Schwartz Family

You know those mornings where you realize that everyone in your home, assuming the husband is already away at work, is working against you and your goals? Even when your goal is simply to get out to the store to buy nourishment for the very children blocking your every effort? And your secondary goal is to get out the door with everyone looking reasonably kempt?
I'm one of many unshowered mothers, and this is my story.
Everything goes smoothly until Daddy walks out the door. As soon as that door is shut, baby has a stinky, Anna's diaper leaked on her pajamas, she wants eggs, no, cereal, no, eggs, okay cereal. Anna cries, "There's a bug in my cereal!" No, it's not a bug, it's just a piece of cereal. Sonja wants to nurse for forever, or at least through highschool, and never eat solid foods or ever EVER take formula. Mom just wants a shower at some point and Raisin Bran. After wheedling the baby to sleep for her nap, Anna is finished with her cereal and announces so in just the perfect tone for rousing sleeping babies. All hope for a shower is lost. Morning chores are tended to while the children cheerfully undo them in my wake. Both girls need a bath so that happens and at 10AM they are clean and dressed. I finish up the grocery list and trudge to get dressed, unshowered and slightly bitter about it, when the thought comes. I scoop up the baby, put her in her crib. She protests, but I know she's tired. I tell Anna to play with puzzles and be good and I leap into twelve minutes of white noise bliss that is the shower. =)
Okay, so I am a showered mom.
Anyway, Sonja wakes up and we head out the door for the store. It is now 11AM, the time I hoped to return by. Things go somewhat okay at the store until we wait in an unusually long line, check out, walk across the parking lot and load the groceries and kids back in the car whereupon I learn that I have stolen the cream cheese. Sonja had expertly shifted her carseat to cover it while I was checking out. Or it had slid under. Either way, the first thing I thought about was how they had charged Chris twice for an item once and he didn't realize it until he came home and of course never made them fix it. And the second thing I thought of was how many times as a kid I had gone back into the store with my mom when we discovered an unpaid for item. So I reloaded the girls in the shopping cart, went back to wait in line again. We return home at 12:30, past the optimum fall asleep period for Anna.
Lunch is made and consumed. Sonja does a little better with sweet potatoes and oatmeal cereal. Anna is falling asleep in her chair so naptime commences. Anna goes down sweetly in her room and I put Sonja down in our room. Anna is quiet as a mouse so I presume she's asleep and fall asleep with Sonja.
A half hour later I sense Anna next to me and there she is. There is something in her face, a sheepishness perhaps. As I put her back in her bed, I notice a tiny dot of blue on her shirt. I walk out of her room puzzling as to what that could be from as her room is in order so she wasn't playing in there. I thought I would have heard her had she been out of her room but apparently not. I came into the living room and found that she had stood up on the desk to get a pen off the top shelf of the hutch, a blue ink pen. It's not nearly as bad as it could have been. She wrote a few checks, circled some 401k percentages she wanted Dad to look at, checked off some envelopes she had gone through and wrote 40 post-it notes to herself. I am SO thankful she only colored on paper. Sadly she also scribbled in our family Bible. I did find it interesting that she circled the word "conviction". That must have been when she left off her mischief and came into our room.
Well, Daddy just walked in the door so order is by rule restored. Sigh...