Pre-School Mutiny

Everyone's favorite Irishman, our wonderful neighbor, knocked on the door at 8:30 last night. "I'm here to take your bins out," he said, referring to the recycling. The dog could not contain his excitement, and and my wet-haired kids were decidedly not in bed. We had just finished reading Eloise, quite possibly the least appropriate children's book ever. I thanked him profusely, since taking three large bins of recycling, damp and heavy from melted snow, over the fence and down our dark, narrow alley was more than I felt capable of handling.

"Don't be daft, Christina," he said, "This is a good time to be sexist; this is a man's job."

It was nearly two hours later before the giggling then crying coming from the girls' room finally ceased. After 11:00, while I lay in bed reading my beloved Nook for a precious few minutes, I heard crashing aluminum cans. I nosed through my blinds to see a sweatsuit clad 20-something man up to his waist in my recycle bin. His comrade shouted from the corner, trash bag in hand. And we don't even live in a deposit state.

This morning around 6, as I headed to take a shower, Mirabella screamed.

"MOM-MY!" I raced up the stairs to see if I could address her concern before she woke her sister. No such luck.

"My nose is yucky," she whined. I handed her a tissue and scooped up Emerie, her eyes only half open, already signing for milk.

Welcome to our house, halfway through The Boy's inaugural trip of the new year. He's in frigid Milwaukee and snowy Chicago. It's going to be 1 there tonight. I mean, really.

So after calming Mirabella down and feeding Emerie a bottle, I placed Emerie and some toys in the only safe place in the house for a new walker-- the crib-- so I could finally take my shower. After that I negotiated each step of the dressing process with Mirabella, shamed the dog for eating a Pull Up, finished getting ready for work, listened to a story Mirabella told about Dora and "the doll that has this hair" (said as she pulled up a lock of her own hair), shamed the dog for eating half my English muffin, made another English muffin and loaded everybody in the car. A good 20 minutes later than I should have. I laughed at the glowing gas light. Mirabella wanted to know what was so funny.

Feeling over dramatic and sorry for myself on the bumpy access road to get to the tunnel, I tried to snap out of it and find my perspective. To finish a sentence that started with "at least." As I merged into the EZ Pass lane, a compact car cut me off. The utility van in front of him, realizing he did not have an EZ Pass, abruptly threw his car into reverse, slamming into him. A bad fender bender, but not for us.

A few minutes after I got to work, our daycare provider called to tell me, when she went to unbuckle Emerie from her car seat, she realized she was never buckled in the first place. In my haste, I bundled, but didn't buckle. And she was fine.

Ah, there it is.