Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Morning After

My nieces got to spend the night with me on Wednesday night. They slept well for me, provided I stayed in the room, with a fan, and a light, and comforted them every time they woke, which wasn't too difficult. Charlie mumbled a few times in the night, and Annie woke up, though I use that phrase loosely, yelling MOMMY! DADDY! And I sat up and reminded her, Annie, you're at Aunt Cathy's, we're having a slumber party, we'll see mommy and daddy in the morning. Shhhh.....

That worked ok. It was kind of sweet. Shushing them. I miss not sleeping with the boys. Sam jabbers if I curl up with him anymore, unless he's 2/3 asleep. But the girls didn't jabber at me. And for once the odds were even, 3 girls, 3
Don't know if I could get 4 ready for the day every day though.

That was rough. Although, they were adorable.



Christopher decided everyone NEEDED waffles for breakfast. And so waffles were had by all.



I was trying to get a picture of Annie smiling, she was pretty happy about her Waffle tower. And she said, "I'm going to make a silly face." This was what she came up with. Goofball.



Oh, and we can't forget the Family Band!



Annie insisted on waiting outside for the bus with Christopher. It was a little chilly outside, so we put Annie's jacket on her, and Chris wanted his winter coat. Wonder where they get their goofball tendencies?



Well, "what's right for one is right for two", so Sam and Charlie had to come out to send Chris off to school. It was a right proper sendoff too. Now Sam is used to this happening every day. But the girls were Most Intrigued by Chris dashing down the driveway toward the bus. They couldn't take their eyes off him.



Then, just as I wave goodbye to the entire bus as it drives away, so also did the girls wave Bye Bye. So I told them to wave Bye Bye for me, because I wanted to take a picture for their Daddy. So he could see a picture of them waving bye bye too. Bittersweet, I posted it Monday, waving Bye Bye as their Daddy went back to Afghanistan.

But before it all got tremendously sad. It got Great. We went to the Zoo, had a picnic, it was great. But before that, I got Insane.

After the Bye Bye picture, I commenced loading all the rest of the kids up into the car. Eric had long gone to work, for an early meeting. And I was quite proud of myself for managing to get the girls and Sam dressed and packed for a trip to the zoo. I loaded them all into the car, and ran inside for fruit snacks. Then Annie wanted a blanket. My keys were in the way as I dug in the bags for blankets for everyone (because once one child wants a blanket, Everyone does) so tossed the keys onto the front seat. They made the car do one quick beep. I thought maybe I set off the panic alarm, but it only merped once, so I wasn't worried, and went back to soothing the savages. I handed Annie her blanket, and tucked Charlie in with hers. I tossed Sam his, but he missed entirely, and it went flying over his seat, down in the space by the door. So I closed Charlie's door and went around to the other side.
Only by the time I got there (walking around the car) the car had locked. Apparently the Mystery beep, was me inadvertantly locking the car. And All Three of the Kids in it.
I locked my son in the car, and he was buckled in. And I locked my nieces in the car.

I began to panic.

They were fine. For the first 7 minutes they were fine. 3 3/4, 3, and 1 3/4. All buckled contentedly into their seats. I went back in, grabbed a few random things, so they thought I was just not quite ready yet...while I called 911 and Eric, who had lost the spare key, and my sister, to simply mention we might be a little late. I was cool as a cucumber, telling them, the kids were Fine, just locked in the car, car off, but that's all.

Until Annie started yelling, "AUNT CAFFY! AUNT CAFFY!!!! I WANT TO GO THE ZOO AUNT CAFFY!" Then I had to confess, that unless she could let me in the car, we weren't going anywhere. And it wasn't a good idea to try to teach her in a pinch to unbuckle and slither out of her seat. But her yelling set off the others, and they wanted to get moving too. As long as they were fine, I was fine, but once they wanted me, needed me, that's when I started feeling like an animal in a cage, only I wanted to be IN the cage. Maybe I was more like a cat circling a birdcage. Around and around, slowly (in 10 minutes) losing my mind.

The police took 11 minutes to arrive. They were the longest 11 minutes of my life. The kids were fine. Of course they were fine. And when the policeman used his mad Mcgyver skills to use a wedge, a blood pressure cuff, and a long metal rod to open my car, the kids were in awe.

I just hugged him and burst into tears.

And commenced crying and shaking for the next hour. This is the third worst, scariest thing to ever happen to me. First being the time Chris choked on a potato. Second being that one long time when he was born and it seemed like every time somebody took a look at him, they said something was wrong. That whole time was very scary and very fuzzy.

This was not fuzzy. But it was just as scary. The kids were fine the whole time, but I was scared to death. Weird huh. But you know, my husband is getting us a spare key!

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