Super long post about not much

It's been a while, eh?

I'm sure there's a lot to catch up on, and I even plan blog posts in my head. This morning at 5 am I thought of a really funny one, but now I haven't an inkling what it was about. So I'll tell you about my day.

Levi's gone to youth conference; he left yesterday. This morning, 10:30, I had just finished the breakfast dishes (the progress of cleaning can be quite glacial around here) and feeding Peter and was gearing up for making the kids clean up the gargantuan mess/fort they had constructed the night before. When I let them stay up watching Charlie and Lola and "camp out" on the couch. But my friend texted to invite us to the Treehouse, so everyone's outlook brightened quite a lot.

I took a shower after telling the kids to clean up their room. This is a part of a fun game where I instruct them in things and they pretend to listen before filling the bathroom sink with water and floating things in it.

[interruption: I think I may remember what my planned post from this morning was! I'll think about it.]

I got ready, got Peter buckled in his carseat to hope that he'd magically fall asleep, chased Alice down to get her dressed, asked the kids twice to put shoes on, and did another batch of dishes--the night before's dishes (the buildup of dishes in my house is the polar opposite of glacial).

Then I--again--told the kids to get shoes on and brush their teeth. Clara shrieked, "Is it time to go? But we haven't finished cleaning up yet!!!" The shrieking is literal, no exaggeration necessary. I've never known the girl to be so concerned with a task left unaccomplished. I sent her down to--wait for it--put her shoes on. Then I sent the big kids on a quest to find Alice's toothbrush. (Are you learning too much about my housekeeping of late? I can't keep up when there's just one of me.) I packed a yogurt parfait for me to eat at school lunch.

We get to school lunch, where Peter waits until we've gotten our food, sat down, and opened everyone's chocolate milks and sorted out utensils and such. Then he wants to eat, since it's been an entire hour and a half, and the big kids are eating, and it's my turn. Once I get Peter latched on Alice tips over her bottle of chocolate milk and it's pouring on the bench and floor and when I get the wipes out to clean it up, I find my container has leaked blueberry juice from my parfait all over the diaper bag. Alice is the only one who eats without threats, and she devours all of her rice and green beans, then wails when her half-eaten snickerdoodle falls on the floor. I tell the kids not to complain at the Treehouse when they are hungry after their abysmal eating and we head to the van, with a still-disconsolate Alice, who I have to carry part of the way. We went to school lunch because I thought it would be easier than cooking and cleaning up another meal in my ridiculous kitchen.

We drive and park and after the long walk from the parking garage to the museum, I remember that I had the double stroller in the back of the van and wouldn't that have made things a little easier? We meet Sara and her kids and between us we have five kids and two infants, and they all seem to want to go different directions, and Peter's fussy, not being able to decide between wanting to eat again and maybe sleeping? After taking turns losing children we manage to interest them all in something in the same general area, Peter falls asleep, and things calm down to manageable for the next few hours.

After leaving the Treehouse at 4:30, I ask them what they want for dinner and they all (miraculously) want the same thing. Everyone falls asleep on the way home. Everyone wakes up fairly happy (again, miraculous) and eats and we watch a little TV before a neighbor comes to play; she leads my kids, a la pied-piper, out the front door without asking permission. We all head outside to play, where we are shortly joined by our other neighbors, with whom we just haven't played enough yet today (they were our friends at the Treehouse).

After riding bikes and other activities just aren't enough, Clara begins hauling stuff outside. Recovering remarkably quickly from the fit resulting from when I told her not to wear her ballet slippers outside and then put them on top of the fridge when she ignored me, she brought outside pillows and blankets outside to sleep. "For pretend." I offered to make it "for real." Nathan joined in with gusto, toys and blankets and such. And the side table from downstairs so he could serve soda to everyone. (Let no one say he's not a good host.)

Oh, and let us not neglect the "campfire" they constructed in the middle of the sidewalk, and the repeated parades up to the corner and back, and sharing the snack of banana chips and cranberries Clara found in her backpack from ballet on Tuesday, and...

It reminds me a lot of the fun I had as a suburb dweller when I was young. That was something I missed when we moved out to West Haven and didn't have friends just out the front door.

So, fun day. Thank heavens all days aren't like that. Most days we don't leave the house. But the rest...