It's Only Funny Until Someone Throws Up

It's funny the difference a day makes. Yesterday I had what amounted to the perfect day in the life of a mom with two young kids. The kind of day that makes me think I would actually enjoy the SAH mom thing. Ella was in preschool from 8 to 2:40. After dropping our girls off at school, my friend M and I took our babies (her baby N will be 2 in the fall) to Starbucks for coffee and a chance to catch up on how the older girls are doing at school. Our friend L met us there with her son H. The little kids (Sadie was the oldest and H is the youngest) were on their best behavior. Sadie was so cute--she kept hugging N and when we left the coffee shop, she grabbed N's hand. Like Sadie, N is very, very verbal, so the pair had what amounted to some pretty hilarious conversations.

After coffee, Sadie and I headed home, where I cleaned up a bit before popping Sadie into the car to head to the office so I could pick up some work. While we waited for the work to be ready, Sadie met some of my coworkers, though she was too shy to open her mouth. Daycare really did a number on this kid.

After that, it was lunch and a nap for Sadie, and I was able to get a great deal of work done. My mom came over to hang with the girls for the afternoon. We went to get Ella from school, had a snack, played outside. Then the girls and I made peanut butter cookies. It was a no TV day. There just wasn't time--and everyone was playing so nicely that it didn't seem necessary. I feel like no television=fantastic mothering.

Somehow, though, the girls were a disaster today. I took Ella to Target with me, and she whined and cried over a cheap and crappy Ariel costume. It is not Halloween. It is not even October. I refuse to entertain the notion of buying a Halloween costume the first week of September--especially knowing that better costumes exist in the world.

Then, after a trip to the grocery store, Sadie was screwing around and insisting that she wanted to sit in the back of the car. It was funny at first, but I started getting very irritated once I had to force her into her car seat. At first, Sadie was laughing too. But the laughter quickly turned to hysterical crying--the likes of which we rarely see from Sadie (or rarely saw until the daycare fiasco). She sobbed so hard that she eventually gagged herself and threw up. In the car. All over her car seat. Awesome. We had to pull over to pull her pukey shirt off her, which meant another wrestling match and caused both Dean and I to yell at Sadie in front of Ella's school (where we just happened to be when this all went down). Lovely. After all this, Sadie's tantrum shifted from her desire to get into the backseat of the car to a desire to wear her shirt with the flowers on it. Which was now covered in puke.

It's worth mentioning that for our trip to the store today Sadie was wearing capri jeans that were too large for her, a *turtleneck* shirt, and snow boots. We had pulled Ella's old clothes from the basement to see what we have for Sadie that will fit this winter. This, of course, caused Ella to pout all day because she doesn't have a bevvy of used and stained clothing to call her own. I can't win with these two. I tried explaining that being the oldest means getting all new stuff, but all Ella could see was the striped rainbow tights with the hole in the crotch that Sadie was inheriting.

Also worth mentioning: At the end of the day, Sadie was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and the rainbow tights. Nothing else. We played my favorite game ever (duck, duck, goose with four people) with one girl barefoot and the other in just tights and a shirt. Since Sadie had put the tights on all by herself, her diaper was hanging out the back of her tights. We must have been a sight--the strange family playing duck, duck, goose with four people--two of them barely even dressed.

Some days are just like that, I guess. Hopefully no one will puke tomorrow.

This Just In:
It's exactly one week to the half (or nearly that). I kind of skipped this weekend's long run since the schedule called for 12 miles, and I did that last week. Instead, I went for what I thought was an 8.5-mile pace run but ended up being a 7.5-mile run about 10 seconds faster than race pace. I guess it's sort of funny that I no longer consider 7.5 miles a "long" run. Right now, my deepest fear about the race is that I'll be one of the people at the very back with the SAG bus on my ass and end up being asked to leave the course because I'm too slow. Like I've mentioned (numerous times) because I am obsessed with how humiliating it all seems, the marathon officials plan to pull people off the course if they are running slower than a 13-minute mile. My training pace has been well below that, but you never know. I like to hedge my bets.