Everything Has an Upside

Today, I attempted to 1) homeschool my 5 year old, 2) potty train my 2 year old, 3) play with my 10 month old, and 4) bond with my 4 year old, all while cleaning the house, buying the groceries, putting the groceries away, and doing the laundry. Thanks to 4 Dr. Peppers I am awake enough to write this.

It occurred to me this afternoon that I had become an expert at finding the silver lining. Of taking the upside down and hanging on to only the upside. The event that spawned this though? It plays out like this:

I made the grocery list last night and asked my husband if he had any requests. He said "Cream cheese for the olives. You should probably get a few bagels too, because we can never eat all of the cream cheese with just a can of olives." I rolled my eyes at this because I know we can never eat all of the bagels in a package before they go bad either. Somewhere down the line something was bound to spoil. So, off grocery shopping the kids and I ventured. I only had 3 of the 4 (my 4 year old goes to school all day), so I hoped this might be a breeze. And it was, if by breeze I meant hurricane force winds knocking the very breath from my lungs. 3 hours. That's how long it took to get in and out of the store. $200 dollars poorer and not even remotely happier, I trudged home, kids and groceries in tow and began the arduous task of putting everything away. Now, J, my 2 year old, is the MOST helpful little girl on the planet. She unpacked every single bag before I was able to get the baby in a new diaper and down for a nap. J put most of the groceries under the sink. Not a single grocery item belongs there. 45 minutes after I have had a lovely egg hunt (and ham hunt and bread hunt and cheese hunt), I get J and M, my 5 year old, some lunch and run upstairs to get some laundry done. After this the day passes pretty quickly. J enjoys a movie and M and I buckle down on reading. At 3:15 L gets home from school and C wakes up from her nap. Chaos begins. Something about the hours from 3 pm to 7 pm wreaks havoc on my otherwise docile and obedient children. (If you could see my mannerisms as I type this you'd recognize a lie somewhere in that sentence.) Surprisingly, the kids were playing rather nicely so I ran upstairs to move some clothes from the washer to the dryer and in that moment an upside was born. J and L decided suddenly that they were hungry. Off to the pantry they went. It only took a little digging to unearth the bag of everything bagels, and only seconds passed before they had half of the bag dumped on the table and ripped to bits. They must have heard me coming down the stairs and scattered like ants and I happened upon the mess. My first thought, "Well, at least none of the bagels will go bad." Yep. There is an upside to EVERYTHING!

"profiter de la doublure d'argent"

-LL