D's birthday party

Today was a CRAZY day and I'm so glad it doesn't have to happen again. I had a church thing this morning to go to. I had told DH I would take the baby with me (sick little buggery thing) and he could take the other 4 to T's wrestling match. I manage to get everyone dressed and out the door. I grab my keys and decide to walk to church. Wouldn't you know it, I meet DH outside. He informs me that the kids have somehow broken the seatbelt in the back and it won't latch. I just about croaked. I mean, COME ON, give me a BREAK! I have no carpet in my hall right now with a plywood that is still drying out. So he leaves, grateful that he only needs the back 4 seatbelts because I am taking the baby with me. As I walk the maybe 3 minutes to the church I just imagine over and over driving 45 minutes to our car dealership to sit there with 3 or 4 kids for what is usually at least 4-6 hours. Do you know how many times you can replay something in your mind in 3 minutes. A bunch when it's that ugly.

I arrive at the church and tell people that I would help with the food but don't want to get it all germy . So I am standing there with C and she takes her sippy full of diluted apple juice and drops it on the ground. Now, normally, a sippy would drop on the ground and everyone would look at it and think how great sippies are. Not this one I take it. The lid pops off and sends stick apple juice all over the floor. I take little sick in one arm and get down on my knees and start trying to clean it all up while sniffling because my nose keeps running. And of course, it's hard to cross your legs in an attempt to not pee your pants when you are on the floor cleaning up a mess holding a baby. Oh what a sight!

A few friends told me I could go home and just chill (that would be to the home that wasn't ready for a birthday party) but I said no and was glad that I stuck around. It was good to just be away from home.

Anyway, I arrived home an hour before the birthday party was to begin. I started cleaning a little and then decided the kids were just going to mess up the place anyway. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I have a living room that has everything from my hall closets (which had to be emptied due to the flooding), closet doors, and who knows what else in it. Instead, I talked to D about party etiquette. I think he thought I was a nut. "D, pretend someone gives you a sock, a single sock, for your birthday. What do you say? That's right. Thank you. Now, pretend someone gives you a real sports car. What do you say? Thank you." We practice for a while and he did great. He didn't show any disappointment. We had a little melt down when we told him we were having pizza. Apparently, he thought you couldn't have pizza at parties, only cake and ice cream. M tells him that every single party she has been to recently had pizza. It didn't help. But in the end he was thrilled as were the other little ones. We planned this one well and finished right smack dab on time too. He just loved having the other kids over. It gave me such warm fuzzy feelings inside to see him so happy too. He was just eating it up.

DH took the boys to a pro basketball game tonight with his dad. It is very hard for L to accept that sometimes boys do things with just the boys. She keeps wanting to follow D everywhere. And of course, she isn't invited over to 5 year old boy's homes. She's a trooper though.

I'm hoping tomorrow is the day I wake up feeling like a million bucks. Actually, I'd be satisfied with feeling like 10 bucks. I've got to get rid of this cough. I'm glad to be a mom and all but dang, I didn't think it meant peeing my pants over and over every time I got a cold.

Off to clean up a little. I'm hoping to get some good sleep. C has been getting up more in the night now that she has a cold. It makes it a bit trickier to get sleep. Maybe that's why DH seems to be getting over this thing more easily. It's hard to get over things when you aren't getting sleep. But alas... we keep going. I was talking to my SIL yesterday and she mentioned how it really stinks when you are trying your best and things aren't falling into place. I told her that although I would often LOVE for things to fall into place, I don't think it's particularly faith building. It's like when you are teaching a class. If kids think they will get a treat every stinking time they do a particular behaviour, they will often pick and choose when to get the treat. You make it a little more random and they do great because they just don't know when they will be missing a treat. It would be hard to have increasing faith if it got better every single time you did something right. What type of faith would that take? ZERO! So I am a faith builder right now. Did any of that even make sense? I doubt it.

Okay, onto cleaning. I have work to do and not much time to do it.