Trials of Tuesdays

My kids had lunch at 2:30 today, a normal Tuesday. The most difficult hours of each week are Tuesday from the lunch hour until naptime.

Around noon on Tuesdays I need to be in Lino Lakes to pick up our milk and an assortment of other farm-fresh foods. This is the easy part. It's arriving home that I find so difficult. By the time we get home, everyone is past due for needing to eat (including Kai needing to nurse), I am starving and therefore crabby, everyone has to go to the bathroom or get changed, everyone is ready for their naps, and I have milk and sometimes other groceries that have been out in the heat for too long and need to get in the fridge or freezer ASAP. But first I get the crying baby and crabby kids out of their carseats, and then I have to wash the milk bottles before I put them in the fridge (the crate is dirty).

Ideally I suppose I would feed them before we get the milk, but the morning seems to fly by and I can't get my act together quickly enough. And of course when we arrive home I have no idea what we're going to eat for lunch.

And it's never just as "simple" (Ha) as I described above. The incredibly ironic fact is that there are always extras to do that day or something else that goes wrong added to this mix. Examples: Having to get gas, Kaylin going to the bathroom in her pants at a park I occasionally take them to before we pick up the milk, breaking a glass and spilling a drink, spilling a crate of raspberries in the car (leaving red juice everywhere), one of the kids being extra difficult, untimely phone calls, road construction detours...

Today Kai was extra crabby because he wouldn't nap this morning. On the way there I missed our exit, adding 12 miles to our trip. When I got off the freeway finally at the next exit I saw a certain unnamed fast food restaurant I go to about once a year. "A-ha!" I thought, starving "This makes my detour worth it."

I got in the very long drive thru line and wasn't so confident of my decision as I didn't think the kids would like this lengthened trip. Then the truck just turned off, I thought the battery had died! When I started it back up it started just fine, but I got out of the parking lot as fast as I could because I would be too embarrassed to tell people where my car broke down if I ended up needing a tow. It actually was difficult getting out of there with the lunch-hour traffic jam.

When we finally were on our way home from getting the milk I realized I'd never put Kaylin's seatbelt on after the park, so I pulled over on the freeway. Then I had forgotten our exit is closed and that I should have taken an alternate route home, so again I had to go up to the next exit and turn around. By this time I did not think my kids could handle being in the car one more minute let alone 10. Our arrival home went smoother than usual but Kai got to eat first and I didn't have the other kids' lunch on the table 'til Kai was asleep. Of course by the time Kaylin and Kavan went down Kai was awake again. So goes Tuesdays.