God's response? "That's so cute."
Friday I was super impressed with myself. Thursday night I painted my toenails. Friday morning, I did not get up at 5:30 and clean the living room and bathroom as I'd planned. When the bell rang on Friday afternoon, I quickly finished the paragraph I was typing, then left, with my desk a mess and all kinds of things undone. Then I took Ben to McDonald's for dinner.
Ummm, hello?!?!? Breakthrough!?!?!
Except that as Ben and I were eating our french fries he threw up all over the place. Like a week's worth of food. And here's where my incredible fortitude and parenting skills came in: I was super calm, handled it, and did not blame myself and my decision to go to McDonald's. Thursday I would have. Thursday I would have said, "see what happens when you take shortcuts!?!?!" But I didn't say that. I told Ben it was no big deal, that I would clean it up, and that we should go watch some TV. That's right--extra TV. A couple of hours later Ben's babysitter texted and said that one of his daycare pals had gone home throwing up that afternoon. Confirmed: the barf was not fast food related, so there was no need to blame myself and go into a shame spiral. We took a bath, watched TV, cuddled, and went to bed. And I was totally cool the whole time. And I stayed that way when he threw up some more on Saturday. And then when the neighbors sat outside for 10 hours drinking their way through a case of Budweiser, getting progressively louder and cutting Ben's much-needed nap in half. And when Ben's puking became diarrhea.
Progress, people.
Of course, I felt bad about not doing my chores on Friday so I did them on Saturday.
No one's perfect.
But seriously, I was very impressed with myself for accepting the chaos. As Liz Lemon said on Thursday's episode of 30 Rock, "Chaos is my normal." I've embraced it. And it feels so good.
Today is Mother's Day. I was looking forward to letting Matthew work like a dog and pamper me and not feel a lick of guilt about it. It started out great. Ben woke up at 6:00, but whatever, it's fine. I was exhausted, but whatever. I'll live. I completely forgot to bring the Mother's Day gifts sitting on the kitchen table for my mom and grandma to the Mother's Day brunch. It's okay. They'll forgive me, and I'll deliver them later. No big deal.
Then when we got home, Ben sat down and quietly started playing with his cars, Matt laid on the couch with his iPod, and I sat at the computer to write a post about the blanket I just finished. Then there was a loud crash and a decent amount of screaming and blood. I will be honest--I don't really know what happened, and I feel pretty guilty about that. We were all three literally in the same room, so it's not like he was left unattended. But I wasn't actively looking at him while he played, and I really don't know what he did. He clearly hit his head on the side of the bookcase that holds his toys, but I'm not really sure how. He wasn't climbing it or anything--I would have noticed that, as I was really sitting right there. I'm thinking he somehow slipped. At any rate, there was screaming and blood. We did all the tricks I learned at first aid training, then headed to Urgent Care since it looked fairly deep and was still bleeding. Thankfully, there was no one there. I guess other people's kids were behaving themselves for Mother's Day. After we checked in and sat in the waiting room, I went to see whom to ask to push play on the DVD player (the TV was on the menu of Ratatouille...Kaiser, you are awesome for knowing the best way to keep a kid content at a medical facility), but they called Ben in before I even got to the front desk. He was traiged quickly and we were in a room within 20 minutes of his fall. Within another 30 minutes he was cleaned up, gash glued shut, popsicle and Buzz Lightyear sticker in hand. By the time we got home it had barely been an hour since the whole thing began. A Mother's Day miracle.
It has been a pretty crazy three days, between the puking and the sleep deprivation and the blood. But seriously, I'm good. There's definitely something to be said about motherhood making you strong. You go from bunny to ox faster than you can say "epidural, please." But I'm in. Because seriously, have you seen this kid's face? Even with the gash, he melts me. I'm like an ox that is also a bunny. A "box". And I've got another one coming in just a couple of months.
Epidural, please.
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