Our Morning

We Leathermans have been battling some sort of virus for a good couple of weeks now.  This virus first showed up in Cal as a fever and a splotchy rash on his face and later turned into a nasty cough and some congestion a week later.  In Ella, we've theorized she has some form of the virus -- her eyes periodically have a slight discharge, and her nose has been runny of late.  And just this week, Dan's and my symptoms have surfaced in the form of coughs, sore throats and slight headaches.

Feeling pretty crummy last night, we each took a nighttime cold medicine, which turned out to have the desired effect on both of us -- we crashed well before our normal go-to-sleep time and slept really well... so well, it made for an interesting morning today, which started like this:

Dan: "BABE, IT'S 6:48!" (Note: we normally awaken at 6am, give or take a few minutes.)

Flustered, I looked at my clock.  6:46, I made note.  I sat up in bed to see Cal standing and staring out the window by our bed.  That's a little strange, I thought to myself.  I stood up and started walking to our bathroom as if I had a clue where I was, what I was doing and what my name was.  I furthered our conversation:

Me: "What day is it?" (No kidding, I didn't know.)

Dan: "Thursday... no Tuesday."

Me: <Wait, I just finished my Tuesday... >"It's Wednesday!"

And I continued to make my way to the bathroom.  I quickly showered, making note of when I thought we'd need to leave in order to catch the 7:32 train.  We normally catch the 7:17.  7:10... 7:10... it's doable, I thought to myself without sharing this with Dan.  He was already up and getting dressed which made my plan even more doable.

Nuts!  I realized that I had forgotten to have Cal select and lay out his clothes for today the night before.  (We've found that doing this facilitates more efficient, less contentious mornings with Cal.)

I threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back in a pony and applied some mascara and was putting on my shoes at the edge of my bed by 7:00 or so.  Dan was in Ella's room getting her dressed, and Cal was coming in to our room with Monkey and Ducky in his hands, the front of his Curious George t-shirt sloppily tucked into his pants which were pulled up above his belly button and all cock-eyed.  "I like putting my pants on tight," he tells me.  I straightened them a bit in the interest of both his and my comfort.  And then Cal and I headed downstairs where I learned this:

Cal: "Mom, where are my snowpants? Miss Ally told you to bring my snowpants to school."

Me: "Okay, first of all, I didn't talk to Miss Ally; so she didn't tell ME that.  You need your snowpants TODAY?"

Cal: "I need my snowpants because we're going to go outside in the snow."

C'mon!  I headed to the basement to find whatever pair of snowpants we had for Cal, wherever we had them. I don't know if you've noticed, but we haven't had much snow around here for two winters now.  I stumbled across a pair of 3Ts (Cal's in a 5T now) and brought them upstairs and told Cal they might be a little small, but it's all we've got.  "Do you need your boots, too?" I asked him, to which he responded that he did.  So I grabbed those (we actually had dug them up over the weekend) and shoved them along with his snowpants into his little backpack.

Ella and Dan were downstairs by now, and Dan was the most efficient I've seen him. He was throwing shoes and coats and hats on kids and on himself without leaving room for resistance or controversy.  He also had animal crackers for the kids and managed to swiftly cut Cal's pleas for a "bar" (Zone bar) short and, miraculously, also without resistance or controversy.

I figured Ella would probably need some snowpants, too, and I remembered seeing a pair hanging in her closet. They were sized 18 months (she's in a 2T), but they'd have to do.  I ran upstairs to grab those.

So it was about 7:10 and we were -- no kidding -- heading out the door.  Cal had his backpack, Dan had Cal, and I had Ella.  Don't ask Cal if he wanted to bring Monkey and Ducky... don't ask Cal if he wanted to bring Monkey and Ducky, I had to repeat to myself, fighting the urge to ask and make him happy.  Cal likes to bring something to school every day, and he had indicated he was going to bring these two earlier.  Please don't remember you wanted to bring them, I further thought to myself.

We were stuffed into the car and backing out of the garage by 7:12.  We still had some work to do if we were going to catch the 7:32.  We barrelled into the school parking lot and made our way inside, possibly in record time.  Dan and Cal darted off to his classroom at the end of the hall, and I took Ella to her room to drop her off.  There was no time for our routine kisses to be exchanged between all of us just inside the door.

As I removed Ella's coat, I realized this was the first I was really looking at her that morning.  She had crusty boogers on her forehead and a big juicy one hanging out of her nostril.  I yanked the latter out with my fingers and tried to wipe away the former with my wet thumb.  It did the job well enough, as if there was any other option. I said some loving good-byes to her and still have the image of her standing there, really just waking up, her hair tossled and she wearing her orange Halloween "scaredy cat" t-shirt that I've been keeping in the stack "just in case."

Sitting on the 7:32 train, I wondered if I had slept through my alarm or if the nighttime cold medicine had knocked me out before I even had the chance to even turn it on.  And I laughed as I replayed our morning in my head.  I've had better mornings for sure, but I've also had worse ones.