One Day

As I lay with Megan tonight, and she rattled off her prayer, I starting getting a little nostalgic. Our daily routine, at least some parts, are so predictable. I know I will forget the little every day things that fade away as they grow. Here is an attempt to capture the mundane.

My day often starts with Megan waking me to do her work. She is my first alarm. My actual alarm usually goes off about 30 minutes later. After getting myself mostly ready, I almost always have to go wake Michael, who almost always holds up a hand from beneath his burrow, indicating he'd like "five more minutes." I then get Megan out of her bed, which has morphed into a library by now and hustle her through her morning routine, which typically ends with her rejecting the shoo-in-for-a-fashion-magazine outfit I have chosen and pulling on something really just pretty ridiculous instead. I then go re-wake Michael, lay out his clothes (because he would maybe be a little confused if I laid out a paper bag for him to wear, but would shrug and put it on anyway) and pull off his covers to make him actually move.

I then head down to start the school prep. I fill four water bottles, one for the classroom and one for the lunch bag for each kid and grab a snack for them to have mid-morning. I lay out lunch bags and try to figure out what the heck to put in them, at which point one of the two has come either stumbling or bouncing, depending on which one, into the kitchen. Megan wants one of two breakfasts: a bagel or a breakfast sundae. Michael nearly always wants a crumpet with jelly. I get them eating and then get back to the worst part of my day: lunches. I pack 'em up, get them into backpacks and make sure all the right books, binders and required signatures are where they should be. At some point, I start the shoe warnings, "12 minutes to shoes!" so they know what they are looking at in terms of hustle. I get a glass of water and a comb to tame Michael's insane bedhead.

At 8:25, it is shoe time. I have typically given about three warnings by now, and most days, Megan finds something wrong with her outfit or hair at this moment. If there is nothing wrong, then she has a meltdown about not having the perfect shoes for her slipshod get-up. Michael and I step over her and head out to the car and she ends up following after a few minutes – sometimes super mad, sometimes already oblivious to the issue she just had. We rock out on the way to school and pray that we turn out of the neighborhood ahead of the bus so we don't get stuck behind it loading children with it's little stop sign sticking out.

Drop off is one of my favorite things. I drive to the far parking lot near Michael's classroom, where he hops out and has to walk about 50 yards to the door. He turns to wave at us an average of 6 times during this walk, so I wait and wave back until he rounds the corner to the door. I leave this parking lot and go to the opposite end of school, where Megan's classroom is (very convenient). I pull into a parking spot here, because it takes Megan about 5 full minutes to get herself out of the car and to situate the backpack that she will remove in 2 minutes. I open the passenger window as she walks past and tell her something I love about her (ie you are so cool/beautiful/funny/bright) to which she always responds, "I know." She heads to the door and never looks back at me, where I wait, just in case.

After school pickup is almost always the same, I wait by the first grade door where Megan comes out, more often zombie-like than not. She runs off to the playground to play with friends while I wait for Michael to make the long trek from the fourth grade door. Michael immediately wants to go home, almost without exception, and I have to put him off for as many minutes as I can to allow Megan some girl time. When I absolutely can no longer stop his whine, I tell him to go gather Meg up and tell her it's time to go. We have to extract her from the group of girls like a deep splinter, painful all the way to the car.

At home: a snack, homework, cleaning out lunch bags, whatever sport practice there is that night, then dinner and finally time to wind down. The routine is the same...up to the shower, pee, wash hands, brush teeth and get on jammies, aka undies. I start with Megan while Michael does his own reading. Meg and I read two books and these days, she reads them to me as often as I read to her, which is both adorable and awesome and patience-testing. She applies Aquafor to her desert lips and I turn off her light. She then nearly chants: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Guard and guide me through the night and wake me with the morning light. Then some form of this comes out: God, please help me think of good things. Please, when I ask, come into my heart. I will open the door to my heart as wide as I can so you can come in. Please keep anything bad or scary away from me, and if it gets close, please come take it away, even if I have to see your powers. Thank you, God. Mom, do you want to say anything? [insert moms plea for a peaceful night] God, please do what my mom said. Amen.

90% of the time these days she wants me to sing Guten Naben, a German lullaby made popular by Grammie. I do that and then we snuggle for a few minutes. When I get up to go to Michael, I have to help her move to the middle of her bed, which involves moving pets (Foofoo [mommy's childhood bunny], IKEA bunny and a dog named Scrufty) and pillow and blanket rearranging. I kiss her and promise to come "check on her." I flip on her nightlight as I leave.

I come into Michael's room with a "It's time, buddy." He wraps up the page he's reading and leans over to record his reading time for his school reading log on a small post-it on the desk next to his bed. He hands me the book to put on his bedstand (on my side) and I turn on his "noise." We get all of the pets arranged (snakesy, makesy, pakesy, crabsie, scorpion, Hedwig the owl and Wyatt the horse) and I turn out the light. He immediately prays: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Guard and guide me through the night and wake me with the morning light. For mommy, daddy and Megsie. For Grandma and Papa Mike, Grammie and Papa John, Aunt Gretchen and Uncle Jake, Alissa and Ellie, Aunt Jenny and Uncle Scott; Annabelle, Miles, Zeke and Audra, and Aunt Gretchen's baby Andrew and Leah. Amen.

We usually have a pretty good chat after that, and snuggle up together for quite awhile since that's the only time he really still acts like my little boy. He is a closet snuggler these days, being all grown up and in fourth grade. And I looooove it. Eventually, I give him kisses, tell him he is a prince among men and take my leave. I always go back in to check on Meg at this point, and 9 nights out of ten, she is passed out. I love the nights that she isn't asleep yet, or almost asleep, because then I get credit for the check and she can rest assured I am not lying when I say I will.

Sometimes, when I am busy with work, the amount of time this bedtime routine takes irritates me, but most of the time, I relish it, knowing I won't get these moments forever.

Then I go down and pour a glass of wine. Ahhhh.