Three Funny Stories

Okay, enough with the depressing for a minute. I have three different, funny, true stories from my life the past few days.

1. The Footwear Incident
Friday, I met Bruce and a good friend with whom I work for lunch. It was nice to get out of the house and see my friend, with whom I had lunched pretty regularly before I went on leave. She drove Bruce to the restaurant and I met them there, but I ended up driving Bruce back to the office afterward, just for a few more minutes with my hubby.

In the car, Bruce looked at me and said, "Did you know that when I left the house this morning, I was wearing a hiking boot on one foot and a dress shoe on the other??"

When I caught my breath from laughing, I looked down and saw that he had put on white sneakers that had been in the car. With black pants and a polo shirt. It made me laugh all over again. At least they matched, I guess. Each other, anyway. After I stopped laughing again I had to assure him that I had most definitely not been aware when he left that morning of his, um, shoe situation.

2. The Full Moon
I have mentioned over on Facebook that Caetlin is going through a phase where she's taking off her clothes and diaper in her crib. Partly it is a potty training thing- we're deep into it now, with her regularly going on the potty, if not terribly reliably. And part of it is a sleep-delay tactic. She's giving us and her nanny fits, requiring three sheets changes per nap, and covering all her sleeping accouterments- Elmo, Flat Bear, her two blankies, her pillows, and her covers, plus whatever other stuffed animal may be sleeping with her at the time- in the waste product of the day. This is an awesome stage, I must confess.

So last night, we put her down, and while we normally watch her on the video monitor to make sure she's not taking her clothes off, the monitor battery was dead, and neither of us felt like getting the charger for it. We didn't hear much from her room anyway, and we knew she was really tired, so we assumed she fell asleep pretty quickly and left it at that, attending to the details of feeding Phoebe, feeding ourselves, watching TV, relaxing from the day, etc.

A couple of hours later, we're trooping back to the bedroom to try and get some sleep, where we finally plugged in the monitor. I turned it on and peered at the picture, checking on Caetlin. What confronted me was startling and hilarious: my daughter's bare bottom, a full moon, glowing into the night vision camera. She had passed out face down, completely naked, a result of taking off her one piece pajamas in order to take her diaper off.

We went in and changed her and changed her sheets, which were sopping wet. Caetlin had to have been cold- we keep it cool in the house and I have no idea how she was sleeping so deeply on cold wet bedding, naked. She went back to sleep immediately, and I was left to continue chuckling over the picture of her bare ass that greeted me when I turned the monitor on.

3. The Church Do-Si-Do
I took both the girls to church with me this morning, to give Bruce some kid-free time and for me to get holy. I had intended to put Caetlin into the nursery, but I was running late and I wasn't sure where the nursery was, as we've never taken her there, and so I just took her with me. How bad could it be? I thought.

(Aside: never, as a parent, think, "How bad can it be?" and then continue to do whatever you're thinking about. If you think, "How bad can it be?" the answer is, invariably, much, much worse than what you're prepared for. Just stop if you think those 5 little words. Really. Not worth it, ever.)

I wasn't dumb enough to try to take both girls to the cathedral Mass, so we instead went to the Mass held in the parish hall, which has a higher than average proportion of children and is easier to get in and out of. I had Phoebe in a sling at my hip, and Caetlin motored under her own power. Everything was great at first. Caetlin was glad to be hanging out with me, no matter how many times I asked her to use her whisper voice, and she was really, really good, staying confined to our little two-chair area, playing with things she found in the diaper bag, etc.

Then the homily ran long. I knew we were in for it when I looked at my watch, and 50 minutes had gone by, and we were only at the beginning of the Eucharist. Of course I hadn't been able to pay much attention to the homily because of wrangling Caetlin, but I figured I could still take Communion, which has always been central to me. Caetlin had started to melt down a little, starting when I took my lipstick from her that she found in my purse. I had let her play with it for a long time, actually, since she wasn't hurting anything, and it would cause more of a scene to take it from her, but when I realized she was getting it all in her hair (at least it was a good color for her), I just grabbed it. That, predictably, didn't go over well.

Then they called our row with no advance warning, sending us up the center aisle instead of down the side as expected. I had to usher Caetlin, who was feeling contrary, out and into the procession. She decided that she wasn't going to go, and laid flat down on the floor.

I tried to get out of the way of those behind me, Phoebe swinging loose in her sling from my hip as I bent over Caetlin with murder in my eyes (not very Godly, I admit). I ultimately had to pick Caetlin up and carry her to the priest so I could receive Communion. I had 9.5 pounds of Phoebe on my right hip, 30 pounds of Caetlin on my left hip, and I was on a mission; I was going to take Communion if it killed us all. Caetlin smacked me all the way up the aisle, too, on my arm and on my face, over and over and over. I marched grimly on.

I reached the priest, finally, and he blessed Caetlin and gave me my piece of the host. I tried to direct his attention to my hip, where Phoebe slept in the sling, pulling the sling open with my non-Caetlin-holding hand, trying to mumble around my mouthful of dry host, "Can you bless her please?" Meanwhile, Caetlin's hands are reaching out for the piece of host that the clueless priest is holding out, and he was about to hand it to her, and I realized at that minute that Phoebe wasn't getting blessed today. I whisked Caetlin away, her grasping fingers closing on empty air instead of the proffered piece of bread, seeing the bewilderment and confusion in the priest's eyes at just how weird that little interlude was.

I reached our seats with something like gratitude smothered in murderous rage at my brat daughter. I picked up our things and took us out, before the end of the service, needing to get out, feeling as though everyone had witnessed my strange little Communion shuffle (of course, they hadn't). What had I been thinking, taking both kids and not insisting that Caetlin go to the nursery? How bad could it be? Worse than I imagined. At least Caetlin didn't start screaming. That would have been much worse. She did, however, decide to lie flat again in the middle of the hallway outside. I saw a nice man stoop to try and help me, before he realized that no, she wasn't hurt, just being obnoxious. He backed away like she had the plague. I couldn't really blame him. I wanted to do the same thing, myself.