Friday, January 2. 7:40 a.m. -- The girls wake up. Clio first, as usual. She babbles to herself for a while, then starts calling, "Mommmmmmmyy!! Daddddddy!!" I nudge Alastair with my foot. It's his turn to get up with them, so I can catch a little extra rest.
9:15 a.m. -- My alarm wakes me up, and I'm surprised that I was actually asleep. The girls had been screaming and yelling downstairs -- for milk, for waffles, to sit in the big girl chairs -- who knows. While I lay in bed, I wondered a few times if I ought to get up, go downstairs and give A. a hand, but I had to deal with the more or less the same scenario the day before. It's his turn now.
9:30 -- After a quick shower, I come downstairs, eat half a banana (Elsa and Clio catch me in the act and, of course, ask for the other half) and warm up a cup of yesterday's coffee in the microwave. While Alastair takes a shower and gets dressed, I put the girls' shoes on, change Clio's diaper (she dirties it right after I put her shoes on, of course), and tell them that we're going to go to some friends' house and have pancakes. A few minutes later, as I'm getting their jackets on, Clio says, "Go friends! Have pan cakes!" I am amazed and delighted, and shower her with praise.
10:00 -- The usual mad scramble to get out the door: girls get all excited and start yelling for things (Elsa hat! Clio milk! Picka up! Picka up!) while Alastair can't find his glasses and I can't find my cell phone and we almost forget the diaper bag, and as usual in this kind of situation, we start snapping at each other. He's annoyed because I'm not positive what our friends' address is, I'm annoyed because he has no sense of direction, the girls are yelling "Nana phone! Nana phone!" but we don't have that CD in the car, and every other driver on the road is an asshole and all the lights are red and we should have listened to the GPS instead of my gut feeling, because this is a really stupid way to get to Jamaica Plain (then, what isn't?) and we're totally late and the girls are yelling for pancakes and my blood pressure must be through the roof.
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