Clothes are thrown out of drawers, toothbrushes are flinged, shoes piles are raped and pillaged... It's a madhouse. And the worst part is that the normally patient-of-a-saint mom turns into Joan Crawford. "WHY is there WATER all over the sink?? You need to BRUSH your hair, NOT PET IT!! WHY IN THIS GOOD GREEN EARTH ARE YOU WEARING THREE PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR???!?!" It's an ugly, ugly scene, these mornings of ours.
To be fair, my kids are idiots. Not always. Most of the time, they're really very, very smart. There is just something about the hour between 7am and 8am. They wake up with their eyes closed, and they need to be reminded that shoes go on feet, and the smallest hole in the shirt is for arms, and not heads. You might think I'm being funny. Nothing about these mornings is funny.
Eventually, we get to a point where I realize I'm not fully dressed, lunches still haven't been packed, and nobody can find their damn backpack, with about 3 minutes on the countdown clock. This is when I shift into druggie-with-INTENSE-withdrawal-symptoms-looking-for-his-needle mode. And I make mistakes. Milk is spilled, brushes I WAS JUST HOLDING IN MY HAND go missing, cats are stepped on (we don't even own a cat! That's how effed up our mornings are), and I consider crying as a viable alternative.
And yet, somehow, we get out the door. Somehow it all works, and my kids look just fine (ignore the cowlick). Lennon gets to school before that last bell, and the bus picks up Harrison with a minute to spare, allowing us to sit on our front porch and make goofy faces at the cars that pass. That last moment before I kiss Lennon goodbye and pat her head as she bounces to her classroom... that minute with Harrison, watching him clutch his backpack and smile at anything that moves... That is why any of it matters.
And so every single morning, without fail, I walk into my house, surveying the damage, and I sigh, and vow to be nicer, more prepared, tomorrow. And then I get started cleaning toothpaste out of the cereal bowls.
4 comments:
Sometimes I seceretly want those kind of mornings.
Ours are only just short of that because Eve doesn't have to be to school until 9 on the days that she goes. Next year...it's gonna be SCARY.
This is so funny!
Some times I feel like the mother on tangled."Where is your backpack? Hurry your going to miss your bus, run!! Bye honey, I love you."
Dude, you've got to LOWER your expectations, man! We skip brushing hair and usually skip underwear, too; I give V a piece of gum to have on the way to school in lieu of brushing teeth; he usually wears to school whatever he was wearing to bed; and I keep a couple extra plastic bags in the car for the days we forget the backpack.
It may seem like I am joking but all of this is pretty much true.
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