A Hair-y Ordeal

Mostly random fare tonight. It has been an awfully long day and I'm too tired to think of anything witty or amusing or even terribly clever. And for those of you thinking, "Why should today be any different?" I say "Pipe down!"

Sawyer got me up just after 5:00 this morning. Note I did not say he got up; no, I said he got me up. Why is it, do you suppose, that a kid who goes to the bathroom all by himself all day long feels the need to include me in his nocturnal eliminations? His bathroom is maybe six feet away from his bedroom. Every morning I hear the same ritual: a thump on the floor (Sawyer jumping out of bed); the squeaking of a door (which, incidentally, I didn't hear today because I finally took some WD-40 to the rusty hinges yesterday); the patter of little feet (Sawyer walks on his tiptoes so even though the sound isn't as obvious on carpet, he literally patters when he gets to the tile); the opening of the bathroom door; the closing of the bathroom door (he has finally, mercifully, developed a desire for a bit of privacy once in a while); then he goes through his morning ablutions and then, finally, the sound of running water.

So again, I ask you: If he is capable of all that, then why, why, WHY does he still call for me on the occasions when he wakes up in the night and needs to relieve himself? The only thing I do is open the door for him. I stumble all the way up the stairs for this?

It just so happened that this morning he woke up pretty close to MY waking time, so while he was able to take care of his business and go back to bed, sleep eluded me. It was actually kind of nice, though, to have almost an hour of blessed silence to myself this morning. I was able to read my Bible and several chapters of another book I'm in to AND get the kids' lunches made before my workout.

We had a couple of things we were going to do today but the weather turned out kind of windy and blustery and I felt sort of sluggish, so I elected to get some things done around the house. By about 11:00 I could hardly hold my eyes open (I feel tired all the time but that's for another post) so I told Sawyer I absolutely HAD to close my eyes for a few minutes. "Five minutes, buddy. Just give me five minutes." I curled up under a quilt without even a thought to what Sawyer would do while I was out like a light resting, but I might have known that five minutes of quiet and solitude were not in the cards. Sawyer began by sitting next to me on the bed working a puzzle book (you know, one of those board books where each page has an actual jigsaw puzzle that you can punch out and put back together), and that is about the time I drifted off. Perfect. When I woke up, Sawyer was standing next to the bed with my gum pouch in one hand and he was sticking a piece of gum between my lips. I also noted with surprise that he had put a stack of books he wanted to read on my chest.

On my chest.

While I slept.

Do you see why I get such a kick out of this kid?!

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Tyler had baseball practice tonight. Even though the wind blew fiercely at times and was overcast all day, it didn't rain a drop . . . until after practice started. And it came with no warning: no thunder, no lightning, it just . . . started. And it pelted us. Hard. And fast. The "Team Mom" had just introduced herself and we were chatting, so when she said she needed to get her Igloo container back to her car I felt compelled to help her. By this time the wind was whipping and the rain was really coming fast, so much so that I had to keep pushing my bangs out of my eyes. We got the Igloo container to her car and Tyler met up with me there, and we headed on to our car.

Tyler had really been getting into practice and he was disappointed that it was cut short, so he was chattering on and on about that. As I drove I kept feeling droplets of rain running from my scalp to my forehead, water running down my neck--I was soaked to the skin. Finally I glanced at myself in the rear-view mirror and said, "Oh my goodness! I look like a drowned rat!" Until that moment Tyler hadn't even noticed, but he turned to me, did a double-take, and then laughed as hard as I've seen him laugh maybe ever. He laughed so hard that even I started laughing! He said, "Well, one thing's for sure, you lost your hairdo!"