One of Those Days

Ever have one of those days where you feel like the world is conspiring against you? I had one of those days today.

The morning started off innocently enough...in fact, Grace was in a great mood and got herself dressed and ready for school in record time and with very few complaints at all. We walked over to school, playing a game of "I Spy" on the way and I read a book to Gracie in her classroom before it was time for me to leave.

Things began to unravel, though, when my reading drew a small crowd of Gracie's classmates and a couple of the other little girls wanted me to read a book to them as well. Since I had a few spare minutes before school officially started, I decided to hang out for a few minutes and read a book to one of the other girls. Big mistake. As I did this, I noticed Gracie slinking away from me and tucking herself into the corner and the pouting commenced. Before I had a chance to finish reading the entire book to the other little girl, the pouting morphed into full-blown crying, and soon Grace had attracted the attention of her teacher as well as another mom. Good grief. I sighed and made a comment about how tough Monday mornings are, and Grace's teacher suggested I stay for another few minutes so Grace could calm down a bit. I stayed until the morning announcements were starting, and by then Grace was happily playing with her friends, so I bid her adieu and headed home.

Mondays are laundry days in our house, so my plan for today (after getting Grace off to school) was to get several loads of laundry done so that I could enjoy the evening with the family after Aaron got home. I figured that I wouldn't have any issue getting this accomplished as Harrison generally takes two good naps during the day. Today, however, was a different story. Harrison was uncharacteristically fussy all day and every time I attempted to lay him down for a nap so that I could get my stuff done, he would wake up wailing ten minutes later and I would have to drop what I was doing to care for him. Needless to say, this made my attempts at getting the laundry done virtually futile.

Speaking of Harrison, he was especially gassy today (which is probably why he was so fussy) and after one particular feeding, I was burping him and he launched what felt like a gallon of spit-up into my hair. After wiping myself down and assessing the damage, I decided that I would definitely need a shower or I would surely smell like sour milk and baby puke and I was not down with that at all. I managed to get Harrison to fall asleep soundly, so I placed him in his bassinet so that I could take a shower. I lingered for a few minutes in the nice warm water, but suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of a baby wailing in the next room so I had to quickly wrap up the shower, dry off, and throw a robe on so I could get to Harrison, who was practically swimming in a pool of even more spit-up. Where the hell was it all coming from?

I was looking forward to picking Grace up from school (so that I would have someone else in the house to talk to after dealing with a fussy baby all day), but when I arrived at school, I found Grace sitting in the office waiting for me instead of playing outside on the playground with the other kids. Turns out that Grace had an accident during her after school art class and soaked through her pants, socks, and her shoes. (She was participating in a new after school class that her school is offering, and when I asked her why she didn't make it to the bathroom, she said she didn't want to miss out on anything so she tried to hold it.) And, naturally, the poor kid didn't have any backup clothes at school, so she was dressed in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of socks that was in the lost and found.

Needless to say, I was so happy to see Aaron when he got home that I practically bowled him over as I was running out the door to grab a few minutes to myself. Who knew a trip alone to Walgreens for diapers could be so therapeutic?