Guys Weekend

My husband went on a guys trip this past weekend. (Someone should invent those for girls.) Naturally, just like every time my husband leaves, everything went, like, super well. He was gone about a half hour when Grant , who takes such a consistent two hour nap that I could probably set my clocks by it, got up an hour early. I literally cannot tell you one time in his entire life that he didn’t take a predictable nap. This caused two problems. One, I didn’t get my extra hour of baby break to get things done. Two, he was beyond ornery and just laid himself on the ground screaming and crying for a solid chunk of the rest of the evening. Alex had been gone about 45 minutes when I decided I should just have the girls take their evening bath now to get it done and out of the way. Rose prefers a shower so I made her go first. She was handling things quite well while I got dinner ready. I fed them a wholesome family meal of nothing but leftovers that I dug out of the back of the fridge. Because I am NOT cooking when Alex is out of town. Rose started screaming at me that she needed a towel from the bathroom. I yelled at her to get one… from of the bathroom… where she was. For some reason this didn’t seem to answer her urgent request. I walked towards the bathroom and told her to get one off the wall behind her. She insisted this wasn’t good enough. I pressed further. “Well, Mom, I have to clean this mess up!” My attention was now drawn towards the floor, where, surprisingly difficult to see, there was about a quarter inch of water over the entire surface. Rose, being six and new to showers, had apparently forgotten to pull the shower curtain inside the tub. So all of the water hitting the shower curtain while she showered for 15 minutes ran straight down onto the bathroom floor. So that was fun to clean up. My brother called and invited us to a bonfire shortly after this. I was rather tied up at my house so I agreed to come, but we ended up not even being able to leave to go until five minutes before their normal bedtime. But it was nice to get them out of the house and busy playing with their cousins for a couple of hours so it was worth the sacrifice. They ended up inviting my oldest to spend the night, and against my better judgment I agreed. Thereby giving up my most helpful child and best asset and I then brought their younger child home with me for a sleepover. It was only after I agreed to the trade that I realized I was definitely getting the short end of the stick. Though he was incredibly well behaved, he couldn’t change my baby’s diapers. After getting all four of them home and tucked into bed over two hours past their normal bedtime, I finally got to sit down on my couch to have a nice relaxing evening reading a book. Something I don’t get to do often enough. When I sat down to check my phone to see if I missed Alex trying to call the kids before bedtime I realized my phone was nowhere to be found. I scoured the house. The entire time a vision of Scarlett “helping”me carry my diaper bag (with phone in it) to the van in the pitch black was dancing through my mind. I didn’t know what to do. That was the only phone I had access to at the time and having my phone for the night was a nonnegotiable with Alex out of town … I just didn’t know how I was going to get it. I did not need my family to be the inspiration for a future Truman Capote novel. I had a child sleeping over at my house. What if there’s an emergency and I needed to get ahold of his parents!? One of my children was sleeping over at someone else’s house. What if there was an emergency and they needed to get ahold of me!? My husband was gone. What if they lit fireworks off the top of his head and needed to get ahold of me!? Basically Mom Brain in a nutshell. Literal constant worry about emergencies involving family members. It was around this time that I heard gunshots coming from near my neighbor’s house. You can’t make this stuff up. I live far enough out in the country that I just chalked it up to target practice prior to hunting season. But there was a little tickle in the back of my brain reminding me that nobody does target practice in pitch black. I needed this phone. I decided to give Facebook messenger a try. 11 PM was fast approaching and I didn’t even know who would be up to read my messages, but I started with Alex, and got no reply. I then moved on to my sister, and got no reply. I gave it awhile and THANK GOD Alex finally responded that he had gotten ahold of my brother and, sure enough, my phone was lying in their yard. I had located my phone, but was still unable to retrieve it. I couldn’t exactly drive over there and leave four kids at my house, and getting all four kids out of bed to take them with me was certainly not on the table either. I finally resorted to enlisting (through Alex on FB Messenger) my saint of a mother-in-law who drove over to my brother’s house at nearly 11 PM to get my phone and bring it over to me, even though she was out with friends. I definitely owe her now. (She’s probably expecting me to produce another grandchild for her in return.) After recovering my phone my mind was at ease and I drifted off into a peaceful slumber. Only to be awakened around 7 AM to somebody being in my house downstairs. I could hear them moving around. And I knew all of my kids were still in bed. I thought maybe I even heard the door open and shut. I gave it a while, thinking perhaps a family member had stopped by. But there was no phone call and no one talking. After hearing noises for a while I went downstairs and found nobody in my house. However my back door, which I KNOW I had locked was now unlocked. So I was feeling, like, super safe. Even if a family member had come over and found a way to get my door unlocked, there’s no way they would’ve used my back door! I then looked out the window to see that it had frosted overnight! I for some reason had been led to believe that the frost was reserved for the northern areas of Michigan. I had spent all summer carefully crafting and tending to my Dahlia garden. Due to late planting and some transplants that had to happen they got started quite late and had just begun blooming. To say I was ecstatic to see them finally in their glory was an understatement. I had not covered them in any way whatsoever and all of my work all summer tending to them is quite likely now a complete loss. But hey, putting in an insane amount of effort with potentially very little return is kind of what parenting is all about right? Nothing I’m not used to there. Now it was time to get breakfast for the four Littles. I had already set the bowls on the table and they were filling them up with their chosen cereal and taking turns with the gallon of milk. Grant still eats meals in his highchair because it’s just the easiest way of handling things. I hadn’t gotten him into the highchair yet so he was hanging out with the other kids by the table until I got his breakfast around. I was on the far side of the kitchen when all of a sudden I heard the unmistakable glug, glug, glug of a milk jug being emptied. I turned around in a state of utter panic. Sure enough, Grant, being his ever-helpful self, decided to pour himself a bowl of cereal. Unfortunately he lacked the skill set required to STOP pouring the milk. He had grabbed the open gallon and held it from the bottom over top of his bowl allowing the entire gallon of milk to pour out onto the table. It was everywhere. On the upholstered chairs. All over the area rug underneath the table. And of course, all over the table. It leaked down into the crack in the center of the table. I am confident we will be smelling spoiled milk in our kitchen for years to come. I cleaned it as best I could, but there is no amount of elbow grease that will fully rectify a gallon of milk being dumped onto carpet. But at least I wasn’t hosting 40 people for a birthday party at my house the following day. Because I accidentally made unalterable plans for Alex and I on Grant’s actual birthday we got to host his birthday party the day Alex was getting home from his weekend away. Which meant that I got to do nearly 100% of the planning and cleaning and organizing and baking for hosting dozens of people. And no, I’m not one of those people that is into enormous and elaborate birthday parties for their children. Not that I have any problem with people that do that, it’s just not my style. 40 people is simply the size of my immediate family without a single friend added on. Very fertile genes around here. We have four children and between my husband and each of our siblings we are tied for SMALLEST family. So at least the milk smell shouldn’t be noticed by many! And to think I came downstairs Saturday morning with delusions that I was going to read my Bible and maybe even a devotional. Instead I found myself considering adding Bailey’s to my coffee and thinking I’d get back to the book of Galatians another day. Perfect I am not.

And this story didn’t even include the part about the partial slushy that got dumped down the side of my counter and cabinets, or the fact that I had to call a washing machine repair man, or the broken glass in my living room carpet right after I finished vacuuming, or the poop smeared in my bathroom, Grant painting his arms with markers, or what it’s like to try to deal with three young children that all experienced a sleepover the night before. I probably could have turned this weekend into a book deal. But all in all I would say it was actually a pretty good weekend! But maybe my bar is just very, very low.