Blood, Tears and Puke

What a day it has been.

Tuesdays are our busiest days. It starts off with the twins going off to Chinese before school. I come home to get little Muffin on the bus (his Chinese is later in the day. They don't run a pre-N class at the same time as the twins' class), go back to get the twins, head off to school and then to work. The afternoon is the reverse. Pick the twins from school, get them home, swope kids at the car porch and take Muffin to Chinese. Take him home, breathe for 5 minutes and go off to work.

Every Tuesday, I wake up bummed at the length of the day, take a deep breath, say a prayer and dive head in, hoping for the best.

Perhaps, yesterday, I didn't pray loud enough.

It was just normal crazy right up to the point where I had to pick the twins from school. Then there were

1. TEARS
Jordan came out of class, holding the teacher's hand and looking like there was a black cloud over her head. The teacher was oblivious but Mommy wasn't. When questioned, she muttered something about her work being all wrong. And there were red lines cancelling out a lot of what she had done. (No details here because I am waiting for the file to be returned and then I shall blog about this with vengeance). Sufficed to say, she was upset that her work was streaked with red and she burst into tears every time she looked at the offending piece of work. There was also much self-flagellation about how lousy she was. It took 5 minutes of stroking her hair, hugging her and promising that she could sit in the passenger seat to calm her down sufficiently. And that 5 minutes made me late to pick up Muffin who was waiting.

Then there was

2. PUKE
Muffin no longer naps in the afternoon. It is hard for him to nap when his siblings are around and he wants to play with them. That makes him a cranky baby by about 4 pm which is the time he sets off for Chinese. On Tuesdays, the standing instructions is that he needs to nap. Because the twins aren't home, it isn't too difficult a feat. Unfortunately, he didn't nap yesterday and plain refused to go to Chinese. He had to be cajoled downstairs but when he saw me pull up, he took off in the opposite direction for the lift. When we eventually caught him and stuffed him into the car, he did what he does best when he is upset. He upchucks. All over himself, his car seat, the car and the pavement. This meant he needed to be changed, the car needed to be cleaned, his seat had to be wiped down and the pavement required a spray down.

At this point, the mental debate in my head was whether we ought to keep him home; after all, he was going to be at least half an hour late. But the crazy mom in me refused to allow that. If I let him stay home, then he would know for a fact that upchucking would get him out of Chinese.

Thankfully, Packrat gets home by that point and takes over, volunteering him to take him to Chinese while I wash vomit out from between my toes.

But even that was a bad idea because that led to

3. BLOOD.
The twins had gone off to the playground on the bikes. But not 10 minutes had gone by before I heard them sob and wail down the corridor. Apparently, while racing one another, they ran into each other head on leading to both being flung off the bikes and scrapping their hands and legs badly. Evan was the one who was more upset because he came away with more scraps and therefore more blood. The thing with Evan is that he can't do blood. Especially his own. To him, blood is supposed to be on the inside. There is something very wrong if it is on the outside and it is flowing. While that isn't wrong, it drives him into panic, hysterics and eventually leads him to  hyper-ventilate. He becomes cold, clammy, pale and is screams and shrieks like a banshee being slaughtered. Jordan, not wanting to lose out, turns on the tears for the second time in the day and soon I had to deal with 2 children wailing and gnashing their teeth as if the world had come to an end.

If I were a cartoon character, my hair would have frazzled and exploded and my eyes would be glazed spinning circles.

And to think that after all that, I had to go to work.

I told Packrat at that point that what I really needed was either a lot of alcohol or a big bat. I suspect a big bat would have been more satisfying. Unfortunately neither could be had so here I am blogging about it, still feeling wobbly from everything that happened.

The bestie's consolation was "It would have pushed any mom over the edge" and another good friend's remark was "Today will be betterer".

So here's's to a betterer today and perhaps I will pray louder on Tuesdays so that this doesn't happen again.

A bright spark amongst all the chaos and tears.

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