The Inevitable

The longer I ride this train otherwise known as motherhood the more accustomed I become to situations and things that are inevitable. As a mother there is always the chance that I can prevent, try to work around or just plain old accept and laugh at all those times that are certain to happen. Here is a list of this week’s five inevitable moments that I knew had a very high possibility of occurring given just the right environment, and accepted them with a chuckle, slight panic & lots of patience. 

1.) I asked the brothers to use the bathroom before leaving Cornwall in the event that there would be close to an hour wait to get processed through American customs. No surprise here that when we pull up to the booth and are asked the same old question, “Have anything to declare?” both the boys screamed “Pee! Gotta pee! Hurry up” at the border agent who told us to pull over. Yes, that’s right my kids yelled at the guy and he rewarded them with a U.S customs tour of their brand new restroom facility. 

2.) Little brother was overdue for a nap. Big brother wanted to go practice riding his bike at the same time so we took a nice long walk down our road. I thought how peaceful it would be. Little brother should have fallen asleep since he hadn’t sat his butt in a stroller in months and big brother would love to ride his bike. We got a mile down the road before turning around. Little brother hadn’t fallen asleep and Big brother was ready to leave his bike behind because he was tired and it got really windy so he couldn’t keep his balance. There I was a mile from home with two miserable sons and no idea what my next move was to encourage both a nap and a seven-year-old version of the tour de France. As a horrible and inevitable meltdown by both kids was upon me, my prayers were answered. An off duty bus driver stopped to ask us if we wanted a ride home, it was on the way. I quickly loaded the boys, the bike and the bulky stroller onto the bus as fast as I could. Thank you angel in the big yellow bus! 

3.) It was that day to go grocery shopping and I was happy to spend some quality time with little brother. We took our time cruising aisles and he walked nicely with me picking up items and putting them in the cart. I was teaching him to put things gently into the shopping cart and trying to teach him what was on the list and what wasn’t. After checking out and paying for our groceries we got everything in the truck when I remembered we hadn’t brought my water jugs in and had two of them. We rushed back in and traded them and then hurried back to get the truck repacked for the ride home. Wouldn’t you know it the last corner before our house the water jugs tipped over and crushed the bread, the eggs, strawberries and tomatoes. After the careful twenty-minute ride home I let the food get flattened on the very last turn!

4.) After spending an entire day and evening doing laundry all I had was just one load of laundry left. We’ve all gotten there, you just have to load that last basket and you are all done. Only when I loaded the last of those dirty kid clothes and turned the machine on I find that I have no laundry detergent left. It’s late and there are no stores open at this time of night. There I stood about to see the end of the laundry pile from a rainy weekend with mud puddle loving boys and I ran out of laundry detergent. 

5.) Little Brother fell asleep on the ride home from grandma’s house. I filled my arms with a bag of mail, our lunch, the house keys, him and my purse, all balancing perfectly. As I fumbled to get the house key in the deadbolt and little brother into the house without waking him, I was thinking to myself what a bad idea this was, and it happens...My keys fall between this crack where our porch and house meet and to the ground below. The plan was going to fail no matter what I guess. If I bring stuff into the house before carrying in little brother he always manages to wake up in the truck and will scream like he’s been abandoned. If I carry him into the house first he wakes up the second I go outside to retrieve items out of the truck and I can hear his wails on the walk back and have to sprint inside to comfort him. Next time I will drive him around for the full hour instead of him inevitably waking up overtired, poor thing!