This past Monday night I took Matthew and Carolyn to our local ski area to go tubing. During the weekends the place is stupid crazy busy (yes, that's a term) so we never go near it but on the weekdays it is much quieter. They also have reduced rates if you tube the last two hours of the evening so I planned for an 8-10pm outing. On this night the 3 of us had the whole hill to ourselves and it was a ton of fun.
Of course the downside to a late evening is the getting up in the morning. Matthew is not much of a morning person (gee I wonder where he gets that from) and was pretty sleepy when the alarm rang at 6:55. I of course was my usual sleepy grumpy, scatterbrained self. My job is to make sure Matthew is up, dressed, and fed before the bus picks him up at 7:40. Andrew also has morning school but doesn't have to leave until 7:50 so I concentrate on Matthew and let Andrew fend for himself until after Matthew is taken care of. Because there is snow on the ground, Matthew is required to wear snow pants and boots. Wearing boots to school means that the tennis shoes must be put into the backpack and if left up to Matthew, they would be sitting at home 4 days out of 5 so I usually pack his backpack with them, along with a snack and homework or speech folder, depending on the day of the week. Yesterday was no exception.
About 2 years ago, I got fed up with the hunt for the missing shoes and bought a small tan bin that I put near the door. The kids all know that when they take their shoes off, each shoe is to be put into the shoe bin. I also only buy each child 1 pair of shoes to wear during the non-summer months so they only need to look for their personal pair and put them on when needed. Really, it does save a lot of time and hassle. As for the socks...well, lets just say that if the kids run out of clean pairs then look into the shoe bin because for some reason they think the socks must stay with the shoes.
Getting back to yesterday. I managed to get Matthew up and out of bed and went about putting items into the backpack. I reached into the shoe bin and grabbed Matthew's shoes and stuffed them in. I asked him his snack preference and got that put in also. As the clock ticked closer to the bus arrival time I made sure to ask Matthew if he had everything he needed for school, including his shoes. I like to have Matthew do a backpack check even if I was the one packing because I'm trying to teach him to take responsibility for making sure he has all of his school items ready to take with him.. As the bus horn honked, Matthew came running over to me a little on the upset side because he had one of his shoes in his hand and could not get the backpack open. I hurriedly opened the backpack and stuffed the shoe in and handed it back to him and watched him run out the door and across the street. In the back of my mind I wondered why Matthew took his shoes out of his backpack and was trying to put them back...did he really need to re-pack them???
After Matthew left, I turned my attention to Andrew who is the polar opposite when it comes to mornings. The only problem I have with Andrew is his preferred way to wake up is to crawl on my lap and sit there drinking soy milk out of his sippy for about 10 minutes or so. Not always possible if I have to taskmaster Matthew. Thankfully Andrew was not in a sitting kind of mood so I dressed him and got out his coat, hat, and mittens. Andrew doesn't have to wear snow clothes to school and the staff actually discourage it because they really don't want to have to put snow clothes on a bunch of 3 year olds every day.
All was going well until I went over to the shoe bin and only found 1 Andrew shoe. Actually, the Andrew shoe was not in the shoe bin, it was on the floor near the shoe bin. I found a pair of socks in the shoe bin but no match to Andrew's shoe. Remembering that the evening before I had Matthew and Carolyn and the loving husband had Andrew led to my concluding that Andrew had taken off his shoes somewhere else but they never made it to the shoe bin. Obviously, the loving husband didn't make sure both shoes made it into the shoe bin and now I had to play detective and try and locate the missing item before Andrew's van arrived to pick him up.
I searched high and low. I looked under beds, in closets, down in the toy area of the basement, even in the computer room but could not find it. Remember, I only buy 1 pair of shes per kid so the only option I had for Andrew was to make him wear his snow boots. After trying in vain to locate the missing shoe, the van arrived and I was forced to send the poor kid to school wearing snow boots. Judging from the way Andrew looked at me I think they were getting a little too small for him. Suffice to say I was NOT very happy with the loving husband.
During my fruitless search for the missing shoe, I decided that it was HIS ( the loving husband's)fault that the shoes didn't make it into the bin and got lost. Andrew is known to kick his shoes off anywhere he plops down and we are still working with him to actually put them in their proper place. I started to grumble to myself and decided that an e-mail was definitely in order. Nothing too mean, just a please please don't ever do this again type of thing. I started to compose the letter in my head with every intention of sending it as soon as Andrew left for school.
As I was getting ready to head downstairs, something stopped me and my brain started to do a re-wind of the morning's events. It was rather strange that Matthew had his shoe in his hand and not in the backpack...what if one of the shoes got taken to school? I decided to hold off on the e-mail until Matthew got home that afternoon and make sure there was no Andrew shoe in the backpack.
Sure enough, when Matthew got home from school, he had 3 shoes in his backpack. His pair of shoes and the missing Andrew shoe. The best guess I can make is that when I loaded the backpack that morning, I grabbed two shoes and stuffed them in without looking at what I was doing. When I reminded Matthew to check for shoes, he saw one of his shoes in the shoe bin and was trying to put it in the backpack when the bus showed up. I'm sure I would have caught the mistake if there had been a mis-match of shoes in the shoe bin when I tried to get Andrew ready instead of a missing shoe.
Later that evening on the way to Tae Kwan Do class, I repeated my story to the loving husband. He started to get defensive when I mentioned that Andrew didn't have both shoes in the bin and went on to tell me that he did put the shoes away. I calmly assured him that there was more to my story and reminded him that there was no e-mail sent and I finished telling my tale. After I got done, the loving husband just rolled his eyes and laughed at me.
Yes, this is why I make it a point never to send e-mail when I'm in a grouchy mood. I also need to remind myself to actually look at what it is I'm doing....even if I am half-asleep.
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