“Mommy, I need Lightning-That’s-Fixed,” moans LittleMan as I pack up the stroller.
Lightning-That’s-Fixed is, of course, one of LittleMan’s Lightning McQueen die-cast cars.
He is not to be confused with any of the following: Color-Change Lightning, Lightning-That’s-Broken (obviously), Dusty Lightning, Lightning-With-Shovel, Talking Lightning, Lightning-With-Stickers, Blue Lightning, Lightning-From-Nana’s-House, Lightning-That-Kathy-Gave-Me, or Lightning-With-The-Trunk-That-Opens. Each and every one of which I locate in the Cars bin in the kitchen within three minutes. But Lightning-That’s-Fixed is the one we are bringing to the park today, and — make no mistake! — no other Lightning will do.
Fortunately, Mommy Can Find Anything. And the Lightning in question is eventually located as I recall, with some effort, that yesterday LittleMan was playing with the elusive car on the floor near the bookshelf, and is it possible he’s hiding in the getaway jet from Cars 2?
“Eureka,” I say. “Let’s roll.”
I run, on average, about 15 minutes late. That’s why I am careful to always make dates with an “-ish” suffix, as in, “Let’s meet at the park, 10ish” or “Come over for drinks, say, 5ish?” If I say 10ish, that means that I will be there sometime before 10:30. The “ish” is my 30-minute cushion. (And frankly, if I invite someone over for drinks at 5ish and they come right at 5, I feel vaguely annoyed. Because obviously I am not yet ready for drinks at 5. That’s what the “ish” is for, people!)
I have stopped apologizing for this lateness. It’s who I am. We accept our friends with all their failings, and this is one of mine. Now please help yourself to a glass of wine while I finish getting dressed.
I used to run early. In fact, my parents and sister still run so notoriously early that my husband has jokingly dubbed our clan the “Early M-‘s”. (My sister just had her first baby, though, so we’ll see if that lasts.) Then I had LittleMan, and then Babygirl, and jeez, between the two of them it is a miracle I go anywhere at all, much less on some kind of schedule. Inevitably the baby poops on the way out the door and LittleMan gets distracted while I’m changing her and kicks off his shoes so he can wrestle with his stuffed animals on the bed, and in the process he loses Lightning-That’s-Fixed in the sheets, and we’re back to square one. Such is life.
LittleMan’s new school has a hard start time of 8:30am, which is new for us. AND, prior to 8:30am there is a daily “morning paper” that sets the theme of the day, followed by free reading time. In other words, for your kid to get the full morning experience, you need to get your butt there by 8:15am if you are any kind of mom worth your salt. Which I try to be, of course.
On top of everything, I need to drop off Babygirl at her new daycare before LittleMan unless I want her terrorizing his classroom for 15 minutes (which I don’t), so in actual fact we need to be somewhere by roughly 8:08am.
Sometimes, you just have to throw up your hands and laugh.
We are a deeply routine-oriented clan. Changes in the routine need to be thought-out and purposeful. Now that I handle the full drop-off, my husband and I have had to rejigger our morning routine to shave a full half-hour off of the morning. Unfortunately, the linchpins in this process are a restless, floppy four-year-old boy and his very strong-willed 15-month-old sister, who are not necessarily inclined to do exactly what we ask, exactly when we ask it. A trip to brush teeth might include a stop in the hallway to drive cars along the wall, a visit with the Lovey in the bedroom, some protest-flopping at the bathroom door, and finally some messing around with the faucet before any toothpaste is applied. The simple act of wedging on the tiny mary-janes might require a full-on chase through the apartment and a brief wrestling match with the livingroom curtains, which have become the favorite hiding-place, before grasping onto the tiny stockinged-feet.
I was talking about this to a mom at the playground yesterday who lives across town — from us and from the kids’ school. “Yeah, we’re late everyday,” she said with a shrug. “There are worse things.” I envied her relaxed relationship with the schedule, and it got me thinking about neuroses; although I no longer apologize for my lateness, it nags at me (obviously)…I guess because it’s one more departure from the woman I used to be: “I try to be on-time” is now right up there with “Work is my main priority” and “I am vigilant about pedicures.”
Of course, the woman I used to be also paid a great deal of attention to whether her handbag coordinated with her outfit, and she never found chewed-up pieces of old oatmeal cookie in her pockets (because raisins are yucky, duh), and she blithely stopped for a glass of wine on the way home from work if she fancied — particularly if she’d worked until 7 or 8pm. She didn’t have any idea how many varieties of Lightning McQueen there are in the world, or how much she would come to care about such things, literally stopping traffic to point out a front-wheel loader next to a big old ditch.
Such is our evolution, we mothers. Fortunately, LittleMan and Babygirl have Such Great Smiles, and they usually decide to be just cooperative enough (right about the time I think about selling them on eBay). So I’ll keep them for another morning, and as for that pedicure, I’ll get to it one of these days.
p.s. Speaking of pedicures, the holiday social whirl really does demand one. Fashion-forward Mommy continues to live out her fantasy wardrobe on the Eagle’s Nest; check it out.
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