Taking the Trash Out: A Doctor's Visit

I fight and I fight. Sometimes I gain some turf. Sometimes it's a losing battle. What is this battle, you ask? It's one I think most, if not all mothers... wives... women (I don't know how much to generalize here- maybe it really is just me) wrestle with. Maintenance vs. Letting Things Go. Balance. Class vs. Trash. Today= Class 0, Trash 1.

I would just like to note beforehand that as of late we've been coasting along pretty well. I took Eileigh's questions about getting dressed ("Where are we going?") and house cleaning ("Is Daddy coming home today?") to heart and decided that perhaps I was flirting dangerously with a line that is best avoided and have been working to improve such areas. This of course includes demolishing certain post-childbirth beliefs such as putting a bra on underneath the sweats you wore to bed the night before consists of "getting dressed for the day".  Needless to say, it's a work in progress.

Last night the girls both spiked pretty high fevers after a day of... let's just say an extremely quickly moving digestive system. I was up throughout the night with Eileigh, who seemed to suffer the most. Selah's fever broke around 4:30am and they both crawled into bed with me around 5:00am, insisting they really would go to sleep and allow me a few moments of restful bliss as well. Eileigh kept worming her way on top of me while Selah spent her time alternating between quietly sucking her thumb and punctuating the quiet darkness with a quick jab to my eye, "Eye", a strong grip of fingers squeezing my chin, "Chin", and a deft single-hair-pulling pluck, "Hair". I decided we could work on co-sleeping another time and they slept a couple more hours back in their own beds.

I dragged through the morning, changing Selah at least three times due to unfortunate leakage. The kind where the diaper doesn't even have time to absorb the fast flow so it just shoots out the side and down the leg. I decided to put Selah in a cloth diaper for our mid-morning trip to the doctor's since cloth (although not thrilling to clean when sick) does a much better job of containing said liquid contaminants. Due to an important phone call, a late start and the inevitable getting-stuck-behind-the-truck-driving-15-miles-below-the-speed-limit I breezed into the doctors' office about 10 minutes late. However, a few other things were right on schedule. That would be Selah's impeccable timing of removing both socks and shoes three minutes before our (late) arrival and her subsequent chucking and losing of one sock somewhere to the recesses of our car. As I pulled her from the carseat I also happened to notice she had completely soaked through her diaper, onesie and pants. Much to my relief it was only urine. Much to my chagrin, in the haste to get out the door I had neglected to pack any spare clothing for her and found myself with a half-naked little girl running around the lobby in only a diaper and a thermal hoodie. Much to my further dismay I discovered that the only spare Selah-sized item of clothing I had in the diaper bag was in fact one sad, lone, gray-heeled sock. I now realized I had to make the choice of either putting her shoes of choice (dressy black Mary Janes) back on her without socks OR putting the pants-less girl in one athletic gray-heeled sock and one green-scalloped-edged dress sock. Seeing as how it is winter time and since I'm out of running for Mother-of-the-Year already I decided to go with the mismatched socks and buckled the dress shoes back on. About that time Eileigh decided she was too hot and took off her turquoise jacket. Light bulb went on and I thought, Hey, that should be long enough to cover most of Selah's legs... almost like a dress. That would be soo much better. So I put it on Selah. Not only was it not even close to long enough to cover the diaper,  I was forced to roll up the sleeves about four times since Selah instantly loved wearing Eileigh's jacket and wouldn't take it off willingly for anything. She waltzed all around the lobby proudly while I slunk down into acceptance: Yep, I'm that mom.

I know what they say: You win some, you lose some. I think losing a big chunk of pride might be the best win of all. Embarrassing almost to the point of painful. Nothing like these God-gifts we call children to humble the pride right out of you. Tomorrow I start afresh. And with a full set of spare clothes packed in the diaper bag.