The Daily Hailey

Well, mostly normal. Part of today was back to our old traditional Sunday, and part of it was not.

Traditional Sunday was always church, visiting until we were basically the last people at church, and to my parents for the rest of the day. We haven’t had a Sunday with my parents after church in what seems like forever, and we were SO looking forward to today!

Unfortunately, the kids were in rough shape. Dekker was being incredibly disobedient, and was getting much too loud and upset in the service, so Brady had to haul him out. Meanwhile, Rowan was getting louder and louder, as babies tend to do when they’re tired. Its not uncommon. But the little back room specifically set up for napping babies was already occupied, and while there is room to nap more than one baby, we knew adding Ro at that volume would wake the little sleeping love already there. So while Laela was very well behaved and staying relatively quiet and entertaining herself, Rowan was twitchy and exhausted, and Dekker was SO over it. Brady had to stay, because he had committed to drum, but I loaded the kids up in the van and we left. We just sat for a while in silence, because Dekker was actually in a decent amount of trouble because of how he had handled himself that morning. Dekker and Laela say perfectly still and quiet, and Rowan was asleep within a minute of being buckled in, no word of a lie. Finally, I had to do something other than just sit and be pissed, so the kids and I drove to the edge of the city to get some Tims for Brady and I. I drove back pretty much right away, and we just lurked in silence outside the church. We had probably been back for a solid 15-20 minutes when I heard Dekker from the backseat break the silence. “I’ve changed my bad attitude,” he said. I admit, I kind of snapped back at him that I hoped he had, and he nodded profusely, and said “Yup, yup I really did. I’ll be happy now. I’m all done being grouchy.” It amazes me how he can really turn it around after that. He’s not all talk. He tells me he’s changed his attitude when it is in fact changed. In this case, I was the childish one. After he’d told me he was happy again, I recapped the entire situation, and kind of explained to him how he had really wrecked part of the morning. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t just “happy” because he was bored, or because he had forgotten. So I recounted all of the events where he had disobeyed or broken rules, and he teared up while he listened and nodded and said “I remember that” and things along those lines. He really took it. In those moments, I know things are sinking in, and I’m SO proud of him! SO PROUD. It was actually a decent end to a really difficult morning.

We had a really lovely lunch of pancakes and bacon with my parents, and then we put the boys to work. My parents’ basement fridge is pooched, so the job was to haul the old fridge away and go buy a new one on sale at Costco and bring it in. They ran the errand in great time, but upon unwrapping it, found it had dents and scratches, and even one little crack in it. So back to Costco they went and exchanged it for a fresh one. While they were gone, mom and I talked about Christmas and upcoming excitements while the kids played tirelessly for hours, all afternoon! It was wonderful, and surprisingly meltdown-free!

Once the boys were back, the fridge was downstairs, and the doors were back on (big fridge + small doorway) we had a yummy supper of pizza and salad, with brownies for dessert. SO yummy. When the kids were done, they were excused, and the rest of us sat at the table and visited until it was pretty much time to go. But it felt like the perfect Sunday. No card games this time, but lots of great visiting, happy kids, and good food. Hopefully there are many more Sundays like this coming up in the future. Without the morning meltdowns would be ideal, but we’ll take what we can get 😉