Please Stand By

It’s spring break this week, so M isn’t in school. We were all having one of “those” mornings… one of those where all of the kids seem a bit out-of-whack and I feel a little like Nicholas Cage in The Family Man… kinda like this mothering this is new, and I’m not quite sure what is going on. I know a lot of it probably has to do with us being out of our normal routine. That seems to have a big effect on the kids (and on me, as well!). Everyone seems a little tired, fussy, edgy, and overly sensitive. During one of those I-might-possibly-be-bald-after-I-yank-all-of-my-hair-out moments, I decided it was a good time to see what was on PBS. I figured the kids needed a little distraction from each other. There was a lot of excitement as they all got on the couch to watch Barney. It had been going for a few minutes by the time we turned it on, but they didn’t mind—they were quite happy and were singing the silly songs. I mentally sighed an “ahhhh” of relief, sat down at the computer, and opened up my email… a good time to catch up on all that, you know. Well, no sooner had I gotten settled into my chair and logged onto the internet than the kids start shrieking and whining. “Mo-ommm!” The show was off, the screen was blank… Barney had gone bye-bye. Let’s just say it was unfortunate timing for technical difficulties. But I did manage to get a laugh out of it. The screen was blank, but the voice eventually came on. The voice that says, “We’re sorry. We are experiencing satellite transmission problems. Please stand by… blah, blah, blah.” Soon L and B are both up and standing at full attention on either side of the t.v. M is still sitting comfortably on the couch encouraging L and B saying, “Yeah, you guys stand there so it’ll come back on for us!” Yes, I guess the voice on the t.v. did say to PLEASE STAND BY. Barney eventually came back on, but only in time for them to watch the closing “I love you” song. They were quite proud of how they had gotten the show back on with their good standing-by (“Moma, Moma! It said to stand by, and we did—right there!”) and didn’t really seem to notice that they had missed the ten minutes in the middle.

After lunch, I sent M upstairs to put a little bit of laundry away in the dressers. She came back down lugging a laundry hamper of all the kids’ dirty clothes. I hadn’t really planned on doing theirs today since I was working on other laundry. But I figured that since it was downstairs, it would be ready to do tomorrow morning. A little while later I came through the kitchen and heard S saying, “Wheee! Wheee!” Let’s just say she was “sorting” the dirty clothes for me. She was pulling each piece out, one by one, and tossing it here and there in the laundry room. So I might be spending the afternoon working on all that laundry after all.

M has been running around as a fairy princess in her ballerina outfit and dress-up tiara. She even made a wand out of paper and colored it like a rainbow. She cut out a star and taped it to the top. I told her I thought maybe she could “magic” those dirty clothes away. I don’t guess it worked, though, because the pile of laundry is still on the floor.

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