Who Wants to See a 3-Ring Circus???

C'mon, the admission is free! ;) It just takes a few steps through my front door.

At 8:30am this morning my husband made his first call home for the day (he calls me constantly, because I have nothing better to do). He asked how things were going. At that point all was good. Things were going smoothly. Lazy Baby was sleeping and Little Man and Baby Girl were occupied with PBS. I was catching up with emails (OK I lie, I was stalking facebook and living vicariously through my friends with social lives). We had not yet entered into the breakfast phase of the morning.

Ten minutes later it was breakfast time. Which went a little like this:
Lazy Baby, sensing it was breakfast time, started pitching a screaming fit. Got Little Man and Baby Girl's plates ready amidst major cry-fest. Baby screaming as I got the other two into their booster seats as quickly as I could so I could get to calming the baby.

Immediately Little Man starts demanding crackers for breakfast. Won't eat his banana, won't eat his cereal, won't eat his donuts. He's cold and needs his jacket. He's jumping up and down on the bench saying he will take a bite of his banana for some crackers. We argue over the crying baby. But I'm not giving him his cheese crackers for breakfast.

Baby Girl decides her bananas look better in her hair and lined up on the back of the chair next to her. And her donuts look better smushed to the table and crumbled on the floor.

The baby is not calming down this morning. Some days are like that. Some days are better and he's calm for most of the day.

But today is not turning out to be one of those better days. And yesterday?? Not one of those better days either.

Yesterday I decided to take all 3 little ones to Little Man's 4-year well child appointment by myself.

It all started with getting 3 kids ready at 7am to drive dad the 20 miles to work so we could have the car. Then getting all 3 back into the house, feeding and changing Lazy Baby, cleaning out the bathtub and bathing Little Man and Baby Girl while Lazy Baby cried. Then getting everyone ready and out the door by 9:45am. Amazingly, I made my deadline without any major hitches. Except...I realized 5 minutes after we left, even though I reminded myself 20 times while getting ready, I failed to brush my own teeth.

I thought a lot about how I would mitigate getting all of us into the office safely. At first I thought maybe Little Man was big enough to walk the short distance holding my hand as I was one-handed pushing the double stroller full of Baby Girl and Lazy Baby. On second thought, the safest option seemed to be Little Man and Baby Girl in the stroller and Lazy Baby in the front pack. He seems to last longer in the front pack than in the carseat.

Lazy Baby lasted all of the walk into the clinic in the front pack. Luckily they got us into the room quickly. That was when all hell broke loose.

Of course I had to let Little Man and Baby Girl out of the stroller to play with the toys. Damn the basket of toys ;) Within seconds Little Man had *all* the toys strewn out across the room. And in between the baby crying and the tripping over toys I had to ask Little Man to do things such as balance on one foot, make a fist and wiggle his thumb, jump over a piece of paper... etc... and fill out his answers to questions on the form to make sure he is developmentally at his age.

And Baby Girl? Not so much fascinated by the toys. But was having loads of fun taking all the brochures and pamphlets off the rack on the wall. And she thought it was really fun to open the door and try to run out. She climbed in and out of the stroller, behind the examination bed and got tangled in cords, onto the Dr's stool and tried to get at the computer, opened all the drawers, threw a couple of things into the garbage...

All this and the baby having a major crying fit while trying to talk to the Doctor about Little Man. And then helping the Dr examine Little Man. I had coached him before the appointment.

"Now the Doctor is going to look in your eyes, in your ears, in your nose and in your mouth. Can you say Ahhh for me?"

He got it, he understood it and seemed to be fine with it. He did great with that portion of the examination. But I failed to mention the dreaded stethoscope. And the laying down and having the doctor feel his belly and check out his privates. Those things were challenging at the very least. Getting him to lay down was the hard part. He would not. lay. down. We got him on his back on his elbows and he would not lay his head down (she was trying to recheck the measurement of his height because for the 20th time her nurses got some measurement wrong and she had to re-do it!). The baby was still crying of course, but then Little Man was crying because he didn't want to lay down and we were trying to force him the rest of the way down. I kept my patience - only because there was the audience of the Dr. (I would have been yelling at this point if we were at home - I can only handle so much before the big yelling voice comes out)... finally I got him to lay down by laying the screaming baby down next to him and telling him to lay down next to baby brother.

As the Doctor was making her way out of the toy maze room, I started getting prepared for the shots coming... I put Baby Girl in the stroller and strapped her in, she started crying so I gave her Little Man's milk because he had lost interest in it, but as soon as I gave it to her, he started crying because he wanted it. So as the doctor was walking out the door I had all 3 crying!!

By the time the 4 nurses came in I had things calmed down (secretly I think they waited until I had everything calm to come in). Amazingly I had Lazy Baby settled too! Thankfully my doctor sent in an extra nurse to hold the baby so I could hold Little Man while he got his 3 shots. I thought I was just going to have to lay him down and let him get all worked up again.

We made it through the shots by some miracle. When the nurse returned with the baby and he heard me say something, he realized it wasn't me holding him and started his screaming anew... so I exited the building one-handed pushing the double stroller carrying a completely undone baby. Surely quite the spectacle. And felt guilty when an extremely elderly lady held the door for me.

Then it was back home to spend the afternoon cleaning up the messes made in the wake of rushing to get out the door on time!

By the time we loaded up to pick dad up at 4:30, I declared an "eat out" night even though we really couldn't afford it.