Spontaneity

Last night I was roused from my bed at 1:30 AM.

"I'm cold and wet, Mommy!" Rachel called. 

And indeed she was. So I helped her get out of her wet pyjamas and into dry ones. We put a towel down on her wet spot. We took a trip to the bathroom. It was kind of a big to-do and we woke Miriam up. The surprised look on her face read, "Oh, you're here?! Awesome. Pick me up," and when I didn't she started to cry so then I did and we ended up nursing and rocking until nearly 3:00 AM.

So instead of doing the things I had planned to get done today I spent the day washing sheets. I figured I may as well do all the bed linens since it had been a while, anyway. While we were out and about i mentioned to Andrew, "Well, at least she didn't wet the bed the day after I washed the sheets. It seems to me that the last few times she's wet the bed it's been the day after I've washed the sheets."

It's not like she even wets the bed that often...it just happens to be soon after the sheets get washed.

This morning I was roused from my bed at 2:00 AM. I heard Rachel coughing--she's got this silly little cold--and heaving--because that's what she does when she coughs too much. Or at all.

At first I wasn't going to get up because I didn't hear anything after that--just coughing, heaving, silence. Perhaps, I thought, it had really only been dry heaves. But then I heard her stirring around so I got out of bed to investigate. The poor little dear was trying to mop up her throw-up with a tissue. It was an impossible task--she had drenched everything. Her pillow was dripping vomit and she had vomit in her hair. But that is not all, oh, no, that is not all. She somehow got it all over the comforter, the flat sheet, the spot she should have been laying on, her favourite blanket, her shirt, and her pants.

Miriam woke up during my cursory assessment of the situation with that same wide-eyed look of surprised delight, "Oh! You're here again? That's two nights in a row. Score!"

I woke up Daddy. We stripped the bed, stripped the Rachel, and scrounged around for sheets, pillows, blankets, and pyjamas. Then we tried putting the girls back to bed, which meant singing and nursing and the whole bedtime go-round.

Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, Rachel started retching again.

"Is everything alright?" I called out.

"Mommy, I missed!" Rachel sobbed.

And indeed she had--missed getting all her throw up into the bowl I had given to her "just in case."

I found her a fresh pillow--this incident was, fortunately, more contained--and then hushed up Meme again. And, um, now I'm nursing her in my rocking chair in front of the computer while the pile of tomorrow's laundry is, I'm sure, multiplying in the dark. *sigh* And the day after I washed the sheets, too. *shrug* Figures.

The tragedy is that I'll be spending all day doing laundry tomorrow, again, which means I'll put off cleaning the bathrooms, again. This is why, I told Andrew, FlyLady never works for me. I've tried to keep up with the program twice now but always fail miserably at silly rules like "getting up a half hour before your family." I mean, how exactly do I plan on doing that when my children sometimes get up at 4:00 in the morning ((for good) like they did last Thursday)? And how am I supposed to maintain a "laundry routine" when I have dirty sheets coming out my ears? And why in the world would I bother putting on make-up and getting dressed "to my shoes" when I my head is buzzing from lack of sleep and my husband doesn't come home until bedtime, anyway? And how am I supposed to get anything accomplished at all when my inbox is constantly bouncing around on my dashboard saying, "Look, another fifty emails from FlyLady reminding you to wash your light switch plates and shine your sink!" No, thank you. I will stick to my to-do lists.

By now I am pretty well accepting myself as a horrible housekeeper. (And I still love me.) My life is too spontaneous for anything otherwise.

No, the real tragedy about all of this is that Rachel totally hogged the tomatoes at dinner--the fresh, ripe, warm, juicy, succulent, garden tomatoes that are now covering her sheets. I almost feel like I'm wasting those precious fruits but at the same time am not tempted in the least to try to salvage them.

Anyway, all I hear now is the sweet sound of silence. My bed awaits.

Tomorrow I'm thinking no preschool.

And lots of temper tantrums.

It should be a good day.