Incapacitated and Dominated;Being at the mercy of your children

This morning was a morning to end all mornings. I woke up, in our apartment in Virginia, where we are residing temporarily until we relocate from our home in the Midwest. The morning was progressing normally until the coffee machine, percolating my much needed fuel for the day, decided to explode. As I was texting my friend, back at home, having a great chit chat I heard a gurgle, followed by a distinct sputter, followed by a pop and a long hiss. I turned around, just in time to see my, much needed, life line turn into an eruption of Mt Saint Dunkin Donuts coffee…all over the pristine white cabinets in the corporate housing that my husband’s new company is paying for. So, in true “Mommy can do everything” mode without breaking a sweat, I turned quickly, discarded my phone ,mid text,ran for the laundry room and grabbed a towel to soak up the mess and avert any real damage. I was on it, little did I know that in my haste, I had pulled my back. All that animated mad dashing was not tolerated so well by my not yet fully awake body. To add insult to the back injury, the aforementioned towel that I used to throw on the floor to soak up the eruption, it was fully loaded with sand from our weekend beach trip. Amidst all the chaos that is unfolding, my 4 and 2 year old are eating breakfast and watching cartoons, looking over at me only briefly, as if to say ” That nutty Mommy, there she goes again.That crazy kid is always into something!” Not until midway through cleaning up the mess did I realize that I had pulled my back. While I was soaking up the mess, I was putting the shrapnel of the morning away. As I half heartily set my large, toffee flavored coffee creamer into the fridge ,atop something or other, it came tumbling back at me and crashing onto the floor, where it oozed its contents all over my newly cleaned floor. To be honest, it was more like it was hurled at me by some unforeseen, Mommy hating entity living within the confines of my refrigerator.Then, when I tried to clean that mess up, that is when my back began to spasm uncontrollably and I could not regain the upright position. As I inched across the kitchen floor, walking in a position that very closely resembled the evolution of man, whimpering and wincing in pain, I called to my eldest to come to my aid. “Bella, help Mommy!Please get another towel and soak up the creamer.” Her response,”Shua Momma,” I don’t know where or how she does it but sometimes she speaks with a distinct Brooklyn accent.What a little angel, I thought to myself. So, I make for the bed and lie down, and try to gently stretch the charlie horse that is in my lower back out, but it is refusing to cooperate. In tears, I roll myself out of bed, after all I am home alone with my 4 and 2 year old. I slowly make my way back to the scene of the crime, the girls are back to eating breakfast. I choke down 3 ibuprofen and realize , I am in a strange place and do not have access to my heating pad and my husband won’t be home for about 8 hours. Oh, the humanity! At this point, I realize I am so far beyond being up a creek without a paddle that I am more closely to being in the ocean without a life preserver.Up until this point, my girls were behaving pretty well. Then they finished breakfast and realized that I was incapacitated and could not effectively enforce any of my rules;like no running in the house, no writing on each other with marker, no eating snacks like Cheetos and cookies before lunch, no wearing your bathing suits around the house as clothing, no laying every DVD in the house out on the floor as you play hopscotch on them, no yelling every single sentence at the top of your lungs, or no washing your entire body down with the foaming hand soap if you can’t reach the faucet to rinse off. Yes, they realized I could do nothing and they did everything they wanted, and all I could do was watch and cry a little. I never thought coffee could leave me completely incapacitated and totally dominated and at the mercy of my children. Now that I do, I may have to give it up.That’s a pretty heafty price to pay for a little get up and go! I got no coffee but my morning sure got up and went… straight to hell real fast, taken there by my two ,otherwise, little angels. Lesson learned; apparently when Mommy’s back is away, there is hell to pay:)

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