My 9 Day Stint as a Single Mom

Day One

I wake up in the downstairs bedroom around 7:00 a.m.  We have a basketball tournament for Logan, the 9 year old at 10:30 in Albia, Iowa, which happens to be an hour away.  I've been instructed to be out the door by 8:30 at the latest.  I groggily take my pantsless self upstairs where Morgan, their Jack Russel Terrier meets me.  This is strange, I think.  Then I look at the love seat where I can hear 2 little voices speaking in muffled tones. Colton and Bryce, the 5 and 7 year old are already up and at 'em playing games on the Ipad.  I decide I should probably get in the shower and get this day going.  The boys convince me that they don't need to shower, so we start breakfast.  Bryce is struggling with a mean case of bedhead and I'm half tempted to wear my kitty shirt. I know it will embarrass Dawn more than it will the boys, so I'm saving it for next week. We seamlessly get ready for the tournament in record time.  We're in the garage by 8:22 a.m., which is when I realize I can't find my phone and Logan's ipod has mysteriously disappeared.  After 3 trips in and out of the house, I find my phone in my pocket and Logan's ipod on the counter. I've only looked in that exact place 3 times.

During our hour plus ride down to Albia, Logan asks no less than eight times how much further we have to go to get to the tournament.  He reads through the schedule thoroughly and then breaks down last weeks tournament at Dowling when the lights went out halfway through the day, just like at the Super Bowl, JUST. LIKE. IT.  Meanwhile, in another part of the school, a wrestling meet was also being interrupted by the power failure.  Logan adds that they decided to stop the meet where they were and started  putting the wrestling mats away through the gym that the basketball tournament was taking place.  Logan notes that it was all Chinese guys that were putting the mats away.  I ask him if the fact that they were Chinese had anything to do with the story.  Logan says no, and I use this opportunity for a lesson in racism. 

We arrive in Albia ahead of schedule.  I'm amazed, but decide not to pat myself on the back too much until we've at least made it to the end of the day.  I didn't realize I was supposed to wear purple, I'm definitely breaking suit with the the rest of the parents.  Also, I think we're sitting in the wrong area of the gym. Colton has taken at least 3 basketballs to the head, and the game hasn't even started yet.

They win the first game. The second and third games are in the High School on the other side of town, so we pack up and head to the other school. We take a seat in the bleachers with the other parents.  Colton and Bryce stay relatively entertained with I-devices...they pick on a couple of the other dads which is a welcome break because I clearly suck at rough housing.  Logan's team loses game two, but wins the third and last game pretty easily, he even scored 4 points. I say my goodbyes to the other parents and we load up the van and head for home.  I thought / hoped that the boys would zonk out on the way home. Turns out I was the only one that was even affected by the day out of the house.  They do this all the time, I'm the only one struggling.  We get home, do some stuff, fight over i-devices, have dinner, and then around 7:30 Traci and Dana show up to tell me about their first night without me. I come to the realization that married procreators must stick together, otherwise hearing of their single friends exploits would get really old and sad really fast.  Apparently I missed out on a party at my house...I've only been doing this for about 16 hours and already I'm homesick. Dana does a couple puzzles with Colton, and reads a book to Colton and Bryce.  Traci makes sure to tell the boys that their teeth will fall out if they don't brush well, so they obediently head to the bathroom to get their brush on.  The boys go to bed as they do every night without a hitch.  I think there may have been one or two instances of butt exposures that resulted in time outs, but otherwise everyone was reasonably well behaved...for what I can recall anyway.  I had some wine with the girls.  It was a perfect way to wind down after a long, fish out of water day.

Day 2...

Now, this day may be a little more difficult to read, for Dawn anyway.  We were up before 7:00 a.m. I should have gone to church, just to break up the day a little.  I'll know better for next week.  We put together a few more puzzles, had breakfast, etc, and I swear I looked at the clock thinking it had to be at least 11:30, and it read 9:05.  I knew it was going to be a long day.  Shortly after lunch I came up with a brilliant idea to make cupcakes.  Since you would have to be a miracle worker to come up with a flavor that all three agree on, I made plain white cupcakes, split the batter into thirds and colored one bowl blue and the other orange for Chicago Bears colors. Bryce even said they tasted like blue.  Whatever that means, I'll probably never know.

We ended up having to run into Indianola to get powdered sugar and cupcake liners. This was a perfect excuse to get out of jammies and brush our teeth.  Oops.  Just a little behind schedule today.  We checked out right behind Casey Blake, a local hero and pro baseball player that returned home.  Good looking dude. Kudos to Logan for pointing him out. Good thing we all brushed our teeth and didn't roll into Hy-Vee wearing spiderman jammies and kitty shirts.  If I had been at home in Des Moines and suddenly realized I needed cupcake wrappers, there's a pretty good chance I would have just put pants on with a coat, gambling that I wouldn't see anyone I know.  I'm guessing this may have been the first day that these boys have not showered since they were in the womb. This is a clean family....which is nice, because after watching a 5 year old dress himself, I'm pretty confident saying that I doubt there is any square inch of his bedroom floor that hasn't had his bare butt rubbed on it.  Put socks on, bare butt on the floor. Put pants on, bare butt on the floor.  So funny to figure out how their minds work.

My friend Kyle came over shortly after the Hy-Vee run to play games and become Logan's new best friend. He stayed for dinner to entertain me with adult conversation.  Seriously, how do single moms do it, on so many levels?!  This next statement is coming form a person that depending on when the first person calls me on a Sunday, may not even use her voice until well after noon.  It is wildly taxing to not be able to have an adult conversation for a day.  I was exhausted and ready for bed at 8:00 tonight.  Had Kyle not made it over, I may have gone to bed at 6:30, all of us.

Quote of the day (with a little context): Bryce and Colton had been 'playing' /picking on one another for what seemed like hours, it was probably 10 minutes of screaming, whining and yelling, but I couldn't take it any longer.  I dug down deep into the, 'stuff my mom said that drove me nuts' file, and pulled out this gem: 'If you're going to kill one another, do it downstairs!'  Nice work.  So proud of myself.  Bryce and Colton each got time outs today.  Bryce for smacking Colton's butt, I can't remember if it was a bare butt or not, but I remember knowing it was worth 5 minutes of solitude.  Colton had about 95 seconds of timeout because he just wouldn't stop screaming, and I didn't know how else to make it stop.  Every time they put Pandora on the damn TV the place turns into an all out rave.  You'd swear someone laced their grape juice with some Ecstasy and handed out glow sticks.  Bouncing off the walls singing to Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, or Will.I.Am...you never notice an inappropriate lyric until you hear a 5 year old sing some Ke$ha.

Also, last night we played the board game, Sorry.  Children don't know how to follow rules.  It was wildly frustrating to not go all 'Rules Nazi' on them as they skipped spaces, counted crazy and made up rules as they went.