Morning Chaos

I have always wondered why mornings are so chaotic.  No matter what I do to lessen this I always feel like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.  The alarm goes off and the craziness begins again. By the time I send them out the door to catch the bus...I am exhasuted.  I can't believe I ever got myself ready too when I was working.  

I have tried everything to fix this.  Laying clothes out at night and making sure backpacks are packed ahead of time.  I try to remain calm....which lasts about 15 minutes.  I try deep breathing, I count to 10.....wait I am trying to keep myself calm and I am not even the problem!  

We have the usual problems.  I have one who moves at a snails pace and she seems to lose things quite frequently.  I have one who gets mad at everything anyone says to her in the mornings.  According to her even Captain Crunch is looking at her funny.  Then the fights.  They fight over who sits where at the table.  The girls fight over clothes.  Ben whines because, well, everyone else is.  Last week at the Valentine's Day Party I asked their bus driver, who is also a room mother, if my kids get on the bus fighting.  Thankfully she said they don't.  I couldn't believe it because they sure are mouthing at each other all the way down the front sidewalk. Believe it or not, one of their almost daily arguments is who is going to get on the bus first!

Not all mornings are bad.....sometimes everyone is so quiet and calm you could hear a pin drop.  We had one of those mornings about three weeks ago when Anna went down to the basement to get a gallon of milk then proceeded to drop the milk on the den floor.  She hit the milk against a table in the den and it split open. The entire gallon of milk hit the floor.  Did I mention it was carpeted?  Did I mention it was my birthday?  They got really quiet then.  I was doing all of the fussing.  There were a few four letter words said as I drug out the steam vac.  Poor Anna, who I knew had done it accidentally, looked like she was going to cry.  The only one happy was the dog who couldn't stop licking the floor.  The saying don't cry over spilt milk is wrong...if you have a gallon of milk in your carpet, you will cry, trust me.  

By the time they got on the bus that morning, I had calmed down.  I hugged Anna and apologized to her for getting so mad.  She apologized for dropping the milk and they all headed out the door.  

I am certain that we will have more mornings like this and I don't know what the solution is. What I do know is that every afternoon when they get off the bus, I watch them run to the house with smiles on their faces and I know without a doubt that I will miss this one day.  The sweet moments will last longer than whining and fights.   


UPDATE:  Not 10 minutes after I posted this blog, Jason went downstairs to get a gallon of milk out of the downstairs refrigerator.  Simple task, I thought.  He was gone for a long time and when he came into the kitchen, he only had 1/3 gallon of milk and he had a towel under it.  Seriously?  He dropped it on the carpeted basement floor right in front of my parents who are watching a UK game.  I mean literally right in front of their TV.  I said the same four letter words I said when Anna dropped hers.  This time though I am not the one who had to get out the steam vac so things are looking up! One problem though....we don't have enough milk for breakfast which might cause chaos in the morning.  


http://www.cmt.com/videos/martina-mcbride/59340/blessed.jhtml