(no subject)

I've not been getting enough sleep lately. This morning I was rather depressed after another night of broken sleep and random applications of baby urine. As to why the little tyke doesn't just wear a diaper, it's a whole 'nother story and not a negative one actually, but anyway, slowly and with much self-prodding and with the assistance of the handy extra hour awarded this weekend, I get myself dressed and loaded both kids in the car to go to the kids' museum this morning. I drive for 40 minutes, I get out of the car, I get the diaper bag and sling out of the trunk, I put the sling on, I unlock all the doors, I reach across Aidan and unclip Connor. While Connor is disengaging himself from his seat and climbing under Aidan's seat (The Tunnel) I unclip Aidan and get him arranged in the sling. I put hats on everyone, I shoulder the diaper bag, I ask Connor to hold my finger while we walk to the kid's museum thing. As we walk up they are just closing. The lady explains that her daughter is sick, and anyway, almost no one showed up so they're closing early, yada, yada. I find myself wanting to cry. We turn around and walk back to the car. Repeat the above procedure, in reverse. We drive to the zoo. Repeat the above procedure. The zoo is closed on Mondays. I don't remember if I wanted to cry or not. So we hung out in the garden for awhile and I saw a tiny, tiny, barely 18 lb, blond girl eating pork rinds. This was rather disconcerting to me. It's kind of like watching wild kindom and seeing some tow-headed tot toddle from off camera and casually start knawing on the wildebeast carcass while watching you with wide, blue eyes. But anyway, I could see that Connor needed to go and he won't just whip it out and water a bush (more on that later) so we packed it up and headed for the grocery store as a prelude to heading home.

Here we are at the restroom in the grocery store. I'm crouched next to the toilet holding on to Connor on the seat with one arm, restraining Aidan, who is trying to climb up Connor, with the other, reassuring a crying, struggling Connor that the toilet won't make scary noises, while trying not to think about what sort of germs Aidan is collecting. Eventually Connor calms down, though he refuses to go, and I let him down. Feeling utterly low, I check Aidan's diaper and nurse him while Connor toys with the latch on the door, clearly ready to bolt away from the demon potty which horrible me tried to force him to use. (At this time Connor will willingly use three toilets in known universe.) Then, as we were walking out, my spirits began to lift. I got the kids out of the house even though I didn't feel like it. He actually sat on an unknown toilet for awhile. 'You were very brave,' I told him and it was true. 'We're going to break out the chocolate milk and celebrate.' And we did and it was good. We went to the beach and it was warm and sandy and beautiful, and when I got home there was a check in the mailbox and a new tub reservation. This last bit sounds like I've finally lost it, but it's actually reality. I've had a solo shower even.