ever have one of those days?

Where you start out with big plans to be out of the house for a wonderful adventure by 10 AM...


But instead, the baby who you thought for sure would take a nap before you left, doesn't take a nap. And just as you thought they had fallen to sleep - ten minutes lapses - and they start up crying and you know that they aren't really napping, just waiting for you to come get them and this goes on for an hour of crying for less than two minutes and then quiet for 10 minutes, and you never want to check on them during the quiet times because what if they really are sleeping, you'd feel like kicking yourself for waking them up.

And so during this period of wishful thinking that your baby is sleeping, you decide to clean up from breakfast and pack a picnic lunch for your outing. And what the heck, you'll also fold a load of laundry because there's always laundry to be folded. And your older children are rough housing and making a lot of noise and screaming "AARGH! AARGH! AAAAAAAARGHHH!!!" just for fun and you are certain that this ruckus is contributing to the baby not sleeping and try as you might, your older children just WILL NOT sit down and quietly look at a picture book.

And then finally you decide by 11:00 that the baby just isn't going to sleep, even though they really, really need to, and so you go and get them. And you decide that the original adventure outing you had planned isn't going to happen because it would take 30 minutes just to get there, and then another hour beyond that it's nap time, so what the heck I guess we'll just stick around here today.

So even though you had your heart set on this adventure and you had told the children about it the night before when you were tucking them in to bed and every five minutes since they've been awake they've been asking "We go to Sea World, now??" you finally tell them, "Sorry guys, not today. The timing isn't working out well with the baby's nap and it's too late and I'm really disappointed but we'll go very soon. I promise."

And you also try to explain to your little people that what you should have done is let the baby just sleep in the car, but you didn't because he had been up super early and falling asleep in his highchair and you thought FOR SURE he would take a good nap in his crib.

And they don't fully understand this and there is terrible sadness in the land.

So you try to distract comfort them with something they love. So you give them big bowls of yogurt and apple slices. And one of your children who is going through a particularly flailing stage of development, accidentally hit their bowl of yogurt while they were climbing into their chair with such force that it flipped over and shot yogurt TEN FEET in the air and splattered all over the kitchen ceiling. And this yogurt explosion required an outfit change for two of their siblings. And you.

And then you are flustered because you don't really know what to do but you know you have to do something. And you feel horribly discombobulated and it's getting too late even to start out to the park. So maybe the best bet is to fill the water table up in the back yard and let them play out there. So that's what you do.


And soon the baby is splashing his siblings with water and they are drenched and they don't want to be drenched and everyone is wet and crying. And you decide THAT'S IT!!! WE'RE GOING OUT!!! and so you get everybody in the house only to discover that almost everybody needs to be changed and the baby is crawling around sopping wet and his diaper is so swollen it is falling off. And you get three children dressed in clean clothes and you bring them out to the car.

And as soon as you you get them buckled in and you are prepared to pull out of the driveway, your child tells you they have to go potty. So you stop the car and you let them out and you have them stand in the grass and go right there. Because they can do this whole potty thing while standing and it is wonderfully convenient at times. But your aim is horribly bad and you end up getting your child's pants wet to the point that they need new pants.

And when you finally get to the park you see that the one child that you didn't get dressed two or three times that day, is still wearing their pajamas top. And you remember that you have a conference call at 2:00 that you need to be home for - so after letting the kids run and play for a short while you quickly herd them back to the car and you drive home and you wash hands, put them on the potty, put them all down for naps and pick up the phone. But just as you do, your husband calls and tells you that he is so sick he can hardly move and he is coming home early.

And all you can think is thank goodness you hit the store yesterday when they were having an ice cream sale because if there was ever a time that you needed to bring out the big guns, THIS IS IT.