Usually on Monday’s I have some sense of a fresh new beginning and if I’m lucky a well stocked fridge from weekend kid-free grocery trips along with a good bit of rest under my belt.

Today was no such Monday.  It was an absurdly crazy weekend for us.  One thing after another, a massive impromptu home renovation project, naps and meals all mixed up, dinners, play dates, two soccer games, a baptism and a church meeting.  I had worked double time trying to keep up with dishes and food and people.

Well rested, menu-planned, organized and brimming with optimism and perspective I was not.

The kids were oddly calm this morning (despite the fact we had their cousin over for the day) so we actually plugged away at a good many school lessons and then the younger 3 took naps.  Oldest 2 and I played tag (they quickly deemed me too slow), hide and seek (they announced our yard didn’t have any big enough spaces for me to hide) and then button-button-who’s-got-the-button (which turned out to be the crowd favorite!).

We planted 144 seed starts in our little greenhouse trays on a table in the backyard before the babies woke up.  We learned that tomato seeds are really tiny and we aren’t sure if any at all made it into the soil.  Time will tell.  We got dirty fingernails.  It was lovely.

Somewhere in the day Daddy called to say that he’d be home around 7 or 7:30 (he left at 4:45 am!).  I don’t remember what I said but I don’t think it was very nice.

I realized this meant soccer practice back to back for Rylee and Caleb while entertaining the rest of the troops on the sidelines.  This sounded potentially disastrous and I thought about opting out and staying home.  I’d already been through over half a pot of coffee and I was fading.  When it’s time for our read alouds and I’m slurring my words together, I know bedtime can’t come soon enough.

But we (I) decided to persevere, hoping for the best.

A kid or two was able to be in the child care at the YMCA during the two practices (did I mention they were straight through dinner time, till 7 PM?).  So it went relatively well.

Until we needed to leave.  I had given no thought to dinner.  In desperation, I planned that we’d head to McDonald’s to eat on the way home.

As Kyler walked out the child care area door, he laid down on the floor and started sobbing, screaming, shreiking, writhing around like a crazy person.  Audrey would not let me put her down, she was pooped.  The nice employees quickly came out and gently moved him out of the doorway so they didn’t have to hear his fits.  People are everywhere.  I ask him to go to a bench, the problem-I deduce-is needing help with shoes.  I will gladly help when he goes out of the traffic path to a bench.  I cannot even hear myself think he is so stinking out of control.  And it happened in the blink of an eye, honestly.

Everyone stares, my face is turning red, I’m feeling immense regret for whatever burst of confidence (or insanity) moved me to try and do this all by myself.

I sit the boy on the bench and put his shoes on.

The trouble now though is that he can’t calm down.  No matter how calm I am, no matter what mommy tactic I try, he will not be consoled.  He will walk, but fervently bawling for all to see.  I ask what is the matter more than once, the answer is the same:  “I don’t know Mama” and then sobbing resumes while the other 4 of us lead the long and windy way out of the YMCA.

We grab McDonald’s drive thru on the way home, Christopher meets us in the driveway, we throw some wrapped up food on the table and Kyler eats 11 chicken nuggets (his own, Audrey’s and Caleb’s). So I guess maybe he was hungry?

My healthy efforts and painfully slow process of losing some baby weight (when your baby is 2, can you still call it baby weight?)  take a giant hit.  I’m so hungry at this point I eat my fried, fatty food as well as kid leftovers.  Then feel like throwing up after it’s all gone.  Lesson learned (I hope).

Maybe Tuesday can be my Monday?