Surviving Sunday

So Benjamin woke me to nurse at 9:44 am. By the time we were done, it was 10:33, and church starts at 11:00. Just enough time to dress and go!

So I got the kids up and immediately noticed that Anda's hair was gunky. It looked like she'd been sucking on it again, and had gotten gravy in it at dinner, and then slept on it. It really resembled a birds nest more than a head of hair. And then I remembered that, while Caleb has bathed recently, he hasn't washed his hair in more than three weeks (he hates having his hair washed, and I haven't been up to forcing the issue). So I threw everyone into the shower, including me.

Consequently, we were 45 minutes late for church. We had just gotten settled down to listen to the end of the first talk when Anda announced she had to go potty. Tim was still driving home from Utah, so I had all four kids. And all four had to come with me to take Anda potty, naturally. As we got up from the last row to sneak out the back of the gym, Dan yelled, "NO! Stay here!" He followed us out anyway, and we got back in time to hear the musical number and try to listen to the last talk.

Ben was sleeping, but I'd come with the double stroller (not a car seat), so I had to hold him the whole time. Dan was a good sport about that. I sent the kids to primary and took the babies to nursery, where Dan clung to my leg the whole time but cried when I took him out so I could feed Ben. So we went back and stalled Ben.

When the baby became absolutely determined to eat now, I took Dan and him out and ran into Caleb being taken out of primary by his teacher for being too wild. He promised both of us he would be reverent, and he went back to class, where he immediately started jumping around and flailing his arms and getting all the other kids even more riled up. Mosiah started it, but Caleb fed the fire. Still, when his teacher came back in, he calmed down, so I went to nurse.

I was still feeding the baby when Caleb's teacher brought him to me and said, "I'll see you next week." In other words, don't come back today. Caleb didn't understand that he was in trouble, and that he couldn't come back today. Then he was mad because the other kids promised to play freeze tag with him. He couldn't see that this was the problem! Meanwhile, Dan started bawling because we weren't back in nursery yet, and Ben was mad because I wasn't nursing him and putting him back to bed.

Finally, I took everyone into nursery, where they were reading books, so they all settled down. A new book is Caleb's favorite thing in the world.

Church ended ten minutes later and I collected everyone and then had to wait a bit while Caleb begged to play freeze tag and other boys whose parents were waiting, too, were running and smacking each other with scriptures and yelling. I wasn't waiting for Caleb to finish. I was waiting to see the Bishop to arrange for Ben's baby blessing. But then I discovered that the Bishop's father died yesterday, so he was gone. While I was talking to his counsellor about the baby blessing, a two year old slammed Anda's finger in the church door and held it there and Ben started crying again and Caleb started running again and Dan started begging for an apple (and I didn't have one--Anda was eating the last one).

Finally, we got to walk out into the 99 degree heat to walk home, and Caleb was still wound up. Then his loose tooth fell out into his hand. And right then the lady asked me to do my food order for the next two weeks. Anda gave Dan her apple and Ben fell asleep, so I stood in the parking lot while Caleb whined that we didn't have enough people to play freeze tag and filled out the food order, with the paper resting on Anda's head.

As we left, we noticed that a sprinkler that had been leaking when we arrived was still leaking, so we had to go back and tell the clerk because we didn't know who to call and we didn't want the water to run into the gutter all week.

So I survived Sunday.

But then I thought about my friend the nursery worker, who mentioned in nursery today that she has two sons serving in Iraq and one in boot camp, and her husband just lost his job and they've found that nobody wants to hire someone who is 52, so he got a job that requires him to travel a lot--three weeks at a time across the country--and she still has a couple of kids at home.

And, in the midst of all my chaos, one of my friends stopped to say hi and, in the course of the conversation, I found out that her husband just lost his job, too, their lease is up on their house, her young single mom daughter and toddler granddaughter are moving out into another single mom's house (maybe good, maybe not!), and her other daughter tried to commit suicide because she's bipolar and is just about to get out of the mental hospital (and the family doesn't believe in mind-altering medications and want a homeopathic doctor to "cure" her.....).

So my Sunday was so hard it will be funny in an hour or two, but all together, I think my life is going really well right now. Comparatively, I have nothing to complain about.