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Kid free zone

Today was the first day Michael took Eleanor and Amanda to school, and I stayed home with Luke, who was supposed to nap. My brother suggested I do something fun for myself, I ended up talking to my sister while cleaning the kitchen, which was pretty good. Of course, Luke only napped for about 30 minutes, so I didn't quite get a baby-free shower...

However, after school we went to the gym for some swimming. The pool was closed, but there was room in the infant day-care room for Luke, and room for the other kids too, so I had some kid-free time! I hardly knew what to do, so I went and "worked out" for 20 minutes. After wandering around for a while I found the hot tub and got in there for a few minutes. Ahh, if only I had had a book. =) So I did get some "me" time after all.

At this point Luke was getting fed up, Eleanor was turning into a zombie in front of the TV and Amanda was trying very hard to use the computer to draw a picture (the concept of clicking and dragging is not quite there yet). so we left. We were going to go straight home and make some hamburgers, instead of getting smoothies at the cafe, and I felt good about holding firm to my principles.

As we were about to leave, it got very dark, the rain started pouring down. If I had had more sleep last night, at this point I would have gone back to the cafe for some smoothies. However, still holding on to my principles (no umbrella or other rain protection for me and the kids) we got out to the car. It was like having buckets of water dumped on our heads, it was hard to breathe through all the water. Amanda was terrified, Luke was very sad, only Eleanor (wrapped up in a swimming towel) was enjoying it. I would have enjoyed it if I didn't have to deal with 2 screaming hungry children and one crabby hungry child, or if there were some part of me that had stayed dry. Of course, traffic was horrible because of the storm, a few minutes later the rain let up significantly, and the hamburgers were still frozen.

I asked my mother-in-law a while ago if you ever get enough experience so that you don't constantly making the wrong choices for yourself and your children. She didn't answer...
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