Today was destined to be a total disaster.  And then it wasn’t.  I’ve highlighted the places where being part of a community saved my bacon.  Check it out.

It occurred to me yesterday that I scheduled an unreschedulable doctor’s appointment at the same time as Zach and Rissa’s piano lessons.  (Sidenote:  piano lessons have been AWESOME!  The kids are flourishing under the watchful eye and expertise of Miss Joanne and they LOVE to play the keyboard that Gramma and Granpa gave to us!)  I mentioned this to Matt and he said that he could help somehow… what do we need to do to make this work?

I assured him that if I dropped the twins off at Miss Joanne’s house just a few minutes early, they could sit quietly while Nathaniel and I rushed out to Mahomet (20 minutes away).  And if my doctor was as timely as he ALWAYS is, we could rush back in time to pick up the twins.  An hour should be plenty.  I should be back with the twins at 10:30am and home by 11am when Miss Jill brought her crew over for a playdate.  Matt again mentioned that I could call him if I needed his help.

This morning, I completely forgot that I needed to be out the door at 9:05am to make any of this happen.  Matt also forgot and did not wake me up when he left for work at 7:45am.  (Sidenote:  our kids are old enough to get out of bed when they wake up, pour their own cereal, and play nicely.  This phase of life – where they are little enough to need me but not little enough to need me between 8pm and 8am each day – this is HEAVEN!  Matt likes to let me sleep so he sneaks out on the occasions that I’m still asleep).  At 8:50am, Rissa came in and said it was time to wake up.  She enticed me to open my eyes by saying I could see the beautiful outfit she picked out to wear to piano lessons.  She knows just how to sucker me!

We snuggled and giggled for a little while – I love when she wakes me up!  I’m always foggy and woozy at first.  Within 1-10 minutes, my mind will snap awake (yes, I’ve had my eyes open and have been talking for those 1-10 minutes, but I’m not actually awake yet) and I will realize that I’m not supposed to still be in bed.  Then I jump into action.  My family knows this and has learned not to trust my mumbled conversation, no matter how sensible I sound.  I can’t be trusted to actually be awake until I get that jolt of “What’s going on?  Okay, let’s get going!”  (Sidenote:  in college when I was an RA, there were students paid to stay awake all night to let people into the locked building.  If an incident happened, they called the RA on duty to come get involved.  There was this amazing girl at the front desk who KNEW that I could talk on the phone without actually waking up.  This was why I kept the phone on the opposite side of my dorm room – so I would have to stand up and go get it in order to answer.  She always chatted me up and I remember none of it, but inevitably, she would say, “THERE you are.  Hi, Jaime!  I need you to…”  She was so kind.)

So I’m finally awake and I check the time and it is 8:57am and WE HAVE TO BE IN THE VAN AT 9:05!!!  Augh!

I ask Zach and Rissa to get some clothes on Nathaniel (he loves to stay in his jammies until the last possible second before we leave, or just stay in them for the day) while I rushed through a shower.  I got out of the shower and heard Rissa saying, “Do you like this shirt or this shirt?  That will look nice!  Oh, but if you wear your crocodiles shirt, they can chomp Miss Joanne at piano lessons!  Okay, that’s a good choice… let’s do crocodiles.”  She is so sweet with her little brother.

We made it to Miss Joanne’s house a touch early, and I explained my plan to her – come back asap from my appointment, but perhaps the kids could stay a few minutes longer if I was late since it was in Mahomet?  She said they could, and I assured her that if I was too late, I’d let Matt know and he would come pick them up.

When I got back in the car after dropping off the twins, Nathaniel immediately announced, “I’m MAD!” because he really wanted to go to Miss Joanne’s house too!  He looks forward to his weekly session with my ipad and her children’s books.  I told him that I was sad that we couldn’t stay too, but I needed him to help me be brave at my appointment in case I needed a shot.  And I assured him that I still brought the ipad, so he could do that while I was at my appointment.  He perked right up and chatted me up on the drive to Mahomet.

My appointment went well, but I needed bloodwork done at the lab.  This has become a regular phenomenon… I can pretty much plan on getting a “shot” at each visit.  We headed to the lab’s waiting room, where Nathaniel charmed scads of elderly people who can’t resist a sweet little boy.  (Sidenote:  Nathaniel has met very few people who CAN resist him, so I suspect that extends beyond the older generation.  But they are especially likely to swoon over him because he is so delicious and they have enough wisdom and life experience to perceive that).

With only one employee in the lab, we waited forever.  10:30am arrived, piano lessons ended, and I called Miss Joanne.  She could keep the twins for 10-15 minutes, but not longer.  It would take me that long just to drive back, and I hadn’t even gotten into the lab yet!  I told her Matt would be there soon.  I called Matt and he agreed to go get the twins and bring them home.  He could wait with them until 11:35am at the latest, when he needed to leave to meet a friend for lunch.

Miss Jill arrived at 11am as scheduled.  Matt called me shortly after – apparently, she offered to stay with her two girls, her two neighbor girls who are spending this week at her house during the day, and my 3 children if he needed to leave.  I knew that she needed to be home at 1pm when she was helping out another friend and that she needed her lunch date with Chad!  (Sidenote:  we trade kids so that we can have lunch dates with our husbands.  Summer has been a whole lot of crazy on the scheduling end, but we’re still working it in because this idea is pure brilliance!  I love benefiting from my friends’ brilliant ideas, and Miss Jill hit this one out of the park when she suggested it).

I told Matt that I was next, so we would be on our way soon.  I still thought it was possible to get home by 11:35 so that he could leave and be on time for his lunch date with his friend.  “Go ahead and send Jill on her date to meet Chad.  Oh… and I’m hoping to make pancakes… is the griddle clean?”

At 11:35am, I called Matt from the road.  We were on our way, but wouldn’t be home until 11:50.  Could he ask Rachel (Jill’s neighbor girl, age 12 or 13, who was visiting us today along with her little sister) if she felt comfortable handling the other 6 children for 10-15 minutes?  Superstar that she is, Rachel said that was fine.  So Matt left and I was on my way and the kids watched an episode of Phineas and Ferb.  Rachel later reported to me that turning on the tv made babysitting so much EASIER and she would remember this trick. 🙂  (Sidenote:  Today, Rachel discovered one of the core principles of my parenting.  The tv is for MY benefit, not my children’s!  We use it when *I* need us to have it).

I was home in time to watch the second half of Phineas and Ferb and to make pancakes and to have the kids help me make exploding paint, which we then exploded in the driveway.  And despite the TOTAL CHAOS of the morning, everything was fine!  When Jill came back, the girls were disappointed because we had mixed our exploding paint, but not yet exploded it or painted with it.  (I’ll link you to Becky for the details… this was really fun!)  So Jill agreed to stay and apparently, her plans had moved to 1:30pm.  Whew!

As I was sitting in the waiting room at the lab, people were grumbling about how there was only one employee and this was taking forever and maybe she was new so she didn’t know what she was doing (What the heck?  She was working as quickly as possible – it isn’t her fault that there were so many of us who needed bloodwork today and that everyone else in her department was on vacation!  And maybe we can think about how she might miss her lunch trying to take care of all of us instead of whining, hmm???)  The main grumbler decided that his time was too valuable to waste and stomped out with his wife following meekly behind.  But I spent the time enjoying one-on-one time with my little man and thinking about community.

My morning only had 2 goals:  I needed to get my kids their piano lesson and I needed to attend my unreschedulable doctor’s appointment.

And it should have been doable… Miss Joanne was ready a few minutes early when I dropped off the kids, and my doctor works hard to be punctual so that he doesn’t waste his patients’ time with waiting in his office.  No problem.  And then the bloodwork threw everything off-kilter.  If I was on my own as a single mom, today would have looked very different.  I wouldn’t be able to have the twins in piano lessons because I couldn’t afford it.  I’d have 3 kids with me and be scrambling to find a way to have a doctor’s appointment with them.  I’d be at work during the summer instead of enjoying the simpler schedule of being a stay-at-home mom/work-at-home mom.  It is unlikely that I’d have the mental fortitude to hang out with Jill’s kids because I’d always be searching for opportunities to send my kids elsewhere!

But I’m not in that position.  I have Matt, who was willing to take time off of work to pick up our kids and then watched the 7 kids for half an hour and cleaned the griddle so I could make lunch.  I have Joanne, who had my kids for 20 minutes beyond their 1 hour lesson and was so kind about it.  I have Jill, who was willing to postpone her lunch date to cover for me and willing to take my kids last week so Matt and I could have a lunchdate and willing to stay a bit longer so we could finish our exploding paint.  I have Rachel, who was willing to manage the 6 tiny people at my house for 15 minutes while Matt, Jill, and I headed to and from our various appointments.  I have Nathaniel, who is easy-going and happy to sit and wait with me (as long as I bring my ipad!!!) and who also was a welcome relief to the other people in the waiting room.  I have three kids who let me sleep and who take care of one another AND our friends who come to visit.

I’m grateful for the help.  I often manage to pull off my life and perhaps people looking in think that I’m some kind of superstar who can totally handle the craziness.  (Never mind the fact that I only try Pinterest ideas that Becky finds and reports as successful because I can’t handle even going on Pinterest to look around.)  Nope.  I’m not a superstar and I’m not even managing my life.  I’m usually barely holding on.  I could crack any second, and I often do.  But I live in community and there are people (my husband, my friends, my children) who make life doable and even fun.  And I wonder… how many of us are barely holding on, no matter how well we look put together?  How many of us would drown without one another?  I suspect ALL of us.  Community is critical.  And we can’t just absorb it – we have to offer it back!