A Complete Lack of Sense

Tonight while our family enjoyed a rare evening at a live show in Gatlinburg Tn, I was once again reminded of the humor and chaos that is called Mothering.  

Now mind you, I have 7 children ages 14 to not born yet, but apparently that means absolutely nothing in relation to my competency. 

You are going to want to hold tight to your lemongrass lip balm for this one.

I left my camper without any diapers.

I also didn’t bother to remember to pack a sippy cup/bottle.

I’ve been needing to pack diapers and sippy cups for 11 years, but apparently in my 11th year of straight up mothering, I no longer find it important to abide by certain rules.

I also forgot to prepare the extremely excited 5 yr old on what to expect. But thats another story that I might crowd underneath this one.

  My husband bought popcorn and glorious big jugs of Sprite for the children to share. Oh how their eyes shone, and how my heart sank. I held my peace though, you would have been impressed how I embraced the moment. Even when my 5 yr old accidentally dumped an entire gallon of popcorn on the floor in front of her. “Oops” she said brightly in a very un-oopsy way and said around the straw as she pulled deeply at the half gallon of sprite. I bit my lip and for the 40th time in 5 minutes removed the cup firmly as she was gulping wildly. “Take little sips” I reminded her. She nodded brightly with a slightly wild look in her eyes as her hands shaking reached for the cup again. Gulp gulp.. I firmly took it away again with a thread of steel slipping into my voice. “That is enough!”

  Within 20 minutes her tankard of sprite was empty. I had the sickening feeling that bladders were filling up all around me. I pictured Niagra falls spilling heavily down into the river and imagined it looked quite similar to what was happening in my children’s bladder. 

  Meanwhile the 2 yr old has worked his way down the row from older brother to mom, because he sees he will have more chance to chug from the tankard of Sprite when on my distracted, non pop drinking lap. He had managed to become wet enough that I knew if he went even one more time, there would be major spillage. He isn’t conservative when he pees into a diaper. He holds back until half a gallon is ready to go and then he releases it all at one time. I’ve literally seen his diaper fill and overflow with just one pee. 

  He was very fussy. He wanted to sit where the 5 yr old was sitting. He wanted her drink, her pizza, her popcorn, and no she couldn’t use his sweater and “no mo” he shrieked when she gulped wildly at the pop trough.

  For 20 minutes he leaned incessantly towards her. Not far enough to fall, not close enough to be comfortable. My parsley became numb. My legs became numb. My heart became numb. Ok, not my heart, because I was laughing too hard at the show in front of me for my heart to be numb. 

 My legs suddenly became un-numb when I felt a warmth permeate my lap, my legs and against my baby filled belly. The baby had blissfully released his tsunami. Unencumbered and finally comfortable, he promptly fell asleep. I shrugged my shoulders and held him to myself as I lost all feeling in my lower half, except for the feeling of rapidly cooling warmth.

  My upper half and sleeves started to siphon the wet further and further up. The longer I sat there, the further up it crept. I wondered wildly really how much had he peed?

When the curtains drew for the last time, I laboriously got to my feet after a little prayer where I basically whisper shouted “Jesus” that I might survive the 389 miles to the car, soaked in urine, with 6 children in various stages of sugar comas. We staggered out with the children fervently thanking their uncle for the tickets, and my husband for the food and drink. Dully I was grateful that at least something from my 675 years of training had managed to stick.

By the time we got home I had to wash everything I was wearing and deal with the 5 yr old sitting on my bedroom floor sobbing about the bun (fun) that never came and how was that the sow (show), because the sow was no good without time to play! 

She apparently enjoyed every minute of the cats weaving around on the stage and leaping from pedestals, but she did not enjoy the truly funny parts for the adults. During the show her arms folded across her chest and glowering hard at me. “I am waiting for the bunny (funny) parts” she muttered darkly. 

Still, pee, exhaustion, and tankards of sprite later, we all agreed that it was more fun than we had in years. Ok, everyone else agreed, while my husband looked knowingly at me and squeezed my leg sympathetically. Because he knew all the things that I would never have verbalized in front of the children even if I had the energy to verbalize it.