The Day of Rest

Lest I ever forget what my life was like with two small children.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

3:00 AM After a lengthy discussion, G and I retire to bed.

7:00 AM G gets up and goes to Bishopric Meeting.

7:45 AM M gets up and showers -- gets both kids up and ready (but breakfast is eaten on the fly).

8:55 AM M drops Buddy off at Nicki's house.

9:00 AM M arrives at Ward Council Meeting with Pee-Wee, a bunch of paperwork, and baby gear (which annoys G who is also in attendance at the meeting doing both clerk and ex secretary duties).

9:05 AM M begins feeding Pee-Wee breakfast while participating in meeting.

10:15 AM Meeting ends, so M goes to pick Buddy up and G begins some sort of "membership audit" at the church.

10:45 AM M arrives at home and puts Buddy in the bath. Pee-Wee is tired and needs a nap, so we forgo Sunday bath for him.

11:00 AM M returns a few phone calls including from the primary chorister who is too sick to come (but he found his own replacements!) and in the meantime, Buddy washes himself and gets out of the bath by himself.

11:30 AM G gets home from his meeting and starts making lunch.

11:35 AM M eats a quick lunch and starts defrosting chicken for dinner.

11:50 AM M leaves for a meeting with the bishop to discuss the chaos in Primary/come up with a plan to get high-quality teachers called.

12:30 PM M and the bishop come up with the brilliant idea of calling a high-energy man to "assist the presidency." He won't be in the presidency because the handbook doesn't allow that, but he'll be a Sergeant At Arms, of sorts. His job will be to guard the door, chase kids around the church, check on men teachers without assistants, and fill in wherever necessary. And I tell the bishop that I'd like to call a new woman to be one of the sunbeams teachers. It's a very tough class, but she was the primary president in her last ward and has five primary-aged children. I swear I prayed her into our ward. Bishop agrees even though most other auxiliaries have called dibs on her already and she's only been in the ward 7 days.

1:10 PM M arrives home and starts preparing the chicken for dinner and reminds G that Pee-Wee needed to eat an hour ago, and finishes gathering supplies for church which was a task that began 24 hours ago.

1:20 PM M receives a phone call from a primary teacher who's husband is sick. She needs to "hold down the fort at home," so neither will be there.

1:21 PM M brainstorms who could possibly fill in especially when half the primary is already staffed by hard-to-come by subs. A few phone calls are made but no one answers the phone (probably because they are driving to church or because they have caller ID).

1:24 PM G offers to teach the class and after a few text messages are exchanged, he gets the executive secretary (who just returned home a few minutes earlier from being out of town) to assist.

1:30 PM G gets Buddy corralled and dressed, prints the lesson, and loads the car.

1:45 PM We start driving to church -- approximately 10 minutes later than we usually leave.

2:00 PM Sacrament meeting is pretty uneventful except we had to use a Tide-to-Go pen on Buddy's shirt and G's pants because they both got soiled in the 10 minutes it took to get to church. Oh, and we had to take Pee-Wee out for the first time ever because he wouldn't be quiet.

3:00 PM I go to get set up for Sharing Time.

3:10 PM All four of my presidency members are there! And there is much less chaos because we've tweaked a few procedures. (Unlike last week when one lady was out of town and another one who had a baby 2 weeks earlier had to leave church midway through because she was getting a migraine from being up all night, recovering, and trying to come to church to help me out.) Class Presentation by my friend Nicki goes very well and my Sharing Time in senior primary goes well too. The best it's gone for me so far!

5:30 PM Finally leave church after cleaning up and talking to about 3/4 of the ward about primary-related matters.

5:45 PM Resume dinner that was started this morning and G reads an Ensign article for family scripture study.

7:00 PM Finally eat dinner.

7:30 PM Have FHE on earning money/saving money/and tithing. We've been meaning to do this for the past two weeks -- ever since Buddy earned $3.00 pulling weeds. Buddy is ecstatic to have earned his first money ever and finally learned how to pay tithing.

8:00 PM Start cleaning up dinner. While talking to a friend on the phone, look around and realize Buddy is nowhere to be found.

8:20 PM G informs me that Buddy was extremely hyper because he was exhausted, so he put him to bed early.

8:21 PM I sigh a huge sigh of relief because Buddy was testing my patience as well.

8:25 PM Field another primary phone call.

8:30 PM Good friend drops her two kids off at our house so she can go to a meeting.

9:00 PM Kids watch Christmas movie while G feeds Pee-Wee cereal and calls his parents and sisters, and takes out the trash. And I start an email to Pee-Wee's birth mom.

10:15 PM Finally finish the email and by now G is just finishing his evening tasks. Oh, and I finish the last of about 6 loads of laundry I've been washing all day. They are yet to be folded, though.

10:20 PM Friend comes to get her boys. They were so good I hardly even knew they were here. I wish Buddy had been like that today.

10:30 PM Finally collapse on the couch to feed Pee-Wee and get him to bed. While watching The Mole. (It's not nearly as wonderful as it was when An.der.son Cooper was the host.)

11:15 PM Start getting ready for bed while watching the news.

Midnight Lay down to go to sleep.

And to think, this Sunday was actually much, much less stressful than last, when I had to chase a child all around the church while I was supposed to be teaching sharing time AND when I had to clean up after a sunbeam puked in his classroom, AND when it was Father's Day so I let G have a nap while I prepared a big salad for dinner and got everyone ready for church by myself.

And this was after a long, long week where we both had something going on every day and every evening. And I had been in charge of and spoken at an adoption conference all day Saturday and G had spoken at a work forum that his firm hosted Saturday as well. I've never been so glad to see the light of Monday. A new week. Phew.