging, I found them under my
bed (how did they get there?) and put them on her.
I loaded the girls in the car, and
looked at the clock, 11:30. We woke up at 9:15 (God blessed me this morning),
it took 2 hours and 15 minutes to get from bed to the car.
We drove to the store, I loaded the
girls into a shopping cart and went to print of the registry. The lady kindly
informed me that they now have a complimentary self-service wrapping area
(seriously, I came here because YOU wrap the gift for me). I glanced through
the list and headed through the store to pick out some lovely glasses...that
they don't carry in the store. Moving on to the towels...also not available in
the store. After searching out the next few items, I realized there was not one
item on the registry that was both in my price range AND in the store. I went
back to the front, and let the sales associate order my gift online (something
I could have done from home in 5 minutes), and didn't even get to sign my
children's beautiful names on the card because it took too long to get him to
type Daniel and Danielle Forbes properly. Sorry Josephine, Katherine, and
Elizabeth, maybe next time.
We arrived home at 12:24, 55 minutes after we left, and 3
hours and 9 minutes after getting out of bed. Today is one of those days where
I wonder if it's really worth it to get out.
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