Abandoned!

For all the times I have gone away on business trips, the number of nights my wife has left me with the kids and spent a night away from home can most definitely be counted on one hand. Last night my dear wife attended a Girl Scout training camp and left me drastically outnumbered. My concept of "don't let them see the fear in your eyes" was based on distraction and avoidance - laced with a good dose of bribery!

The day started with taking my eldest to Karate. You would think this would have been easy but when we walked out the door to get in the car, all of a sudden my eldest wanted a toy to play with in the car. Where I would have probably placated the other three in this request I had no patience for this from my 9 year old, on a 5 minute car ride, to go to HIS Karate class. Needless to say, the tears flowed all the way to class and I started the day as the evil villain. The 45 minutes of class went fairly smooth. The key to the scream avoidance was ignoring the stares of everyone in the dojo as I allowed my 2 year old to play and dance to her "Old McDonald had a farm" singing chicken all the way through class.

From there we were off to the store to buy some Crocs for my boys as their sandals are falling apart and they are very jealous of their sister's Crocs. Do you know how hard it is to find name brand Crocs??? Good grief! After about 5 stores I finally used my Blackberry to find a Croc selling location. Who cares that it was 10 miles away, more time in the car means less time at home with them running around screaming, right?

By the time we got there the kids were crying for food, it was 1pm, so despite my plans of not taking them out to eat, I caved to Uncle Ronald and his magic arches. A round of nuggets for everyone hit the spot. I think the other patrons noticed my predicament as a mother in the next booth offered to get napkins and ketchup for me and the store manager actually carried my tray to the booth AND retrieved the requested sodas from the store accessible fountain drink dispenser. Although I think I could have handled it, I appreciated the help. The funny thing was the mother that helped me. As I told the story of taking the kids for the weekend and where my wife was, she unleashed on her husband in that "why don't you do that for me every once in a while" tone. From the look the husband shot me, you'd think I broke some kind of Daddy's code.

From there we raced to the movie theatre and caught a matinee of Ratatouille. I know it has been out for a while and I'm sure will probably be out on DVD before Christmas, but it was the only family friendly film showing. Unfortunately I hadn't notice that that thing is almost 2 hours long! That is one long cartoon! I lost the 2 year old somewhere around 1:30 into the film and had to employ every trick in the book to keep her quiet for the one other moviegoer besides us that had decided to take in the matinee. Not a bad movie but not quite up to the level of other recent cartoon releases. I give it a C+ for comedy and an B+ for child distractivity.

From there we came home. I delayed the onset of dinner moans with the crumbs and dregs of a week old appetite spoiling Cool Ranch Doritos bag. That didn't last for long. Good thing Jamie had left me with one our kid's favorites for dinner, Mac&Cheese. Of course, I found a way to mess that up as well. We had a leftover cheese packet so Jamie had just purchased a random pasta to mix with it. Somehow my eyes missed the shells she usually uses for shells and cheese and grabbed the rigatoni. Rigatoni and Cheese just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way for some reason. It doesn't roll over the pallet as well either. Thank goodness for our kids non-distinguished taste buds who all scarfed down their dinner!

At this point I decided to take a risk and go for my weekend run on my treadmill hoping things wouldn't blow up downstairs. I left explicit instructions to "come and get me in case of an emergency or if Liesie-Lu needed a new diaper." Two hours and 10 miles later I came out to put everyone to bed only a little past their bedtimes. You can imagine my fear when I met a certain girl coming up the stairs to great me with a diaper held up in the air informing me that "Daddy, I oopy!" Thank goodness for dry ball poopies! That's all I'll say about that...

Remarkably the kids went to bed extremely well. Mishca asked Josh-Josh to sleep in her bed with her which left Caleb in a room by himself. So, upon his request I decided to let him occupy Jamie's side of the bed. Sometime around 1 am I was awoken by a leg cramp in my left calf. One of Jamie's jobs is to rub the arch of my foot to help make the cramp go away. I figured that if he wanted her spot in the bed, Caleb would have to do the same thing. (Hey, I was in mind numbing pain, I wasn't thinking straight!) After fighting for 2-3 minutes to get Caleb awake enough to actually be conscious enough to understand my request I endured another 2-3 minutes of my son tickling my foot while I cried in pain I came to my senses. I told him to forget it and then used a bedpost to rub it myself.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully. As I write this post Sunday morning is passing smoothly. Of course I was told "I should be home sometime around 10am" by a certain loving wife. As it is now, it is 11:30 and the natives are showing signs of hunger. I wonder what I can bribe them with, I mean feed them? Wish me luck, and pray that my wife is just delayed instead of plotting ways to extend this momentary freedom of hers...