Day in the Life

Ellie and I were talking about her detailed London blog and I said it would be funny if I chronicled one of my days like she is doing. She said that was a good idea, so I'm going to attempt to give a detailed account of my day! I hope it is fun and/or interesting to read! It is long, so feel free to give up half way through. : ) It is mainly for Ellie's benefit anyway. : )

Woke up from a dream in which Tom Hanks intervened to make sure I got a prize that I had won for putting on a bridesmaid dress the fastest. Serena Williams also made an appearance to scream that it was a huge injustice that Venus was a bridesmaid and she wasn't.

William was up first to do some homework he didn't do last night. Usually he does it right after school, but he had a "free homework" pass that he was going to use. However, after being in his bedroom for a half hour last night, he came out to inform us that he didn't want to use the homework pass after all.

Jack was up next and said, "OH! There's William," when he came downstairs. As if this was some huge shock. Henry stumbled down shortly thereafter in his usual, "the light is too bright" stupor.

When Luke was ready to leave Jack threw his new favorite fit. It is the "my Daddy" fit and it is currently rolled out every time Luke has to leave. So sad! I told him that we would have to be going soon anyway and he said, "to Mulberry?" Um, no.

We then all ran around in a flurry of "where are his shoes" and "someone find my keys" and "I know you love your Wall-E shirt, but you still have to wear a coat over it to go out in the cold and rain". We rushed out the door for the 30 second car ride to drop William off at school. I don't normally drive him, but it was raining and we were running late.

Back home again Henry insisted that we had plenty of time to play "I Spy" on the computer even though I was trying to eat breakfast, feed Jack, sign pay checks for the preschool teachers, feed our foster cat (Orion) and respond to the e-mail from Luke that he had forgotten his lunch. I finally launched us out of the house five minutes later than planned to get to preschool.

It was my day to help out in Henry's classroom, the Sparkplugs. His class starts a half hour before Jack's Rookie class, so Jack had to help me set up and play with the big kids at the beginning. I filled the water table and Jack quickly proceeded to get himself all wet. As the Sparkplugs arrived, we got down to business. I helped the kids do some table activities, put smocks on the painters, cut pumpkins out for art, and helped unstick a bunch of Legos. I brought Jack down to his class and he bravely said good-bye to me with no tears. How did he get so big all of the sudden?

Back with Henry, I did my usual duties of washing tables, washing hands, pouring juice, resolving disputes and telling Henry to get his finger out of his nose. I also had to endure some stern questioning from Henry's friend, Johnny, who wanted to know why our family doesn't let Henry spend the night at people's houses. I explained this is a standard policy for all of our kids, but Johnny seemed to think that the fact he could use the air mattress if he had a sleepover might sway my rule.

During snack time Henry related the news that "we have all the ingredients at home to make cookies. Last time we made cookies Mom let me eat some of the chocolate chips."

During time in the big muscle room, I got to see Henry in full glory. He and two other children asked that I take the slide off of the climbing structure and they jumped off of it over and over again. When I finally convinced them the slide should go back on, they developed a game that I can only describe as "extreme sliding". It involved going half way down and then sticking their feet onto the slide so that it hurled them forward onto the mat below. He then put on a puppet show for me that was basically a shark chasing people, he balanced on the balance board, walked the balance beam, put on a cat costume and pretended to be a cat, and played in the rice table. All of this took a grand total of about 10 minutes.

Back in the room, Henry made a mini-pumpkin. It looked normal until he glued a bottle cap to the side of the face and said it was a shield.

I went to pick up Jack, who had made a paper pumpkin. The kids were supposed to glue colorful squares onto the pumpkin. Jack glued two small orange squares onto the orange pumpkin. If you look too quickly, you can't even tell he did anything. His teacher said, "Jack made a pumpkin! Well, sort of."

Henry's class wrapped up with song games that Jack watched from my lap. We helped clean up and then I had to go change Jack's diaper. When I went into the nursery I was met with a bloody scene. One of the kids from Jack's class was in there waiting with her grandma and she fell and hit her head on one of the chairs. She got a huge gash and there was blood all over. Serious yuck. I went and helped finish cleaning Henry's room and then went back to the nursery to see if the grandma needed me to take the other kids she had in case she had to take the one to the hospital. She seemed to think the bleeding would stop (I hope it did!), so we left.

Shortly thereafter I realized I forgot to give one of the teachers her paycheck. Who needs a paycheck anyway, right?

Henry and I had an argument on the 45 second ride home about whether or not it was possible for me to make macaroni and cheese that was as good as Burger King's. I won. I made that and left over pork roast for lunch. The entire time I was cooking Jack was yelling, "I want Mac-e cheese!" and Henry was saying, "can you please help me with 'I Spy' now?" Eventually we ate and then I spent about an hour playing "I Spy" for Henry who only came to the computer to collect the prize at the end of each puzzle.

I got the mail and William's soccer pictures arrived. They are rather crazy looking. William's fake smile is worse than Luke's fake smile.

I called William's school to ask them to tell William to be "car rider" today. Then I spent 10 minutes looking for Henry and Jack's shoes. No success. So I loaded them, shoeless, into the car to get William. As I put Jack into his car seat he let out a huge burp to which he said, "I so cute."

We picked up William, who was wearing his sweatshirt he had lost 5 days ago at school (yippee!). We went to McDonalds and got cookies because I'm weak. William said his day was good, but people were bumping into him all day. Apparently a rash of klutzy behavior broke out at school. He also claims that he wants to use his homework pass "for real" today.

Got home, set the kids up with Scooby-Doo (yes, I'm an attentive parent), got online to chat with Ellie and read my favorite blogs. While writing this, I've had to stop about 10 times to keep my children from batting each other in the head with the balloon swords they got last night. I've exiled William and Henry to the basement and switched the TV over to "Little Einsteins" for Jack. I also found myself screaming "STOP SCREAMING" at the top of my lungs. I'm so charming. I've also fielded 5 requests for snacks, two for drinks, had our foster cat lay claim to my lap, and checked Twitter three times.

So, that's it for now Ellie! Hope it helped you feel closer to your nephews for a bit! It was kind of theraputic to write it out! : )