Turning Over a New {Palm} Leaf

At lunch with my dear friend Amanda today, I had to choose between wiping poop off my forearm or vomit out of my hair first after a dual eruption from the wee one. Just livin’ the life, you guys. Livin’ the life.

Really though, I’ve already hit rock bottom this week, so I’m hardly even phased by such a decision.

Airborne Acer

Probably the hardest part about having multiple kids so far is getting them ready and in the car, along with all 5,564 of their “essentials”.

Step 1 is getting Hutton strapped into the infant carrier. He screams from the time the buckles snap to about 5 minutes into our commute, but he needs to be secured just in case Beckett decides to flip his seat on end again when I’m not looking.

Step 2 is carefully setting my extra-large, extra-caffeinated coffee in the car cupholder. I mean…making sure my babies have everything they need.

Steps 3-235  include a lot of hustling and bustling, running back in the house for imperative items (diapers), finding keys, locating the blue Matchbox car with the “fing on top of the fing – no, not that fing, the ofer fing” somewhere among the piles of fast food wrappers in the floorboard, and sweating.

So on Thursday morning, we finally hit the road (after completing all 235 steps) to get Beckett to school.

We’d been driving for a few miles when a huge, heavy object flew up out of the road and hit my windshield. (The windshield attached to the car that was going 50mph). I was furious, because I knew it came from the guy with the trailer in front of us that had a bunch of unsecured lawn equipment on it. Idiot.

We got Beckett to school and I headed to a meeting about an upcoming event at church. Somewhere in the hustle and bustle I’d left my laptop at home. Irritating, but – hey – at least we made it there with the right Matchbox car.

I borrowed some paper to take notes.

One meeting, a grocery store trip, and 3 hours later, I got back home. I needed to do some work on the computer so I started thinking through where I’d last seen it.

…and then heart palpitations.

It wasn’t lawn equipment that had slammed into my windshield. It was the laptop I’d set on the hood of my car.

(You know, the laptop with the pictures of my second child’s birth and first 2 months of life. You know, the laptop with half a book written on it. That laptop.)

By the time I’d realized what happened, it was long (long long long) gone. Probably dying alone in a ditch, smashed to smithereens.

I cried a lot.

And then I called Taylor. How do you segue into, “…and, by the way, that laptop you bought me less than a year ago suddenly isn’t holding up so well…”?

It wasn’t just about the laptop – that is easily replaced. It was about the feeling of complete chaos that is my current life.

I’d changed shirts 3 times before 9am because baby reflux. I hadn’t eaten breakfast because picking out toddler shoes was a 30 minute affair. Both boys cried a Noah’s Ark amount of tears within the first hour of the day. And to top it off, a failed experiment on the aerodynamics of Acer computers.

It was a rough day, but thankfully my sweet husband and mother talked me down off the ledge.

Until Friday night.

The Lost Boy

Taylor was mowing in the back, I was upstairs putting the baby to bed, and Beckett was in and out of the house playing.

After Hutton was asleep, I came back down and called for Beckett. Nothing.

I called his name in the backyard. Nothing.

I called his name in the house again. Nothing.

I asked Taylor if he’d seen him, he said no.

I checked the garage. The garage door was up.

I ran out of the garage, about 1 second from full-fledged panic, when I see a lady walking down the street holding the hand of a beautiful blue-eyed, blonde-headed little boy.

“Do you know whose child this is?” she says.

If my mom instincts hadn’t made me scoop him up immediately, I might have gone the “Ugh. Again? Yea…I know where he lives. I’ll take him back for you.” route because, you know, negligent parenting accusations.

But I claimed that little booger instead…and then stuck my hand out to introduce myself. Because meeting your new neighbor as she is returning your lost child isn’t weird at all.

Beckett played it cool while his rescuer was still standing there, but as soon as she walked away he sobbed and sobbed. And then the words “I was looking for you, mommy. I couldn’t find you.” shattered my heart into a kajillion tiny pieces.

We talked a lot about how mommy and daddy won’t ever leave him, what his first and last name are, why his parents are dummies who leave garage doors open, etc. etc.

He is such a precious boy. I like it when I know where he is.

It’s a good thing it’s Easter week, a celebration that Jesus makes all things new.

So until the whole world is made new, I’m starting small:

I’m aiming for a new week where I don’t lose any more computers or children. (I only strive for greatness.)

I’ll keep you posted on my progress, but so far so good.