Rolling With It- Part One

Ever have one of those days?  You know, the days where everything just seems determined to go wrong?  In my adventure in single parenting, I've found that it’s pretty easy for those days to reach full-blown crisis days pretty quickly.  There’s no second shift- no back-up- no calling in the reserves.  So I’m learning to roll with it.  No sense in getting stressed out over what I can’t change.

I've been told before that I am good in a crisis.  What’s funny about my life now is how many times I get to practice that art. 

Little ones, of course, think everything is a crisis.  “I can’t fiND MY SHOES!”  “But I WANT a Lego set.”  “Take me outside NOOOOWWWW!”  And, when there is a crisis, like this:

(Totally my own fault.  Austin- maybe it was a little his fault too- dumped an ENTIRE bottle of dish-washing liquid right before bed.  I put towels on it to soak it up and in the morning- I’m going to blame not being fully awake- I thoughtlessly tossed them all in the washer. Bad idea.  At least soap suds are a “clean mess.”)

Anyway, when Mom is diligently (and calmly- at least outwardly) dealing with a laundry room full of foam, kids have no concept of BEING QUIET and just getting out of the way.  Nope.  Their crises are STILL every bit as important as they were before.  “Mom, mom, mom, MOM…”  “I’m sort of in the middle of something right now, sweetie.” 

Then there are the days where things just seem to stack up.  Two days after the soap incident, Nathan had woken up sick.  Plus, it had been raining all day and the boys were climbing the walls.  I was hanging curtains in the living room, and, while dealing with the inevitable kid distractions, I forgot that I had left the hammer on top of the ladder.  (That, by the way, is another bad idea.  Probably worse than the soapy towels in the washer.  You can guess where this is going.)  I moved the ladder and the hammer, obeying the law of gravity, crashed down on my head.  Major headache- thought I was going to black out- nausea and the whole bit. 

Ten minutes later, while my head is still pounding, Megan comes in the house.  She’s been hit in the eye with a Frisbee and her iris is filling with blood.  Lovely.  I missed getting a picture of the initial injury, but it ended up turning brown.  She couldn't see out of the eye, and I spent two hours on the phone trying to get a straight answer on whether or not I needed to bring her in.  (Note to moms: For eye injuries, call the ophthalmologist directly.  The groups will have someone on call.)

In the midst of all of this chaos, Steffen had a meltdown, Austin had one of those just-put-him-in-the-tub issues, and a few squabbles had to be refereed.

The next week, the wheel of my car was threatening to come off, resulting in an emergency trip to the shop with all the kids in tow and a rental car for several days.  And so it goes, one mini-crisis after another.  Like most people, I'd rather just have everything go well all the time.  No temper tantrums, no car trouble, no laundry disasters.  But that's not realistic, so while I can't escape all the bumps in the road, I am learning, a little at a time, to take them in stride.  

I'll share some of what I'm learning later in the week in Rolling With It Part 2.