Woman With Tools

This week has been busy and full which means most of our breakfasts and lunches have been on the fly. It's a sort of everyone fend for yourself, eat when your hungry, go minimal on the junk foods and use your independence. Now, I'm talking to The Little Mr.'s here, not Little Miss, although she is a startlingly independent 2 and insists on doing lots of things herself.

Let me again stress the blessing of those cleaner wipe cloths in a can.

It's an unusual feel for us. It's a home school thing I guess, but we normally eat most meals together in a week. I normally eat all my meals in a week together with my kids, so that's 5 of us at the table together for breakfast and lunch daily, plus The Mr. for dinners and weekend meals.

This everyone grab something because we're moving at the speed of Children's Hospital--wait a minute, then we should have hours and hours at our disposal to eat 7 course meals--wait just another minute, we're at Children's, we could go broke just buying a bottle of water--anyway. This style of on the go can lead to some interesting foods and conversations.

Yesterday Little Mr. made the lunches for himself, Little Miss and Littlest Mr. Their requests.

Once again, The Littlest Mr. proves that he is, if in no other way than by his eating preferences and capacity, my child. He requested a sandwich. Not so unusual you might think. But, it was a white bread, cream cheese, bologna and day old pop corn sandwich.

Um, OK, not quite what would be the average lunch bag sammy, but he did eat it all and say it was good.

Today, Littlest Mr. sat down at the table for another snack. I have a food stays at the table rule, so as he sits down he looks out the patio door into the back yard. He says, "Hey Mom, look at the freak show out back!"

Ah, the love my kids have for each other....

Today's afternoon projects include the million loads of laundry I'm now behind on because of all the fun trips we're making to Children's and putting together the new deluxe stroller I bought last night in total desperation, again, because of all the fun one can have at Children's.

Anyone sense a theme here?

Children's is a blessing. No doubt about it. Lots and lots of kids live and live well because of it, but can I in all honesty tell you, that place is a curse too. Just walking in there sucks away your sense of time, season, reality. It's like a big black hole.

All our trips there this week have brought back to the front of my mind that we were long overdue for a new stroller. Not an umbrella stroller, those I've bought and tossed a ton of over the years. Yes, we're hard on our stuff over here. But I mean a real stroller. Sturdy and comfortable, reliable and decent. The last one I bought like that was over 10 years ago. We're still using it, but now with 2 under 2, what I'm really needing is a double stroller.

So I did it. I made the late night run to Target, checked out my options, choked on the cost, gave myself a back injury lifting it into the cart and begged for a stock boy to load it into my car. Once home, like a super mom...no, crazy woman...I tried to take it out of the van and haul it into the garage. I made it two steps before I dropped it to the ground and searched the garage for the wheel-ly cart thing-y.

Yes, I spend a lot of time out there in the garage...that's so my domain, because I'm so un-girl-ly.

Right.

I don't even take out my own trash if I can help it.

So that's one of the afternoon jobs. Get that sucker out of the box, assembled and ready to go and then back into the van, because, yup, you guessed it, first thing tomorrow morning, back to Children's.

Thank you, thank you, to The Mr. for the full Starbucks card. It sure helps to hit the drive thru on the way home from Children's. Somehow that hot sugary caffeine jolt seems to calm my frazzled nerves on the way home.

Sort of like those neon colored Gatorade's I hand to the boys and the milk sippy I pass to The Miss.