The Perfect Days of Summer, Part II

After such a wonderful day of picking berries and enjoying the summer weather, I had convinced myself that truly, summer had begun... the golden days of eating berries, playing in the sprinklers, going to the park, enjoying your kids' company all day every day, non-stop fun and enjoyment. We even finished out the day by meeting up with Dave and Costco for dinner, browsing the store and driving home just in time to put the kids to bed.

The next day (Friday morning) I was awakened to find that my 6-year-old had wet the bed. This from my girl who has never wet the bed since she quit wearing diapers at age 3? Maybe I just have to attribute it to letting her get one extra refill of her drink before we left Costco. Wetting the bed wouldn't have been such a big deal except that for the past few nights she had been complaining that she didn't want to sleep alone in her room (because she was afraid of hot lava-- a pressing concern on the second story of the house) so she was sleeping on the empty bottom bunk in Jared's bedroom. Because that bed is not normally used, I had just thrown some sheets on and it did not have a mattress pad. Hooray. Oh joy.

In my enthusiasm to enjoy the delights of the summer from the previous day, I had bought tickets to go see a children's production of "Sleeping Beauty." Trying to overcome my irritation at lack of sleep and pee-pee mess at least we could look forward to going and doing something fun. I even, despite my tendency to always be late, started getting the kids into the car in the garage a full 30 minutes early! As we were walking to the car, Jared said, "What's that stuff dripping on the garage floor?" I thought maybe our car was leaking oil, but the fluid was red and coming from the freezer. It turns out that the freezer door had been left open since the afternoon before when I told the kids they could get themselves a popsicle. [Jared is reading over my shoulder and corrected me, saying that the door was open "A tiny bit. Just a crack."] Everything in the freezer had thawed, including bags of frozen raspberries and strawberries, which were streaming juice down the shelves of the freezer and on to the floor. Hooray. Oh joy.

So instead of being unusually early and having a stress-free ride to the play, I stuffed Jackson in his carseat (to keep him away from the mess) and crankily yelled for the older kids to get towels and help clean this up unless they wanted to be grounded for life. I spent the next 20 minutes carefully cleaning up the sticky juice from the freezer and then threw the kids in the car to race out the door to the play (which I had considered skipping as a punishment, but being stuck at home in the mood that I was in did not seem like a great idea). I was planning on taking the kids to Wendy's for lunch, but that seemed inappropriate after they ruined all the food in the freezer, so I packed some bread and butter, fruit leather and cheese sticks in my bag to eat after the play.

We made it into the play only a few minutes late and had a great time. Hooray! The kids enjoyed getting autographs from all the cast after the show. We then ate our lunch in the car and went to run errands that needed to be done. In the course of the afternoon shopping, the kids got incredibly cranky and fought the whole time (not surprising, considering their small lunch), Jackson missed his nap and would not go down once we got home, and we came home to a dirty house with a pee-peed mattress to clean up. Tired cranky mommy. Tired cranky kids. Hooray. Oh joy.

Is it just part of being a mom (or maybe just being pregnant) that your mood can go from "Life is wonderful!" to "My life is a disaster!" in a matter of hours? Or minutes? =]