The bad morning

Wow, has this morning sucked. I'm going to blame it all on Scott.

Scott usually leaves to take the girls to school at 7:30. He goes to PT in the mornings, so I get up at 6:50, and get the girls up. They have their clothes laid out already so they begin to dress while I make them breakfast, which is usually waffles and chocolate milk-only no chocolate for Ashlyn, she wants white, and not blueberry pancakes for Haley, she likes the cinnamon ones. On Tuesday and Thursday Owen is thrown into the mix, as he has preschool on those days. So they are dressed by 7 easily, finished eating by 10 or 15 after, and that gives me 15 minutes to do their hair and send them on their way.

Except for the days when Scott doesn't come home, and it all hits the fan.

Like today, when Scott had to participate in a September 11th parade of some sort on post that supposedly started at 7. I say supposedly because I went past it at 7:40 and they hadn't started yet. I get up immediately at 6:50 and put my contacts in. Then I get Ashlyn up, then Haley and send them to get dressed. Then I get Owen up and find he has peed in the bed. Of course, he never does this except when I am rushed. So I have to put him in the shower and put his sheets and the million blankets he has on his bed into the washer. Sometimes in the mornings to get him good and awake we stick him in the shower with Scott, but today Scott wasn't here, so it's all me. While he is in the shower screaming, Ashlyn (thank God she's responsible like she is) gets breakfast made and then comes to tell me Haley is crying and Skylar is awake. I know this already because when I turn off the shower I can hear horribly loud fake crying coming over the baby monitor as well as Skylar jabbering in her crib. Somewhere in all this I notice my right contact is not working and I cannot see out of that eye. I dry Owen quickly and send him to get dressed.

Then I go to the other bathroom where Haley is sitting on the potty fully clothed in her pajamas facing backwards fake crying. I hollered at her that I wasn't taking it from her this morning and she had two seconds to get up and get dressed or she was going to get it. Normally this type of aggressive behavior from me is ignored by all the kids in this house, however at this particular moment I was also waving around a belt, so she got up and got moving. Back to the living room, where Owen is still completely naked and shivering. I get him dressed all the while yelling at Haley; Ashlyn has put Skylar in her seat at the table and she has stood up inside it and is attempting to crawl onto the table to get Ashlyn's bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Owen is eating and Haley is just having milk. I fix a bottle and feed Skylar and then get her dressed while teeth are brushed. Hair gets fixed and Owen gets his backpack and looks for blankie. Oh, blankie got shoved into the washer so he cannot make the trip to preschool today so Owen announces he's not going either.

I get them all into the car, which is no small feat (and it's raining), and drop the girls off and go on post to take Owen to preschool. We drive by the parade field thinking we might catch a glimpse of a parade, but there is no parade, just a bunch of people standing around. I spot Scott immediately out of the hundreds of soldiers, as he is standing in the front of the army ones pacing a little and I know his walk. I point him out to Owen, who now begins to cry all over again because he wants to stay for the parade. Also, they have the road blocked off for no reason so you cannot drive down the street in front of the commissary, you have to turn in the parking lot at the first entrance and drive parallel to the street and then turn back out at the second entrance.

And let me take a minute to say that Air Force people in uniform absolutely refuse to walk in a group of more than 1 person. Because if they did they would have to walk in formation, and they do anything to avoid that, so they straggle along. Meaning if you stop for one person you have to sit there forever while the others go by one at a freaking time. There is a crosswalk right after the second entrance to the commissary. So we sat. And sat. And finally I got tired of sitting so I just cut off a soldier, who had to stop on the sidewalk causing other soldiers to catch up with him, and they're probably still standing there trying to figure out what to do so they don't have to walk in formation.

We get to preschool and Owen cries, cries and cries because he doesn't have blankie, and he doesn't want to stay, and he doesn't want to go with me, and life is terrible, so I left. And it's still raining, and it's only about 60 so it's wet and cold, and I remember something about Scott wanting to move to Seattle, where there is this type of weather every day and I make a mental note that I'm not going, and I came home and immediately got in the shower instead of working out because I have to be ready to go get the kids when they cry enough at school that someone calls me. Last year I think the elementary school had me on speed dial and Owen's teacher told me she'd call if he didn't calm down. Now Skylar is back asleep so I will have to wake her up, which means she'll cry.

And we have no milk, so I have to go to the commissary. And we all know that no one knows how to behave in the commissary. I would go now, with just Skylar, but I have to stay home as much as possible to wait for the guy to call who's going to fix the shower. Did I mention that the tile wall in the shower caved in? And we can see the insulation and lots of mold inside the wall? Well, I have to wait for that guy to call so I'm supposed to stay home.

The only time the kids do this crap is when Scott isn't here. We don't tell them he's not going to be here, they just somehow know. They have some sensor inside them that lets them know that Nope, Dad's not here and Nope, he's not driving here so Nope, he must not be coming so it's just us and her, and if we give her a hard enough time she'll yell a bit and that will be all. And then we can step it up a notch and give her a worse time, and if we all band together against her and keep on eventually she'll give up and get back in bed, which means we can get back in bed and that's all we really want because we're tired because at night when she tells us it's bedtime we don't listen. We stay up. We go to our rooms and mess around and waste time because we're not tired. We don't do what she says unless Daddy backs her up.

So we're back to the fact that Daddy wasn't here this morning and that's why this is all his fault.