just back into the normal routine

So the kids went back to school yesterday post-Christmas break.  I know I haven't even written about the joys that were our holiday break celebrations, but I will now present to you what these last 2 days of getting back into the "normal routine" have been.

Yesterday, first day back:

First Abigail's alarm didn't go off in the morning as she expected so she was just a bundle of cheerfulness, as you can imagine.  Then Samuel couldn't find his shoes.  Like no shoes, anywhere. There were lots of tears and screaming and crying about the loss of said shoes (I may have joined in with some yelling). How could we not have any shoes?!?  Isaac joined the search, I searched.  No shoes.  I texted Zac who told me to look in the car.  Why his shoes would have been left in the car when they normally would have joined his feet into the house, I have no idea, but lo and behold, there were the shoes. 

Then I got the younger 3 kids to school and drove back to find that Abigail's middle school bus had not arrived.  It was about 15 min late but I told her I was sure it would come soon and I left her standing in the cold at the bus stop.  About 20 min later, there was a knock on my door and there was Abigail and her friend frozen into popsicles telling me school already started about 5-10 min. ago and the bus had still not arrived and begging me to drive them.  So I did.  Wearing my polka-dot pajamas that Samuel gave me for Christmas.  Based on the line of about 20 cars dropping off kids (15 min after school started), it looked like we weren't the only ones that had waited for the bus-that-never-came (apparently they had some issues with buses not being able to start - nice).

In the afternoon, I picked up Elisabeth to take her to her gymnastics lesson.  She was showing me her very slightly wiggly front tooth and was convinced that it was coming out - today!! She wanted me to wiggle it and get it out.  It was clearly not ready to come out, but I gave it a good wiggle and we got in the car to go.  As soon as we pulled into the gymnastics parking lot, she wanted me to twist it,  sure that I could get it out.  No dice.  And she was getting mad that I wasn't helping her get this tooth out.  If you don't already know, when this girl gets mad, she gets mad.  She is the kid who still has hour long tantrums if, perhaps, she didn't get to go first in the bathroom.  Ugh.  So we're walking in and I'm trying to diffuse the ticking bomb.  I tell her, hey I wonder what you're going to do in gymnastics today?  What?!? she says.  I say it again. No! She says, that's not what you said before, tell me again!!  (this is a common explosion she has).  We're walking into the locker room where she has about 5 min. to change into her leotard before her class begins.  We don't really have time for a lot of dawdling.  But she's still stuck on this idea that I didn't repeat what I said verbatim and is now in full blown tantrum mode over it and refusing to change her clothes.  I help her out of her clothes, trying to tell her what I said, and then she goes back into the wiggling tooth, etc etc, crying and screaming in the locker room.  And she starts the "I'm not going to gymnastics!" spiel.  Sigh.  So I've manually helped her change all her clothes and I gather up all our stuff and walk out and over to the gym with her trailing behind me, still in tears.  We go in the gym and she's clinging to my legs, still crying. I explain to the teacher that she's "just a little grumpy." And one of the other teachers comes over and peels her off my leg, telling her how good she is at gymnastics, and I leave her in tears.  Wonderful.

The rest of the afternoon and evening, I have a killer migraine that has migrated to both of my eyes and both sides of my head.  One of the worst ever.  I go to bed with a headache, dream about my head hurting, wake up several times in pain and wake up, of course, with my head still hurting.

In the morning, as I am trying to direct everyone getting ready for school and trying not to move very much because me head, face, eye hurt like the dickens, all of a sudden I hear a lot of yelling coming from the kitchen area.  "There's a bird in the house!!!"  "Whaaaaat?!?!"
yeah.
There was bird - from outside - in our house - freaking out and flying around.  Elisabeth was screaming at the top of her lungs.  Isaac was reminding us that we certainly didn't want the bird to poop in our house (so helpful).  Samuel was yelling.  Abigail grabbed her video camera and recorded the whole chaos, along with a whole lot of "oh my goodness!!!"  And about all I could do for several minutes was groan and hold my head.  How were we going to get a bird out of our house.  Turned out that turning off all the lights and opening the back door wide and getting everyone to be quiet, was enough for it to get it's wits together and fly out.  Thank goodness!!!  I'm not sure how it came in, since I missed that part, but I think it must have been in the garage and flew in when someone opened it (it was -6 F outside, guess I can't blame it).

Anyway. After all that excitement, my head was about to explode so I loaded up on good meds and slept the rest of the morning.  In the afternoon when I was going to pick up the kids, I realized that our garage door was frozen.  This happens sometimes.  And someone has to push the garage door opener button while someone else simultaneously pushes the garage door up to get it open.  Well.  There was no one else to help me push the button.  So, after several minutes of panicked texting to Zac, I realized that I could go outside and use the keypad and push that button and be able to reach the garage door and push it up at the same time.  So I went outside.  But I slipped on our snowy and icy back steps and slipped all the way down, falling on my back and landing in the snow at the bottom.  Yes, I screamed and laid for awhile in the snow crying.  It just wasn't really what I needed.  You know?

But I got the door opened.  Picked up the kids. I think my coat had provided a good cushion protecting my back from serious injury.  But still. I went back to bed afterwards to nurse a killer migraine, face pain, and a nice sore back to top it all off.

Just getting back into the normal swing of things...
No big deal.

(oh and Elisabeth has just come into my room as I write this telling me that her tooth is definitely ready to come out now.  Seriously....)