Two Truths

I deal with lots of poop.

I exist in a state of frantically avoiding being late...while still being...well, late.

Recipe for Disaster

1 - Pour both distasteful ingredients into my morning

2 - Pinch nose to avoid the stink

3 - Avoid buying a watch for 15 months

4 - Pretend you can get eight hours of stuff done in two hours...with a toddler on your hip

Then Bake

or Freeze, as one is more prone to do on a morning in January.

Caroline had preschool at 10:30, which is precisely what time I was changing Cecily's rather offensive morning diaper. We still had to pick up our carpooling friend.

I was the proverbial headless chicken.

I might have yelled at the kids to "Get in the car! RIGHT NOW!"

And if I did, I likely apologized in very solicitous tones from the front seat, while eyeing them in the rear-view mirror.

To which Jonah likely replied "Thanks Mom. Turn the book-on-CD back on please."

So if I yelled, they must have recovered.

We got the girls to school.

I took Jonah and Cecily to the library where I have been wielding Jonah for the past few weeks.

I have an itty-bitty problem with late fees at the library. And after a particularly disastrous affair with a stack of DVD's that escaped my to-do list, I had amassed fines well into the double digits. The city library rather generously allows children to "read down" their fines: $1 for every twenty minutes or $6 for every hour. This is not a privilege offered adults. But my children are allowed to read down my fines. So far Jonah has done three hours and twenty minutes at our library. We're still in the red, but he's saved me $16 so far.

I owe him.

Or maybe it can be considered payment for countless hours of my lost sleep in his infancy.

We went to play group at the church after reading time at the library. From there I had to pick up the girls from school. I intended to leave Jo and Cecily in the hands of other capable mothers while I fetched Caroline. At ten minutes to 1:00pm (which is when I was meant to be at the school whisking Caroline into the car) I noticed Cecily was not smelling right, and her pants were wet.

Blast the ineffective diaper!

I laid her on the floor to execute a quick change.

Five minutes and counting...

I WILL NOT BE LATE.

Unbutton the pants to reveal....

OH NO

How could this be?

Blast the ineffective mother!

The child had NO diaper on.

While acting the part of the headless chicken two and a half hours earlier I neglected to re-diaper my child.

She was soaked through with pee.

One pant leg full of poop.

Smile on her face.

She could have at least cried to tip me off.

It took more than five minutes to scrub her down in the bathroom.

I was late.

Caroline's pre-school teacher was very understanding.

The offending pants are on the front porch this morning, because the offending mother was more likely to soak them with gasoline and light a match than scrub them at the end of her frantic day.

I'll wait to deal with it until after I've had a piece of the bread I just took out of the oven.

My only proof (just now) that sometimes I can do some things right.