I had such a lovely morning full of wonderful surprises today. Before going to bed last night I begged Alex to let me sleep in. I sleep in about once every seven years, so he was very kind and gracious and happily obliged. And, to his credit, he delivered. Until Scarlett found her way upstairs to wake me up. Once something has awakened me I can’t usually go back to sleep, so I got out of bed. I came downstairs and decided that I would make pancakes before we watched Mass on TV as a nice thank-you-for-letting-me-sleep-a-few-extra-minutes-treat for everybody. When I turned the corner to come down the stairs I realized my morning might not go exactly as I had planned. Some sort of small explosive device had detonated while I was upstairs. There were multiple bags of cereal spilled on the carpet in the living room and in the kitchen. And I don’t just mean spilled a little. I mean, like, somebody grabbed the bottom of the open bag and whipped it around their head. There must have been a toddler rave I missed my invitation to at about 6 AM this morning. It’s the only explanation. Three different bags were almost entirely emptied around the house. The entryway into the kitchen was barricaded with chairs that I can only assume were someone’s attempt to set up some sort of defensive perimeter to contain the damage. Alex snored softly and peacefully on the couch. I told Elle to start working on cereal containment. She attempted to clean it up by using a handheld vacuum. That poor little Dustbuster didn’t sign up for this type of debacle. She sucked up so much stuff it was literally falling back out the end because it couldn’t hold any more. And she wasn’t even a third done. I figured I had two things going for me. I had premade my coffee in our single serve coffee maker the night before and all I had to do was push the button to start it brewing. So I did. And I was informed that Rose had kindly unloaded the entire dishwasher without being instructed to do so in an attempt to surprise me. The surprise would have been way better had I actually run the dishwasher through and didn’t now have drawers and cupboards full of hundreds of dirty dishes in no particular order mixed in with the clean. That’s fun. (And I had to actually thank her for this unique form of torture because she was just so darn proud.) I had also already verbally promised my kids pancakes so I was fully committed to that when I opened the fridge and realized we didn’t even have all the ingredients for them. So I had to ad lib. My coffee had finally finished brewing so I turned around to grab it and added all of my favorite creams and sugars to doctor it up just like I like. I decided a sip of this lovely caffeine would be all I needed to turn my morning back around. I put it to my lips only to find out it was ice cold. Apparently, Alex had decided that he wanted coffee this morning and had pushed the Brew button earlier, then promptly walked away and fell asleep on the couch without ever actually touching it. Thereby doing nothing but ruining my coffee experience. (“My intent was to make you more. Then I fell asleep,” he explained later.) So, when I pushed the button thinking I was brewing my coffee I was actually doing nothing. It was around this period of the morning that I decided it was time for Alex to awaken. (“I was very comfortable.” he explained in our post catastrophe conversation. “You must’ve been!” I exclaimed, “Because I’m pretty sure the Hindenburg went down in the middle of the living room while you were snoozing!”) I will say though, after making pancakes, throwing them on the table for everybody, and then heading into the living room… we were only five minutes late for Mass! No different than a normal Sunday! And we had mediocre pancakes to boot! And I have a husband that’s willing to get up with the kids to let me snooze… even if the plan lacked a little in its implementation.
And this, my friends, is why women don’t sleep in. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
And the below picture does the situation absolutely no justice as it was taken mid-clean up and there was no possible way of getting the entire mess in a single frame.
World's Okayest Parenting 