Easy Like Sunday Morning

Sundays.

Oh, are they rough.

Lately I've been thinking I should document what Sunday mornings are like so I can look back someday (possibly as an empty nester) and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Maybe I'll even be able to laugh a little.

Being religious folks, we do the church thing on Sunday. This year we have church at 9:00, and that's really not a problem. My kids wake up between 6:00-7:00, so getting out the door by 8:40 isn't extremely difficult. I mean, it is extremely difficult because there are children involved, but it isn't any more difficult than getting them out of the house at 11:00 or 1:00.

This morning, we gave all the girls a "quick bath" (this is where we make them stand in a few inches of water and we give them a scrub and a rinse, but we don't let them sit in the tub because we don't want them to get their hair wet, and once they've sat, they think they get to linger in the tub for an hour). After Zoe got out of the tub, she started throwing a tantrum (I can't remember what it was about, but rest assured, it was over something ridiculous). When Zoe is throwing a tantrum, we just ignore her and go on with our responsibilities, so I worked on getting all of the other kids and myself ready. Zoe stopped screaming at some point, and the next thing I knew, she'd had a total mood change and came skipping out of her room wearing a Minnie Mouse t-shirt, jeans, Minnie Mouse slippers, and a fire fighter hat.

Not church clothes, of course.

If there's anything to know about Zoe, it's that you can not make her change her clothes once she's gotten herself ready. Not only does it set her off on a tantrum that may take hours to recover from, it also completely crushes her spirits. Thus, she often ends up wearing unicorn shirts and Elsa shoes to church. I've decided that the way my three-year-old dresses for church is not a priority right now. I'm sure that there are people who judge me, but I don't care. It's more important to me that I can actually get my child to church, and if she's having a complete meltdown over clothes, we'll never make it there. I wasn't however, going to let her wear a fire fighter hat to church.

So, the fire fighter hat... It's pink, and her cousins just gave it to her last night, so it's new and exciting, which means Zoe is overly attached to it right now. Luckily, at some point, she took it off and forgot about it. Phew! But then she decided she wanted to wear her snow pants to church, and thus began a series of screaming, stamping her feet, and yelling about her snow pants. I ended up letting her put her snow pants on, then when we got to church, I took her in the coat room and said, "Which hanger do you want to hang your snow pants on?" It was just dumb luck that it worked (that whole "give your children acceptable and logical choices" parenting tactic has never worked on my kids - they usually just throw it back in my face. "Mom, would you like to buy me a Barbie or would you like to buy me Shopkins?" "Don't you Love and Logic me!"), and she was excited to take off her snow pants and hang them up. Worst case scenario, she would have swished through three hours of church. We've seen worse.

Scotty has church meetings before and after church, so he does as much as he can to help get the kids ready before he has to leave, and then I finish up and get the kids to the church on my own. A few minutes after we arrived, Scotty took Eva out of her car seat, and she was covered in poop. I had to run her to the bathroom and get her cleaned up. This was a real doozy - the kind that warrants going home, but I refused to go home because it was too much work getting everyone there just to turn around and leave.

In the bathroom, I began to strip Eva down. I made a pile of poo clothes and then started to wipe her off which resulted in a pile of poo rags which sat upon the poo diaper which was too full and leaky to roll up and secure for disposal. During the process, we got poo all over the bathroom counter. I ended up giving Eva a little bath in the sink (where the water ran and ran but NEVER got warm - poor thing). Then I left all the poo everywhere so I could take her back into the chapel and have two free hands to clean everything up (I crossed my fingers that no one would go into the bathroom during the thirty seconds I was gone) (it looked like a crime scene) (but substitute poo for blood).

When I arrived in the chapel, Scotty and Zoe were gone, and Nicky and Daisy were sitting there alone. Not having any other choice, I handed the baby to Nicky and ran back to the bathroom, but first I stopped at the custodial closet and got some garbage bags and disinfectant. I bagged the mounds of poopy things, then I cleaned the counter and sink, washed my hands, and went back into the chapel.

Scotty was still gone when I got back, so I asked Nicky where he went. Nicky told me he had taken Zoe to the bathroom, and that's when it dawned on me that Zoe hadn't worn a diaper to church.

A little info about Zoe's potty training progress: there is none. Zoe has been sitting on the toilet for over a year and a half of her own will, but she WILL NOT "go." The kid pretty much diapers herself (save for poopies), and sometimes she will put underwear on for a few hours and then switch to a diaper when she needs to pee. All of my kids have self-diapered at some point. Isn't that bizarre? It seems like a kid who can change her own diaper (and put a diaper on when she knows she's going to pee) should be able to just go in the potty. But whatever. I haven't been able to solve this strange problem.

I left the chapel again and went to the men's bathroom to find Scotty. I was worried Zoe'd had an accident, but fortunately she hadn't. She'd told Scotty she needed to go potty (which she does often), and Scotty took her to the bathroom and patiently waited for several minutes to see if she would pee (as we always do), but she didn't (as she never does). While I was talking to Scotty, I caught a sniff of my hands and realized that I still smelled like poo, so Scotty took Zoe back to the chapel, and I went in the restroom to wash my hands again.

When I got back into Sacrament meeting, Zoe crawled up on my lap and said, "I need a diaper." When Zoe says she needs a diaper, she's not kidding, so out we went. I took her in the closest classroom because, at this point, the Sacrament was about to be passed, and I didn't want to miss it. I put a diaper on her and ran walked briskly, yet reverently, back into the chapel.

About halfway through the meeting, I looked down and realized that my off-white sleeve was covered in poo. At that point, I didn't care what I looked or smelled like. I knew I was a champion for still being there, so I looked over at Scotty, smiled, glanced down at my sleeve, and mouthed, "Poo!"

Then I looked around at my fellow church-goers and wondered if any of them had any idea what we'd been through in the last half hour.

This made me contemplate the possibility of starting a forum called "Tales From the Pew" where people can write in about what really goes on in their pew.

And thus, another challenging Sunday came and went, and I just have to laugh that the phrase, "Easy like Sunday morning" even exists.