I was never so good at being on time before I had Grace. After Grace, things went from bad to worse. And now? With the two of them, forget about it. I want to tell the story of a typical morning at the Sandlin house.
My alarm goes off at 4:30 AM. I am usually already up, nursing the baby, or just drifiting back to sleep from nursing the baby...we are all in one bed, sleeping like a pile of puppies. This was not planned, but as Grace is cutting four eye teeth at once and I can't stay awake through nursing, much less finish nursing and put the baby back in his bassinet...so there we all are (Jerry, too, when he's not on shift). I sneak out of bed to get myself dressed; everything but clothes. If I'm lucky, everyone stays asleep. That is not usually the case. If Grace wakes up, she plays in the bathroom while I do makeup, rearranging my sanitary napkins and extra rolls of toilet paper. If Wes wakes up, I have to make faces at him while putting on my make-up. He likes to "talk" to me. Once my hair and make-up are done, I nurse the baby again, to hold him over to breakfast (he's a big boy, and he likes to eat). Then, it's time to start dressing babies. If Jerry is home, we each take one. Once the babies are dressed, I herd them out the door. Grace likes to grab random things to take to Mrs. Martha's house: an extra shoe, a funny hat, some sunglasses (even though it's 5:45 AM and still dark out)--once she took a giant maxi pad she kept calling a sticker.
The car is already packed with the diaper bag, my things, and several snacks for Grace. Before we pull out of the driveway, she demands we begin the buffet. One day last week, I pulled out of the driveway, only to circle the block because on the way out of the house, she had put down her milk to grab some other random object, and was now screaming for milk. I ran in, got her milk, and we were on our way. I gave her a snack cup of lucky charms (which is not spill-proof, by the way, after they learn to take the lid off) and once she got tired of picking out the marshmallows and throwing the cereal on the floor, she started crying for a cracker. I didn't HAVE any crackers, but I had poptarts, which she ate. At THAT point, I had to pull over to retrieve the THREE binkies she had thrown on the floor and now could not possibly live without. We got back on the road, and she started crying for an apple. I drove the remainder of my one-hour commute trying to get her to stop crying and sing along with the kids' station on Sirius.
My alarm goes off at 4:30 AM. I am usually already up, nursing the baby, or just drifiting back to sleep from nursing the baby...we are all in one bed, sleeping like a pile of puppies. This was not planned, but as Grace is cutting four eye teeth at once and I can't stay awake through nursing, much less finish nursing and put the baby back in his bassinet...so there we all are (Jerry, too, when he's not on shift). I sneak out of bed to get myself dressed; everything but clothes. If I'm lucky, everyone stays asleep. That is not usually the case. If Grace wakes up, she plays in the bathroom while I do makeup, rearranging my sanitary napkins and extra rolls of toilet paper. If Wes wakes up, I have to make faces at him while putting on my make-up. He likes to "talk" to me. Once my hair and make-up are done, I nurse the baby again, to hold him over to breakfast (he's a big boy, and he likes to eat). Then, it's time to start dressing babies. If Jerry is home, we each take one. Once the babies are dressed, I herd them out the door. Grace likes to grab random things to take to Mrs. Martha's house: an extra shoe, a funny hat, some sunglasses (even though it's 5:45 AM and still dark out)--once she took a giant maxi pad she kept calling a sticker.
The car is already packed with the diaper bag, my things, and several snacks for Grace. Before we pull out of the driveway, she demands we begin the buffet. One day last week, I pulled out of the driveway, only to circle the block because on the way out of the house, she had put down her milk to grab some other random object, and was now screaming for milk. I ran in, got her milk, and we were on our way. I gave her a snack cup of lucky charms (which is not spill-proof, by the way, after they learn to take the lid off) and once she got tired of picking out the marshmallows and throwing the cereal on the floor, she started crying for a cracker. I didn't HAVE any crackers, but I had poptarts, which she ate. At THAT point, I had to pull over to retrieve the THREE binkies she had thrown on the floor and now could not possibly live without. We got back on the road, and she started crying for an apple. I drove the remainder of my one-hour commute trying to get her to stop crying and sing along with the kids' station on Sirius.
That I was only 10 minutes late to work was both miraculous and admirable.
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