Yesterday I finally got to watch "Mom's Night Out."  Since I live in a movie theater-less town, Redbox is the big go to for movies and it finally hit ours!  My review of the movie was that it was good.  A little overboard on packing as much stuff as possible into the 90+ minutes of movie, but an overall fun show.  (Obviously it inspired me to blog again..) It got me thinking about how my days as a mom flows.  I was talking with Jonathon tonight about the new Mormon message about moms (Excelent!!) and we decided that it's not just mom's that start off the day with a seemingly doable plan that changes sometimes minute by minute as life happens all around us, everyone's life is like that!

Some days my days flow just like I think they will.  Those are either the days that I am so productive that my head swells a little bit or the days that I am bored stiff!  On the productive days I find that no one usually showers on the praise, so at the end of the day my head goes back down to normal and I realize that MOST of what I do can't really be seen unless I DON'T do it.  The bored days, I just eat too much junk that I'm not really hungry for and have new and crazy career ideas pouring around in the back of my head. Using a list helps bring on the productive days, but sometimes I get bored of the lists so I top them off with exciting things like shower, put towels from shower away, clean up breakfast dishes, empty dishwasher, get kids dressed. After a few days of lists like that I am back to a week or two of no lists and less productive, more crazy career option days. Mom days are just like that sometimes.

Then there are the other days.  The days where there is a sense of what will happen during the day, then at some undetermined point of time the day takes on a life of its own and the best I can do is hang on and ride the roller coaster ride through to the end.  Unlike the movie I have yet to have a day or night where the police, biker gangs, missing children and husbands highlight my ride, but I do often sit back at the end of the day and just shake my head thinking. "That was an interesting day.."

Yesterday was one of those days.

It started off as one of those head swelling super productive days.  I had made bread the night before and so the kids had bread and raspberries for breakfast.  Lunches were made, kids were out the door and I don't think I yelled once!  It was great!  I loaded and started the dishwasher and the washer, I was even showered and dressed before we left at 9:00am for preschool.  I remember thinking, "I'm doing good today!"

I left Linden in tears at preschool.  He loves it when it's at our house, but he's still a big momma's boy at heart so staying at one of the other houses without me brings the tears.  Thankfully about 30 seconds after I leave he is just fine so we're going with the drop off and mom doesn't linger approach.
I brought Laurel back home and since I was already feeling productive and Laurel was in a good mood we decided to tackle Olive and Laurel's room.  Olive had rearranged things more to her liking a few weeks back.  I was holding my tongue on making suggestions until the end when there were a few safety issues I needed to work out with her.  We decided that her dresser needed to be moved to a place where I could bolt it to the wall.  Several weeks later I was finally going to get to moving the dresser.  (Though I still haven't bolted it..)

I think that Laurel was feeling super productive too because she would point out a toy she wanted, I would get it down and then she played with it for 20-30 minutes while I worked,  It was great!  After the first toy we got a snack then came back for a new toy and time for me to finish up the room.  Yep! It's a big head productive kind of day!

Then my phone rang.  It was Olive.  She wasn't feeling well.  She had a bad headache.  Would I bring her some medicine?  No, she didn't think she needed to come home.  Just the medicine please.  So Laurel and I found the medicine and buckled into the van.  When we got to the school Olive was feeling quite a bit better.  No fever, headache mostly gone. I gave her the medicine anyway and told her to call me if she started to feel bad again.  I figured if it was something I should worry about it would come back hard after the medicine wore off.

While I was at the school Aspen called  She told me she had walked home because she had a weird rash on her arm and she was worried it was contagious.  She had some sort of a rash from her weekend rafting that was responding really well to some high powered hydrocortizone but this was different.  I told her I would be back in a minute to look at it.

It definitely was a different rash.  I hadn't seen that one before.  It looked like tons of little pinpricks on her arm.  She could pick the little scab like things off but I told her not to since we decided that she should have it looked at since this rash was really behaving strangely and we wanted the Dr to see what it looked like.  We got an appointment at 4:00 and after lunch I had her go back to school since she really wasn't sick.

I picked up Linden who had had a wonderful day at school and after playing for a few minutes outside he got to get the chicken egg (one of them is laying!!!) and bring it in and wash it.  He of course dropped and cracked it so I hurried and cooked and froze it for my breakfast the next morning.  (YUM!)

Sometimes I think that Linden is the S L O W E S T eater on the planet.  (When I think about it though most of them went through a phase of really slow eating.)  It took him 45 minutes to eat 4 chicken nuggets.  In that time Laurel ate, I put her to bed, I made my lunch, ate it and cleaned up.  It was painful!  Finally he was finished and he went down for naps and actually fell asleep!  It was after 1:00, but he was down!

Then I remembered that I was working the book fair at 2:00.  Shoot! If I hadn't sent Aspen back to school she could have stayed with the kids, but now I've got to wake them up.  I am usually very religious about not waking napping babies.

Volunteering at book fair is fun for the first 10 minutes.  You get to chat with whoever's place you are taking and browse the books. Then my kids start doing what they do best.  Steadily taking the book fair down.  One book, pointer, eraser and pen at a time.  When I have finally whisper yelled more than a few times they change their game to chase and yell at the top of their lungs.  Towards the end of our time there were a few parents who came in to look at books and with the added looks from these strange adults Linden and Laurel reverted to sitting under a table and playing with the little sliding thing that locks the legs down.  At least they were mostly quiet and NOT running! We finished up with a short rush of kids (Thankfully on of them was Olive) who came in to look and buy and then we were done!  We got home just in time to change over some laundry and for me to give instructions to Olive whom I was leaving to babysit while I took Aspen to the doctor.

How bad is it that I left my 9 year old to babysit my 3 and 1 year old?  I'm trying not to think about that to much.  But I did leave her a phone, and the doctor's office is less than 2 blocks from my house.  I drove, so I could get home in 90 seconds or less and she had very strict directions.  The kids survived, I was gone 25 minutes and it seems that they had a kids bop dance party.

At the doctors we were brought right back.  I filled out the paperwork in the room and just 60 seconds after finishing it the doctor came in.  He hadn't seen that kind of a rash, he didn't think it was contagious and he thought it would clear up within a week.

We got home right as the piano teacher arrived at our house.  Olive was first and Cedar last since he has cross country practice.   Somewhere in here Aspen came up to me and said that she washed her arm and the rash was gone.  A little soap, water and an insurance co-pay was all that was needed to clear up her skin.  (I'll let you have a little chuckle break.)



When the piano teacher is at our house I try to stay out of the kitchen, especially when no one is around to play with Linden and Laurel.  They haven't learned to move or play quietly on demand so we spend the hour downstairs and outside.  Which meant that dinner didn't get started as soon as it needed to.  And since Jonathon, Cedar and Olive's last rec league soccer game was at 6:30, dinner needed to be on the table as close to 6:00 as I could get it.  It turned out to be 6:10, which wasn't bad, but when we cut into the meat and it was raw in the middle it kind of put a damper on things.

Jonathon, Cedar and Olive went off to their game.  Linden was super slow again so we didn't see the first half of the half but we did make it to cheer them on to victory.  Then it's back home and a late bed time for the littles and then I could start my laundry party.  I had picked up the movie on the way home from school and we told the kids that they could stay up and watch part of the movie as long as they were folding laundry the whole time.  We got 7 loads folded, the big kids sent off to bed grumbling that they couldn't watch more and I got to watch the end of it in peace!

And that brings me full circle.  The flow of my life is probably not too different than anyone else's. My "List" productivity ended at 10:15am.  I had to show Olive what I had done to her room since she didn't notice any of my work. My plans changed a half dozen or more times before my head hit the pillow at night.  I had successes and failures.  I made good decisions and ones that maybe should have had a second or third thought.  But this is my life.  It's predictable, boring, frantic, funny, crazy, busy, slow, fast, fun, aggravating and unexpected. And at the end of the day the text that Jonathon sent as I updated him on my day certainly rings true.  "Never a dull moment!"