Forgotten Sleep

Loving Husband and I had the brilliant idea yesterday to take the kids out for a fun morning. We clearly should’ve known that the beautiful weather would be misleading.

It wasn’t bad enough that Little Man woke up on the wrong side of the crib, crabby and screamy. But, he was generally in the mood to scream about everything. Frankly, I’m amazed that Big Girl didn’t try to join in the action.

After a quick shopping spree at The Children’s Place (which went amazingly well, considering the events that followed), we thought we’d take the kids to the playground. It was empty, so we had the run of the swings, slides, and climbing equipment. Little Man took off by himself, chasing after his sister, giggling wildly. All of a sudden, he tripped over a root, twisted, did a face plant into the mulch ground covering, shoving the right side of his face into the earth. Twigs, mulch bits and dirt stuck to his face (which was also quickly covered with mucus), and as I feverishly wiped his face off, I saw that he’d bloodied his nose. Fortunately, it was just a scrape on the underside of his nose, but it was still bad enough to bubble like mad with hydrogen peroxide later.

But like a big boy, he recovered and wanted to play on the slides, just like Big Girl. So, Loving Husband helped him climb up to the top, gently pushed him, and I waited at the bottom to catch him. Everything went well for the first few slides, but the last time, Little Man took off at an angle and managed to bounce his head against the sides of the curly-Q slide until he reached the bottom. Reaction: yep, you guessed it, screaming, crying, general bad mood returning.

Meanwhile, Big Girl was trying to learn how to climb up a vertical ladder and span the distance between said ladder and the big slide structure. I was very proud of her. She did it a couple of times, but on her third try (of course, the one she wanted to do alone), she lost her footing and couldn’t hold on. Down she went, falling about three feet to the ground. No real biggie, and she wasn’t hurt, but for a 3-year-old, it was terrifying, and she had to be cuddled for a few minutes.

At this point, Loving Husband and I were ready to pack it in and go home. The parental happiness quotient was in the toilet. We returned to our bags and stroller to pack everything up, and then Loving Husband hears this: “Daddy, I had an accident.”

Yep, our fully potty-trained daughter had peed in her pants. A lot. I mean, a lot. No only were her shorts soaked, but she had streams of urine flowing down her legs. She complained that her shoes were wet. Loving Husband removed them, looked inside, and then turned them upside down, letting pools of urine splatter on the ground. It was lovely.

So, finally, we made it back to our van, put a towel underneath big girl, strapped little man in, making sure to provide the security binky, and tried to get home as quickly as possible. Believe me, I couldn’t drive fast enough. No matter what we did, Little Man wanted to scream.

Things finally calmed down for a little while once Little Man went to sleep for four hours. But even that didn’t let us recover from the epic family day FAIL from hell.