Late Night Hospital Visits and Other Ramblings...

I dropped the girls off at playschool this morning and boy oh boy am I happy for the gift of a quiet house right now.

I actually don't think there is ANYTHING that I would appreciate more than these few moments of pure silence...to drink tea...to sit near a sunny window and just blog my chaos away...I mean maybe a really, REALLY large sum of money, but if it meant giving up this quiet house it would have to be in the MILLIONS of dollars to make it worthwhile.

If you're feeling a little nutty this morning, or your kids are making you want to lock them in the house while you go sit out in the snow in your backyard to meditate or say a prayer, do read on. I can't promise my recounting of my last 24 hours will take any of your troubles away, and it certainly won't quiet your whining children (sorry!) but, maybe it will make you laugh and remind you that you are not the only one dealing with craziness on a day to day basis.

So, after my very wise post about "feeling" happy yesterday and managing our emotions I decided that it was time to check myself into a yoga class, at least once a week, just to see if it helped to quiet my mind.

I made it to my yoga class by 7:30, settled in and was stretching, and breathing and stretching, and breathing...and wait...there is a gym employee standing near the back door staring into the class...why is he staring into our room...he looks like he is waiting for the class to end...someone in class actually makes a joke about it...."Someone should go tell that guy that we have another 15 minutes," she says...Someone probably should, but hey, this is yoga, we need to focus on our breathing not the other distractions...

Until, said gym man finally comes walking into the room...

"Is there a Lisa Littlewood here? Your husband is on the phone and says there is an emergency!"

My heart jumps all the way from my grounded feet up to my throat.

"Yeah. Right here." I say, as I quickly and clumsily grab my mat, and my socks and my boots and my jacket, leave any peacefulness or centeredness on the floor in that room as me and my adrenaline go flying to the nearest phone.

"Lis, I'm friggin' pissed at the gym...I've been waiting on this friggin' phone for 10 minutes!" Scott says.

Honey, I know...but we were in yoga and the poor guy was standing outside the door not wanting to disturb us all as we are trying to find our inner peace.

"Babe, I'm sorry. What is going on?"

"Ella ate Benadryl. I don't know how much. I'm on my way to Children's Hospital. Ava is at your moms."

So, to summarize...here is what supposedly happened. The next door neighbor's daughter was over playing with Ava. Scott was downstairs saying goodbye to my brother who had come over for dinner...The next door neighbor came over to pick up her daughter and Scott ventured upstairs to get her. What he found in the bathroom was Ava and Madison (the neighbor girl) sopping wet in the bathroom because they had decided to wash their own hair in the bathtub and Ella sitting on the floor after somehow having climbed into our medicine cabinet, finding the adult Benadryl, managing to get the bottle opened and still having a pill in her mouth with several other wet pills on the floor.

Scott called poison control and no one knew how much Ella actually ate so they said she should get to the ER.

Anyway, to make a long story short. Ella is fine. We don't think she ate very much. She did get to bed at 1 a.m. and woke up at 7:30 this morning though. We tried to put her back to sleep and 1/2 an hour later I hear,

"I"M DONE SLEEPING NOW!" MOMMY, I"M DONE SLEEPING"

Well, I guess that settles that. I wasn't done drinking the coffee that I was attempting to use to wake me out of my own morning slumber after also not falling asleep until Scott got home...but that tiny detail really has no relevance here...

I got Ella up. I got the girls fed, dressed and out of the house. I drove them all the way over to the church. I dropped them off and then bumped into another mom I know who has two very small children. We were commiserating about how our houses are always trashed, how it is impossible to fold a basket of laundry because someone needs you every 2 1/2 minutes, and how we are mostly completely overwhelmed by the utter chaos on many days. Not a very uplifting conversation on the surface, but TOTALLY uplifting in the sense that WE ARE NOT ALONE in our craziness, and that reminder, in and of itself is all I need on some days.

So, thanks Kelly for sharing your craziness with me. I'm glad I'm not alone, and please know you are not either.

I get I the car and start driving home, all happy to have dropped the girls off and grateful that the sun is shining when I look up in the mirror and realize I have a big friggin' piece of black pepper from my breakfast stuck right between my two front teeth.

Now, maybe this would not have been a big deal if I hadn't talked to anyone, but I had just recounted the entire last night's events to the playschool teachers, and then yakked away to Kelly about my crazy house, and smiled big toothy grins as she told me about hers. It wasn't bad enough that I was feeling as frumpy, messy, dumpy as one can feel in my fleece, sweats, the no make-up on my unwashed face from the night before, my glasses, the hat the was covering my very scary hair...and alas, that big ole piece of pepper just hanging out between my teeth to remind everybody that, well, we're all VERY very human I suppose.

Ahhh....such is life.  I'm off to "fake it till I make it!" today...hope you are too! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read my post from yesterday!)