Who knows why I thought it would be a good idea to pack in 3 things after 4:30 pm (blatantly breaking a parenting rule of thumb, and thus deterring any sympathy from other parents after this story is over). But I did. I thought it would be a good idea on a night when Jeremy was off at work and I was flying solo.
It started with the cast removal appointment at 4:30 in the afternoon. I brought a very happy daughter (castoffday!) and a very cranky son, and a patient grandma for backup. Everything went as planned - daughter was happy, son was cranky and whiny, and patient grandma documented with photos. Towards the end, cranky son got to be too much for everyone (in the entire office, I'm sure), so patient grandma took him to get hamburgers and fries for our (castoffday!) dinner treat while happy daughter and I finished her appointment. The abandonment of our previous plan to actually go to dinner, rather than take home a bag of dinner from a drive-thru should have been clue number one.
But I'm not one who's usually deterred by a little change in plans, so I went full steam ahead on the rest of the evening. Even despite the fact that we left the cast removal appointment an hour later than planned because they re-casted it in a short cast, waited for it to dry, cut it off and sent it home to use as a splint after hearing all of Everly's plans now that she didn't have a cast up to her shoulder anymore (swimming! gymnastics! skiing! sledding! somersaults! dancing! roughhousing!). The doctor looked at me, I nodded a confirmation, and he said "Let's re-cast it".
We head home, the happy daughter eats and itches her sore arm, and cranky boy is even crankier. Patient grandma gives them a bath and I take care of the last thing on our agenda. Friends of ours stopped by to get Everly's crib because Jeremy also took down her crib and my dad put up the new big girl bed that morning. Things go smoothly, we load the crib into their car, and I start putting kids to bed about an hour and a half past their bedtime. Parks lays in his bed with the lights out while I put Everly to bed. And on the upside, it's pretty easy to get Everly to wind down in her new bed because she's so tired. Things are looking up.
While I'm laying with Everly and talking to her about how to sleep in a big bed, I hear all sorts of thumping around outside her door. Upstairs, downstairs, in the hallway, up and down. I finally leave her, say goodnight, and walk out. ALL of the lights are on. ALL of the doors are open upstairs. And then Parks pokes his head out of the bathroom door. He's wearing one sock, a jammy top that is way to small and holding a plunger in one hand. Before I can say anything he says "Mom. It's totally ok now. I think I took care of it." Um, excuse me, dear?
I walk into the bathroom and the toilet is TO THE BRIM. Parks explains that (in his own words) he had an "issue". He saw the toilet overflowing and ran downstairs to get the plunger. He plunged, it didn't work, it went to the brim, he got scared, then he turned the water off. Proud. I'm standing their proud of Parks and his poop-inducing problem solving skills. Then Everly hears the commotion, decides she has to go potty again, and I spend the next ten minutes plunging it while Everly lays in weeping heap outside the door because she refuses to use another bathroom and Parker lays in a weeping heap inside the door saying over and over "You can't do this! Call daddy to come home! Get grandpa! Girls don't plunge!".
In the end, I plunged. Both kids went to bed approximately 3 hours after their bedtime. And I think that my life is comical. Because all that happened in about 5 hours.
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