what a day!

We are late to bed-late to rise in this house. my kids aren't usually up and out of that grumpy sleepy daze until about 8:30 or 9. so when we have to do something early, i make sure to put them to bed early and have something special for them in the morning to help them get a move on. Well. i didn't remember until i was in bed almost asleep last night that i had a dr appt downtown, where i have never been at 9 am this morning. shoot. so its about 11:15. the kids are asleep, but haven't been for very long, so we started out today without the help of enough sleep.

We went to the doctors-which was really just a nurse visit where they ask your history and get a medical record started for you. The kids were wonderful the whole time, and i made sure to tell them so. we got home around 10:30 and they wanted to eat again. so we had snack and a little later some lunch. even though i had promised to take them to the park, and connor has a tball game and i have a homeschooling moms meeting at dinner (so i needed to prepare a dinner for my clan) i told myself that i would clear out the entry way, which was getting to be actually hard to get through it was so full of things. things that came in from the car, things that needed to make it to the garage but took a long pit stop, shoes, blankets, dirty laundry (sometimes i toss it down there instead of taking it all the way to the basement laundry room). See, the entryway is the only place inside the house that you can reach from outside without climbing any steps. my house is a tri-level. its hard to describe, but easy to get it when you see it. so the entryway and garage are on the ground. you walk inside and you can go up 6 steps to the living room,dining room and kitchen, or go down 7 steps to the basement. once up the 6 steps into the living if you make a u turn you can take 6 more steps and you are in the hallway to get to the bedrooms and bathrooms. from this point in the hallway you can look down over the entryway, or turn around and look down over the kitchen. Often things end up in the entryway because we, in our haste, dont want to deal with any stairs.

So, I swore I would get the entryway clean, and have to take connor to the park, get dinner ready earlier than usual and take connor to Tball and go myself to a meeting. so i am cleaning in stages, which is the best way for me, who am easily distracted by another mess. so i take the stuff from where it is in the entryway and toss it into the general area of where it needs to go...i do not 'put it away' which takes my focus off cleaning the entryway. i had moved most of the stuff that wasn't supposed to stay there, and grabbed a hammer and hung up our holy water font and key hanger. i left the hammer down in the entryway for a minute and went into the kitchen for something quick. connor had a spiderman slipper that i tossed up into the upstairs hallway, intending for it to make it into his room later that day. The kids were in the bedroom when i hear a very loud crash! come from somewhere. im pretty sure that they dont have anything they can break in there, so i come out of the kitchen, with the question, 'what was that?'

that, as it turns out, was what happens when connor takes his slipper that i put in the hallway, thinks 'hey this goes in the entryway' and throws it over the railing, crashing into, and breaking our entryway lamp. we just hung this new lamp up about 3 wks ago, because we didn't like the one that was there when we bought the house. wow, i yelled at him for a few minutes until he cried, and then i felt bad and started the process of cleaning up the glass, which had shattered on the ground and was in everyones shoes. while occupied with making sure that miriam didn't come downstairs with the glass on the floor and making sure that the glass came completely out of the shoes it was in, miriam managed to sneak off with the hammer. it took me a few minutes to notice and investigate the not-too-noisy banging noise, only to find that miriam has left a really pretty hammer pattern on a recently painted wall. all i could do was cry. it took a few minutes to pull myself together, and i finished the entryway, removed the hammer from the 2 yo's grasp, packed up the kids and went to the park. then we made it to tball and my husband took them home. i went to my meeting, which was a welcome relief. needless to say i did not get dinner done and my family had to eat leftovers or store bought pizza. to be honest, i dont even remember which. i didn't get to bed until very late, but my entryway was clean. whew!