Two hours in the life of this Mama

Sunday night I am lying in bed and thinking to myself, “I need to go to Kroger tomorrow and to the bank.  Then I need to go get my nails done again because they look like shinola.  Somewhere in there, I need to get gas for the van, take Abby to the groomer’s, and then pick up Sweet Girl at school.  Should I take lunch to Joel at the office?  Nah, no time for that.  I also need to run to Walmart and get new fabric for those gifts I’m making for the MIL for Christmas.”  Then, because I’ve thought of it all, I drift off into a peaceful slumber.

On Monday morning, at about 6:15 I got a text from our nanny/Jamie’s healthcare worker saying she was going to be out sick that day.  I roll over and put the pillow over my head for a moment.  My immediate thought was, “Crap.  I have so many errands to run today.  How am I going to do it all with Jamie in tow?”  Then, I thought, “Well, we’ll give it a shot.”  So, I get up, brush my teeth, change into errand running clothes, strap my sneakers on my feet.  I go wake up Sweet Girl, who does NOT want to get out of bed.  It took lots of coaxing to finally wake her up.  She wakes up and looks at me with a pitiful look on her face, until I tell her it’s a school day and she gets to go to music class that day.  She jumps out of bed, puts on the clothes we’ve already laid out the night before, brushes her teeth and washes her face.  She heads for the dining room table.  In the meantime, I wake my husband up and inform him he’ll have to help me get Jamie up so that I can get breakfast started.  Luckily, I always set up our coffee the night before, so it was ready when I got to the kitchen.  I pour myself a cup of Joe and set out all of the breakfast stuff.  Cereal, milk, meds for us all, spoons, straws, bib and a banana for Jamie (he always feels slighted when he doesn’t get a banana with his cereal).

Sweet Girl and I start talking about her day while hubs is getting Jamie ready.  I hear them talking in the bathroom and singing the “Good Morning” song, which Jamie really loves.  Finally, here they come out of the bathroom–Jamie toddling along like he does.  It’s funny that he toddles at 10 years old and 5 feet tall, so I giggle when I see him coming out to the table.  We sit down while hubs runs to get dressed so he can shuttle Sweet Girl to school.  I pour him a cup of coffee when he comes back out, and then he and SG are out the door.  I look at Jamie and ask him if he’s ready to go run around IN THE RAIN.  Yes, I forgot to mention it’s pouring.  It is off and on drizzling and pouring.  It never really stops.  So, we put on our rain coats and head out to the garage.  It’s still pretty warm in there, even though the temp is hovering around 40 degrees outside and steadily dropping.  I get Jamie loaded in the van, which is basically me putting one of his  legs up and then boosting his rear end up into the van with my knee so that he is able to turn around and sit in the seat.  By the way, he’s 100 pounds, easy.  Phew.  I get myself strapped in, take a sip of coffee that has now gone luke warm, sigh, and put the van in reverse.  I back out of the garage and realize I have forgotten the grocery bags.  I pull back into the garage, unbuckle, grab my coffee cup, and run inside.  Grab the bags, nuke the coffee, and back out the door.

Jamie is very happy on the ride; he always is.  He loves riding in the van, mostly because he gets uninterrupted video time with the Backyardigans.  He will giggle at that video and just really enjoys it.  I forget to get gas and we don’t pass another station until we get to Kroger which is about 8 miles from my house.  Luckily, I had about 23 miles to go on that tank, according to the gauge.  We get to Kroger, I find a handicap spot and park.  It’s raining again.  I wonder if we should wait it out or just run for it, then I remember that I have Jamie with me and he doesn’t run.  Ok, we’ll wait it out.  We wait for about three or four minutes and then I realize it’s just not letting up but it’s not really raining that hard.  I get out of the van, go around his side and get him out.  I pull him out of the van, bracing his feet on the edge of the step, and he stands up with help, then sort of lunges at me and I catch him in my arms, where I let him down slowly and then turn around and grab my purse and the bags, slinging them both over my shoulder.  I grab Jamie’s left hand in my left hand, and propel him into the store with my right hand on his back.  I’m pushing him to walk faster than he normally does because it’s cold and rainy.  He has an unsteady gate and I just know we’re going to slip and fall.  I slow down the pace a bit and let him toddle along.

We enter the store and he immediately heads for the carts.  This child loves to push a grocery cart.  It is like demolition derby when he’s in control.  But he loves it so I let him push.  I should mention that it’s not even 8 am yet, so we’re mostly alone in the store with the exception of the Kroger cashiers and stockers.  Jamie loves an echo, so he starts his screaming where he just lets out one high pitched tone just loud enough to create an echo and of course, draw attention to us.  I tell him to use his inside voice and that his screaming is too loud, but he doesn’t care.  He just keeps doing it.  All. The. Way. Through. The. Store.  From produce to dairy, he’s letting out that ear-piercing scream.  We get dirty looks from some of the old ladies who shop that early in the morning, but I don’t care.  I just smile back at them and wish them a good day.

Jamie helps pick out the groceries.  I had a long list that day, two columns on printer paper of groceries that we needed.   I wanted to get everything we would need for Thanksgiving plus this week’s groceries.  I absolutely hate to go to the store the week of Thanksgiving.  It’s too crowded and people are fighting over the last bag of stuffing, or sweet potato, or whatever.  We were in Kroger for almost two hours, up and down almost every aisle.  Usually we stick to the outside aisles, but this week I was also buying things to make a couple of Pinterest recipes and well, they called for spices I didn’t have, and crackers I didn’t have, etc.  Jamie was worn slap-out by the time we got to the dairy department.  He’s too big to fit in the cart, so he’s just going to have to keep pushing.  When Jamie pushes the cart, he has no aim, so I have to steer it, and it’s really like fighting him to keep it between the lines of the ailes and not bumping into the little old ladies who are simultaneously giving us dirty looks and smiling that pity smile that little old ladies are wont to do when they meet Jamie.

We finally make it to the checkout and the cashier asks for my Kroger card before she will ring a thing up.  Now, Jamie has to hold onto something or he could fall backwards, cracking his head on the linoleum floor.  That’s actually happened before, in that exact store.  He also has a tendency to walk off when he’s alone.  So, I politely tell her that I can’t leave my son alone to step up there to enter my card number because the little key chain thingy they gave me four years ago disintegrated once upon a time and I have never gotten a replacement.  Why should I when I have the number memorized?  She gives me a dirty look and says something to the effect of, “Why isn’t he in school?”  Again, I take a deep breath and ignore her comment.  It’s not worth getting into a discussion about it right now.  She’ll realize what she’s said the moment Jamie lets out one of his screams.  Then she looks at me and says, “I need your card before I start scanning because it won’t give you the discount afterwards.”  I tell her that it works at the other Krogers in the state.  She silently starts scanning.  I finally get my over-flowing cart unloaded because Heaven forbid one of the baggers help me do that when they see me struggling to keep Jamie holding onto the cart and empty the cart at the same time with one hand.  I’m just that multi-talented.  I step up to the ATM machine thingy and enter my Kroger number and lo and behold, it actually worked mid-scan!  Jamie and I stand there watching her scan all of our pickings and I realize I forgot the buns for sloppy joes for later in the week.  “Screw it”, I think.  “I am not going to the opposite side of the store to get those.”  As if on cue, Jamie lets out a scream.  The woman looks at me and the pity smile comes out.  Whatevs.  I’m cooking a turkey next week, bitch.  I got it all this week and on sale.  So there.

I pay for the groceries and I actually have to ask the bagger girl if she will take our groceries out for us.  She didn’t offer I guess because it was raining and she didn’t want to get wet.  She reluctantly agrees and we head out to the van.  It’s a replay of the garage scenario where I am lifting him into the van with my knee, because try as I might I still don’t have it down the way hubs has shown me “the easy way” to do it.  The bagger girl gets all of our food loaded up and I tell her thank you.  I get in the van and head down the road…realizing I forgot again to get gas.  I tell Jamie, “Well, we’ll get gas on our way to get Sissy from school”.  Yeah, like that happened.

We get home, I take him straight to the potty because we’re still potty-training, and he has dry pants!  Happy dance all around!  I take Jamie out to the dining room table so he can read a book while I unload all of those groceries and put them all away.  Jamie snacks on the pretzels I bought him at the store, I down a bottle of water and we call that good for the errands for the day.  The rest can wait until Miss S comes back the next day.  Jamie and I chill the rest of the day until it’s time to go get Sweet Girl, and I forgot to get gas again.  “I’ll get it tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow is another day.”

This is just a glimpse into my life as a Modified Mama.  Usually I have help.  Miss S is wonderful with my kids, and loves them like her own.  She is part of our family and we love her.  Life runs a lot more smoothly with her.  On this Thankful Thursday, I am eternally thankful we found her and that she loves my kids so much.  I’m not sure how we got anything accomplished the first 9 years of Jamie’s life without her.