An Hour in the Life
Our family has been trying to get to bed earlier. By this, of course, I mean that I, the Mama, want to get to bed earlier, and I want the children to get to bed earlier as well. So I have been trying. The children have been trying too—trying patience, trying sanity, but definitely not trying to sleep. My husband, Noah, has been trying to try, but last night he worked until around one in the morning. Like I said, we’re trying. Also, we are not allowed play-dates because we are sick. Well, potentially sick. The kids were exposed to chickenpox, and we are quarantined until we know if we have them—an arduous process, but necessary.
Our entertainment this evening begins about five o’clock, after Noah declares that the cat box is dirty and he is going to Fred Meyer to buy cat litter. He says he will be home shortly to grill chicken for dinner. As a point of reference, Freddie's is roughly a seven-minute drive from our house.
Noah leaves. We have lost the TV remote, but I want to watch a new DVD I bought online, in honor of being trapped with sick children for the previous week. So we pop the first disk of the Rocky and Bullwinkle box set into the player. Armed with the temperamental DVD player remote instead of the suspiciously missing all-in-one remote (we have a two year old), I settle in the chair to wait for Noah's return with two very cranky children in my lap.
We watch an episode.
We watch a second episode.
Noah calls on his cell phone and says he has found a new calculator watch and must have it. I okay the purchase. We go back to the TV.
We watch a third episode. I look at the clock. Noah calls and says that he would be coming right home, but there is a sale on jeans.
Noah begins trying on jeans.
Halfway through the third episode, the DVD begins to play the same poetry segment over and over. I don't notice until the third loop, but when it starts for the third time, I refocus my brain enough to realize that we have watched this before. I concentrate on trying to get the remote to skip the segment.
It will not skip. I go to the main menu and skip it there.
In retrospect I should have taken the eternal loop of Bullwinkle reciting poems about tubas as a sign.
It is now 8:15 p.m. I realize Noah is not going to be grilling chicken tonight, and so shut off the TV and start frying it on the stove, while doing a load of laundry and loading the dishwasher and washing the remaining large items. SuperMama is multi-tasking! My daughter is playing with Playdoh, and periodically tries to feed it to her brother, who is intently and loudly playing with a tambourine. We have a little chat about not gagging her baby brother with old Popsicle sticks. Evva takes off her diaper, tells me it is wet, and refuses another. I choose not to care—after all, she's over linoleum, and I haven't mopped this week. We continue with dinner, which is actually quite good (stove fried chicken with crushed corn flakes and ranch seasoning—easy, crunchy, delicious). I finish cooking a piece for the babies and serve it up. I am starving, but Noah’s and mine goes back on the stove.
9:00 p.m. Noah reappears just in time to see Evva pour her milk gleefully all over the table. We hurriedly remove the objects from the table (What? You don’t have stuff on your table?), put them in a nearby box, and take off the tablecloth. Evva finishes her chicken but is annoyed we have taken away her glass.
Noah and I have a brief, curt discussion about how ironic it is that he has a new watch. We also discuss how I ran to four different stores way across town, including Costco (on a Saturday), within two hours and forty minutes, while in roughly four hours he bought jeans and a watch (and cat litter), five minutes away.
Noah decides to penitently vacuum the living room, which we've been trying jointly to get to all week without success. I ask a still diaperless Evva if she needs to potty. She says no.
9:15 p.m. I find the lost remote in the cabinet with my cookie sheets.
Noah begins vacuuming, which freaks the baby out entirely. I smile and play peek-a-boo with him, trying to convince him that he is not scared. Nevertheless, he continues to cry, and so I reach down to pick him up.
You may have heard the phrase about scaring the poop out of someone? (WARNING: PEOPLE WITHOUT BABIES SHOULD NOT READ THIS PARAGRAPH). Ammon, taking after his sister, is a hoarder. Thankfully, I know that it is perfectly normal for a little nursing baby to go up to a week without a very messy diaper. The baby that does this, however, often has impeccable comic timing and is more than joyful to share the results with the world at the most inopportune moments. With Ev it was always as we drove up to the store to get our pictures taken, or during the first hymn at church. Ammon is more of a five-minutes-before-you-leave-for-the-store sort of guy. However, breaking with tradition, he now performs a masterpiece of getting poopy. In one moment that justifies the amazing gassiness of the past week, he poops through his diaper, up his back, down his legs, and on to the seat and floor of the Exersaucer. Ew.
So, Noah holds Ammon gingerly (diaperless now, with poop on his feet, hands, back and legs) and makes tracks to the bathroom, with Evva joyously following. Sighing, I turn the still-cooking chicken down to low. Noah reappears with the bath mat. Evva, apparently feeling left out, went in to a jealous rage and peed on it. We discuss with her that tee-tee belongs in the potty. I scrub the babies in the shower. Noah mentions that it is times like these that give us the chance to be great parents. I pause to suppress a sarcastic commentary on hours spent watching Moose and Squirrel while husband was MIA. Deep breath. Instead, we laugh hysterically (we are really tired, after all) and my sweet husband leaves the room to find Ammon some clothes. He returns to ask if the one diaper Ammon has in his bin is all we have left.
It is.
Oh well.
It is now ten o'clock on Saturday evening. We have diapers in the next size up—Ammon will survive. So, Noah clothes our son. He clothes our daughter. I step out of the shower, saying a prayer of thanksgiving for a husband who has a great sense of humor (and who looks great in Levi 560s), for the opportunity to see hilarity in weirdness, and for a life that mimics a sitcom. I dress . . . then remember the chicken, browning in the kitchen.
The chicken is not burnt and is edible. While we are spraying down the exersaucer, Ammon begins to fuss on the newly vacuumed floor. We check—diaper number two is full. Pretty impressive! Evva demands soda, still naked and climbing on the stair-stepper. Ammon falls asleep in my lap, now clean and blissfully empty of gas, while Noah eats some hurried chicken. I am thankful I have a substitute lined up for my Primary class tomorrow. It's 10:40 p.m., and I am very tired, but somehow quite refreshed and happy to be alive.
Strangely, it is evenings like these—okay, technically it wasn't an evening but a mere hour and a half—that show us what we are made of. And what are we made of? Not cursing, not yelling, just getting things done and taking care of life, working together as a team and helping each other and our children. Laughing in the mirror as a poop covered boy and a girl with a red and blue mouth from eating Playdoh rejoice at the feel of clean warm water on their little bodies, happy for clean clothes and a good night of sleep to come.
Wait. Ammon peed on the bed this morning.
Okay, first clean sheets. Then sleep. Then, perhaps, dreams of a quiet desert isle, a hammock, and a good book . . . But it wouldn't be paradise without a spouse to snuggle next to, a baby on my chest, and a beautiful toddler crawling in and holding tight onto her favorite lovey—a braid of my long hair.
Those are my dreams tonight and my thoughts for tomorrow. We might be quarantined, but we are together. We might be dirty, but we come clean. We might be tired, but our perspective is still eternal. God made love, but I am grateful that He also created laughter. Perhaps, after all, they are the same.
Heather is young enough to not have many gray hairs, but old enough to make worry lines while looking for them. She lives in South Carolina with her two young children, a long-suffering and compassionate husband, a small orange cat who thinks he is a dog, and about fifty bazillion mosquitoes. When she is not editing for Segullah, she de-clutters yet another closet, naps, and works on finishing her book of essays about adapting to chronic illness and Lyme disease. Mostly naps.
