Not the correct scene I know, but one of my favourite nonetheless!
When I was younger (and even still!) I loved the “Anne of Green Gables” books. In the second of the series Anne has what she calls a “Jonah day”, a day in which everything seems to go wrong and all she can do is get through it and wait for tomorrow which is “fresh, with no mistakes in it yet!”
By the time I went to bed last night I was sure that I had just survived a “Jonah day”. By survived I mean that even though everyone else in the house was still awake, I needed to go to bed or I would explode! These days, obviously, the term “Jonah day” isn’t used anymore (was it ever? I mean after the year 1910) nowadays you’ll see people on Facebook posting snippets of their bad day followed by “FML”. I am not a fan of all these text message short forms that get used everywhere, in fact, I pride myself on spelling (correctly) every word in every text message, tweet or Facebook update that I write (even LOL is out in my book, I will, however, use the odd emoticon 🙂 !)
My Jonah day started when Little Man decided that he needed to pee while I was doing the same thing! He is perfectly capable of taking care of it himself but doesn’t often remember that. I was not in a position to switch places with him but luckily there was a bucket on the floor. Seeing how I’ve watched him pee into a measuring cup just for fun I thought he could handle a bucket, and he could except for the fact that his little wee-wee was smooshed from being in his overnight diaper and while he aimed for the bucket he was actually pointing 90 degrees to the right! He soaked the floor (as well as me!) and then got upset because he had peed on his feet. I would say “imagine me trying to clean that mess up whilst finishing my own business” but it’s a mental picture that nobody ever needs to be subjected to!
After that, it was just crazy. Every time I turned around it was to a call of “Mom! Mom!” and it got to the point where I just said, “WHAT!!!!” For all the people that live in this house now (6 adults, 2 kids) there was nobody around other than me to tend the children. Everyone had valid reasons for being busy and away from home and I don’t begrudge them that…except yesterday I did. I’m used to being on my own with the boys, it’s normal for us. We’re all adapting well to our new farm life and have a lot of fun most days. That’s what makes yesterday such a Jonah day, there was nothing terribly out of the ordinary that happened but it all seemed to be just too much!
With all the space available to the boys for playing they are really enjoying being able to run outside whenever they want to. There are a few places that they are not allowed to go without an adult and they’re still learning the boundaries so they require supervision (or at least a general knowledge of their whereabouts) which means that I can’t leave them to even have a shower without fear of them taking off into the unknown. Maybe that’s part of the reason for the Jonah day, when it’s been a few (okay, more than a few!) days since you’ve enjoyed being completely clean it can make one very cranky!
Daddy and Papa decided that the time was right (at 6:30pm) to move the propane tank that had been temporarily (since December) placed just at the back corner of our house. It needed to be moved to it’s new home so we could properly bury the propane line and get ready to stake out the new deck. I knew they were preparing to move it but didn’t think they would do it when the boys should have been starting to wind down for the day and when I was right in the middle of an on-line support chat with Rogers. Poor Jenn from customer service, I had to abandon her in the middle of a sentence so I could go and make sure that Little Man (who was determined to help) wouldn’t get hit by either the tractor or the 500 gallon tank being lifted by the tractor bucket and moved to it’s new home underneath the pine trees.
Since there was still daylight left (at 7:30pm) the boys were shown their surprise. Papa had scrounged around and found a tire and some rope to make a swing. Right now it hangs about 1/4″ above the ground since neither of the boys have ever been fans of swings at the park. They both absolutely love the tire swing though and we had fun showing them how to use it by having Papa and Daddy demonstrate!
First time, loving it!
Daddy’s turn!
After all of this play time I was naively thinking that the boys would be tired and ready for bed at a reasonable time. I had forgotten that the boys never go to sleep at a reasonable time on Friday nights when Daddy is home.
Finally I was able to convince the boys to come inside for their bath. After running around the farm all day in their bare feet they were desperately in need of a clean up, Big Boy’s legs were so white with gravel dust that when he stuck his feet into the water there was a distinct line of demarcation between wet and dry leg! While they were in the bath I was finally able to have my supper (someone very thoughtful brought me home a sub from one of his trips into town!) which I promptly had to share with a Little Man who had been too interested in the tractor to eat his own dinner. There I was, sitting on the potty stool with my sandwich in hand, alternately holding it over the tub for a small mouth to take a nibble and trying to get some soap onto two very excited little boys.
One very important lesson that I learned is that even though my children are accustomed to falling asleep in front of the TV (while a nice, gentle movie like Tinkerbell or Mary Poppins plays) if I have the Disney Junior channel playing they will remain interested and not fall asleep. At one point I went into the bedroom and crawled into bed so the boys would follow. That lasted until the next cartoon began it’s theme song. Rather than immediately following the boys back into the living room I stayed tucked into bed and rested for a few minutes When I came back out if was nearly 10:00 and I was astonished to see Big Boy having his second bottle of the night while Little Man calmly sat watching Sheriff Callie like it was the middle of the afternoon. Upon voicing my disbelief at how not tired the boys were my husband said to me, “Why don’t you just do the same things when I’m here as when I’m at work and they go to bed without a hassle?”
I nearly screamed. After the unreasonably wretched day it had become I didn’t have the energy to explain that everything had been done the same, it was just the fact that he was there and in the room that threw everything off (that and my inability to care about anything by that point!) The boys miss him when he’s at work and want to spend every possible minute with him when he is there. My mental state was in no way capable of explaining that rationally though so I just turned around, brushed my teeth and went to bed. Big Boy came with me and was asleep in minutes, as was I. Apparently Little Man was awake until nearly 2:00am so I’m really glad that I went to sleep!
Anne Shirley’s Jonah day ended with her disciplining a student with a ruler on the knuckles, I’m proud to say that I managed to survive my own Jonah day without hitting anyone or anything (other than the bottle, but just a tiny bit!). Now I just have to get through today…
Easy Being Mom 