Chaos is the new norm

On Saturday morning we awoke pretty late....9am and decided to hit the open highway. Our cute little cousin Connor was having his first birthday back home in Louisiana and we were up for the adventure. We had approximately 3 hours to get ready, get packed and get on the road to have enough time to stop and grab fast food and make it to the party on time. We were out the house by 10 after 12, but what happened in those three hours were enough to make one's head spin.

We got everyone up and changed and started breakfast. Josh made pancakes, and the kids devoured them, so did Brownie and Maddie. Yes, Maddie was staying with us since my mom and dad were out of town. She is also a chocolate lab and takes up as much room as Brownie in the bed....thankfully she likes to sleep with Meredith when she is here.

Josh, who was feeling like complete shit was game for the trip and we were restless and ready to get out the house. We started getting everyone showers and dressing. Everyone was feeling better, but we still all had some coughing and runny noses going on. I attributed Meredith's less than stellar attitude to that simple fact. We also realized that in the weeks of sickness we weren't sure when the poor baby had went to the bathroom last and with that brought lots of tears, yelling, screaming and fighting trying to get her to go. Eventually we gave up and decided to deal with that issue when we got home, what's one more day right. (For the record she went after she did a little running at the party and all is better now).

Noah was also very cranky because he was up all night and ready for his one nap of the day. Instead of putting him down before we left, I kept him up hoping he would sleep the whole car ride. He thanked me immensely for this genius plan by crying and screaming and cursing me under his breath. When the boy wants to sleep, he wants to sleep, I will eventually catch on. He showed me what he thought about my plan by refusing to sleep until we were almost there.

We then got everyone dressed and ready only to have Noah find an open Hershey bar and get chocolate all over his shirt. I then chased him around with one of the stain stick pens and you know it really didn't do much for his chocolate stain. He was very curious as to what I was doing with it on his shirt collar that he decided to suck on his shirt to get a taste when I was finished. He is okay so I am going out on a limb to say it is nontoxic, even if the pen says otherwise. I realized that raising boys was very different than raising girls, Noah is always a mess by the time we get out the house and he is so okay with it. It is a mission that he is determined to accomplish.

Brownie decided she was rather upset we would be leaving her home all day alone and needed some attention. She decided to throw up in three different rooms, I guess she didn't think those pancakes were that great. Josh got the duty of cleaning up vomit, while I finished getting dressed. After my stain removal with Noah and dressing Meredith, I realized my hair had dried on it's own and had a nice wave look and went with it. My mom complimented my hair at the party, I didn't tell her I spent exactly .2 seconds on it, the time it took to remove the towel from my head after the shower and not another thing.

As we were about 30 minutes from take off, I realized that Noah was playing quietly in my bathroom. I went in to find he had broken my hot pink bottle of OPI nail polish and was in fact turning himself pink. He painted his face, his hands, my tile, the grout, but miraculously NONE of his clothes were pink and stained with nail polish. I know WHAT THE HELL! The tike is a genius, how did he do that? The bottle was broken and he was playing in the middle of glass and a bright pink pool of nail polish, and very eloquently painting his face and hands and everything else pink. Josh and I are so winning the Parent of the Year award for this one!

I yelled to Josh who came in to help with the situation. I wasn't sure if I could put nail polish remover on his skin or on his face. I did, I figured what damage the stain remover pen didn't do the finger nail polish remover would.....kidding....SO KIDDING. I only used a quick dab on his hand and when it proved fruitless because he had so many different coats on him I gave up and let him be pink for the day. His sister was pissed. I know life is unfair, she has only been wanting to be pink for months now and I let Noah be pink and not her.

After we cleaned the tike, the grout, the tile and finished getting ourselves dressed we got in the car. We then took a deep breath, said some choice words and then went back inside 10+ times to get everything we forgot. We realized that time was up and we were on our way, leaving whatever we didn't have behind. We made it to the party on time, it was fun, we saw our family and infected them all with this nasty bug. They will be thanking us next week. A few people asked if I spiked Noah's hair like that on purpose and why he was pink, I ignored them.

Life never goes as planned anymore, but that's okay. Josh and I have mastered adapting and overcoming. It is our new philosophy on life. One day at a time, one disaster at a time, one thirty minute interval at a time. After the party we decided to reward ourselves for a job well done and hit a favorite local restaurant. We sat there looking at one another and talking about how lucky we were and how grand life is and how good our kids were. They were playing with their food and drink quietly in their chair and we were thinking, life doesn't get much better than this. We then loaded up the car and hit the road for our long ride home. They were tired and exhausted and cried the last 30 minutes of our trip, we still thought we were lucky, we were just ready to fast forward this thirty minute interval and get home.

Like Meredith said, it was a good day. Yes a very good, ordinary, chaotic day....that's our life and we embrace it!