Grumpy.

It’s 7:15. My dear 9 year old daughter, who shares a room with her 9 month old baby brother has entered our bedroom. Max is on her hip. She loves this little duty. Smiling from ear to ear, she announces…”Hey mama! Somebodies’ lookin for you!” She brings him to my side of the bed and he is as delightful as ever. I thank Iris, she carries on with her own morning routine.

Max attempts to nurse but is far too distracted by Dada, laying beside him. Something about Dada begs to be teased and fiddled with. Max CANNOT concentrate if Chris is nearby, ready to growl and wrestle and peek-a-boo. I recognize that I will not accomplish the first thing on my vague and disorganized TO DO list. (FEED THE BABY) While laying there, I smell the familiar odor of a soiled morning diaper. This isn’t the norm for Max, he usually poops after breakfast. As I reach for a nearby diaper I’m confronted with another familiar odor. The light scent of baby urine.

My pre coffee, morning memory is jogged to recall that roughly 48 hours ago I was changing max’s diaper on our fresh sheets and had to leave him unattended for some 5 seconds, in which time he peed all over his outfit and my side of the bed. Using my better judgement, I left the sheets to be changed at a later date, with a 5 year old in the bathtub and dinner clean up still ahead of me. Over the next 48 hours, every time I thought to change the sheets there was either a baby asleep in the bed or some other more urgent need to be met. Last night while Chris and I enjoyed the fleeting moments of exhaustion that come after we’ve put everyone to bed I mentioned that I needed to change the sheets but that I just nursed Max to sleep up there. Chris convinced me that it wasn’t worth it just then…It could wait…till he was more sound asleep and we moved him to his crib. I reminded him that it wasn’t his side of the bed that had been urinated on, hence his relaxed attitude towards the situation. We moved on with our night and I never changed the sheets. Mostly because I was exhausted and I forgot.

So here I am, bright and early, enjoying a combination of odors that one could only assume were coming from an actual toilet bowl. Upon opening Max’s fleece sleeper I’m confronted with the kind of poopy diaper that nightmares and urban legend are made of. Up the back and down the leg. The kind of mess that takes your breath away and leaves you bewildered at where to begin cleanup. I ask Iris to start the bath while I clean as much as I can with wet wipes.

When I enter the bathroom and place him in the tub he cries momentarily but remembers that he enjoys bath time. I approach the toilet/sink area and immediately step in a small puddle of urine. This is an ongoing problem with our five year old. I reach for the paper towels while 2 more people enter the bathroom…needing to use it. From the hunched position of an indentured servant, I cant hold back a brief moment of insanity that emerges from a dark, self deprived location that I don’t like to acknowledge very often. “YOU KNOW, I CANT WAIT TILL MY ENTIRE LIFE DOESNT INVOLVE HANDLING POOP AND PEE ALL THE TIME!” Clearly, this is not a accurate statement. I do a lot of other things besides handle poop and pee. These are the rantings of a crazy woman, in her pajamas, who hasn’t seen or smelt coffee yet today and who is also a little tired.

Chris takes over in the bathroom while I fetch clothing for Max. I quickly get dressed while the moment allows. I then clothe Max and take him to his high chair. Meanwhile Owen cant find pants…or any clothes for that matter. I help him. Iris is dressed but is still adorned with yesterdays pigtails. I ask her 2, 3, 4 times to brush her hair…the hair that she prefers to take care of on her OWN. Flynn and Micah are outside playing…because it snowed. This is a big deal. They’ve been waiting for this snow. It’s great that they’re enjoying the snow. It isn’t great that they keep coming in and out and leaving doors open and haven’t eaten breakfast yet and are getting their pants all wet.

Chris is now filling the kitchen with bacon smoke. EVERYONE is in the kitchen, each person with a different breakfast request. 2 eggs scrambled, one egg NOT DIPPY, oatmeal, toast with strawberry jelly, a kiwi (and then another and another kiwi). I now recognize that Max has abandoned his Cheerio pile and is enjoying a piece of the strawberry jelly toast that Iris left within his reach. He requires assistance. I’m barely keeping it together when I ask the kids to ALL either sit down or leave the kitchen while we get their food together. I had just the night before moved Max’s highchair from the far end of the table to the closer end, right near the kitchen “HOT SPOT”. I said “With Max’s chair here you guys can’t all be hovering around.” Chris looks at me and says “Yea, why’d you put it there?”

Oh no you ditint.

“Why? Maybe because sometimes when I’m making supper and a baby is fussing and four kids want help with their homework and want me to sign papers and I’m trying to set the table, it’s just a little easier to have Max HERE than it is to have him all the way down there.”
Boy, what a charming gal I am in the morning…when I wake up in a toilet bowl and am a little frazzled and am becoming increasingly more frazzled as the things which frazzle me become stronger forces in my life. Let’s face it people. I’M GRUMPY! I don’t enjoy being grumpy, but it happens.

Chris leaves for work, we offer each other a tightlipped goodbye kiss. The kids and I pull it together. I put Max in his car seat and return to the house to retrieve Micah and Owen who perhaps haven’t sensed that we are all walking out the door. I help Owen gather his back pack, he and Micah head out the door while I grab my cup of now cold coffee. I step out the front door in time to watch Micah hurl himself onto the sidewalk, face first and begin to aggressively produce a snow angel…in maybe a quarter inch of snow. “Oh COME ON MICAH!” He jumps up, grinning, a dusting of snow all over the front of him. As I turn towards the vehicle, that is running, there is Owen…at the tailpipe…breathing in exhaust. “OWEN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
“I’m smellin that stuff Mom. I like that smell.”
“Well it’s poison and you’re gonna kill your brain! Get in the car!”

On the 3 minute drive to school I tell everyone that I know that I was grumpy this morning and I’m sorry. I tell them I love them and that they are really good kids…it just feels like there are A LOT of them sometimes. Because there are. And sometimes I just need to get my sleep deprived self out of bed before the parade starts and change my sheets and make a cup of coffee. I’m just gonna start there.