Yeah, I was prepared. I mean, Boy Scout prepared. Except that I wasn't at all prepared. Isn't that the way it goes?
Y'all, I'm spoiled. We're a homeschooling family and there aren't many things that can convince me to roll out of my warm bed much before 8AM. It's one of the major luxuries of my job. Once upon a time, I was more of a morning person, but I'm over that now. The problem with me lazing about in bed so late is that my children aren't necessarily reveling in their extra snooze time the way one might think, and so they find themselves confined to their rooms until Mommy gets up.
Which has only worked so-so for quite some time now. Finally, I took the bull by the horns and put some concentrated effort into making their mornings productive without me having to be out of my bed yet. Joshua and I sat them down, explained the schedule they were to follow, posted all the appropriate signage to be sure they didn't forget the plan, and we were off.
The quick version of the plan is they're allowed out of their bed at 7:15, makes beds, get dressed, brush teeth, go downstairs for breakfast, clean up behind themselves, and then the older two head to the school room to do school work that doesn't need my supervision while the younger girls go to the living room to read quietly or play with their doll house until I show up about 8-ish.
Nobody touches the baby. He's much nicer if he gets his beauty rest and I like my babies nice, don't you?
It worked out beautifully. When I descended this morning, everyone was doing exactly as they were supposed to be doing!!! I grinned, gave myself a mental back-pat for a job well done, and proceeded to get the Anna and Daniel dressed for the day. By 9AM, we were all dressed, the girls' hair was all done, everyone had on shoes, and I was ready to do math with the school age kids. Except first I needed to call the doctor for our Anna, who's been under the weather a bit.
"Yes, ma'am. We can be there by 10." Again with the mental back-patting. We were ready to walk out the door, no big deal. Dude, I'm good!
Well, ready to walk out after I extracted the baby from the mirror he'd managed to break while I assured the nice lady on the phone that I could be to the office in less than an hour with five children in tow. I sent the kids out to the car to get strapped in while I grabbed a broom and haphazardly swept broken shards of mirror together. Since I couldn't find the dust pan and there wasn't going to be anybody to step in the glass anyway, I left it and headed out to the van with the kids.
The whole way to the appointment, I giggled at the thought that my not-quite-eighteen month old had just cursed himself with 7 years bad luck. I tried to explain that to him at one point, but he just yelled and grinned and clapped his hands. I guess he's not superstitious?
Now, our doctor's office is pretty efficient. I anticipated only a small glitch in my carefully worked out schedule. We'd be home by 11;15, no problem.
You're convinced she's unhealthy, right?
"Chest x-ray."
Joshua had met me at the doctor's office to keep the hale and hardy members of the family. When I found out we were going to have to have a chest x-ray, I almost called them all in to view the films afterward. Except, honestly, at that point, I was looking at a set of lungs that I knew were not looking like they should be. Too bad, though, it would have been a fun mini-field trip for science!
After stopping to pick up antibiotics, we were home by 12:30 with hungry children, sleepy babies, and me trying to cover all my bases in cancelling piano lessons and play dates and calling in help for the follow-up appointment later this week.
Which is why, on the first day of my well thought out, carefully laid plans, we didn't finish school until three hours later than the schedule told us we should.
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