poop and popcorn - 16 steps to sanity

so this afternoon was a doozy and here's how it all went down.

1. sophie and ellee wanted to run through the sprinkler.
2. against my better judgment (it was about 4:30pm at this point), i relented and allowed it.
3. in a desperate attempt to flee from the freezing sprinkler water, ellee raced toward me. in doing so, she missed a step on the deck and took a hard fall and scraped her elbow and knee.
4. i picked up my screaming middle child and tended to her wounds and tried to calm her down so that i could get dinner started.
5. with casey and sophie both wondering about the kitchen and ellee recovering on the couch, i began making dinner.
6. i successfully got three grilled cheese sandwiches going on the griddle and a pot of tomato soup heating on the stove. with that, ellee begins screaming again in an effort to alert me to the fact that she had pooped and pottied on the dining room floor. arg.
7. i strip her of her bathing suit, and raced to casey's bedroom knowing that the clock is ticking on dinner and that a nasty pile of 'elleeness' is steaming on the floor in the dining room. just as i grabbed a diaper and turned the corner to head back to the disaster zone, literally 3 second later, i heard a crash followed by a scream. double arg.
8. i run to the kitchen to find casey - laying on the floor, on his back, in the 'elleeness.' he had wandered into it, lost his footing, and fallen into the mess that ellee had delivered on the floor.
9. without thinking, i scoop him up and hug him close - yes, that's right. i hugged my poop covered baby close. after checking all limbs for broken bones, i begin to clean him up.
10. suddenly, a flash runs through my mind - grilled cheese! i put naked casey down to play with his two naked sisters (ellee naked from me stripping off her bathing suit, sophie naked when she realized an opportunity to join in the fun, casey naked from his poop fall).
11. i flip the semi-burned grilled cheese and strip the boiling tomato soup from the coil. quickly, i clean the table, i cut up the sandwiches, i bowl up the soup - all the while tuning out the fighting going on in the living room.
12. by 5:15pm all the children under my care were eating their favorite dinner and sipping their cups of milk. naked.
13. by 5:45 they had finished eating and the race to start movie night had begun. i was counting the minutes until mary poppins took charge of my children for the next hour while they were busy snuggling up with each other and staring longingly at the tv.
14. all moms can relate to the seemingly eternal minutes that it can take to actually get a movie going. in this case, the calm from dinner soon gave way to the storm of toddler fatigue. sophie demanded that i fast forward through the previews, casey was into the refrigerator, i knew i would have to eventually dress them again, my head felt hot and my heart was beating fast...i began to feel like i was losing the battle. suddenly...through the madness...i hear sophie's voice say to me sweetly 'mommy, are you going to make us 'cockporn'?' with that, everything that was bad and that was frustrating me to the point of break down disappeared in a gut shaking, can't breathe, tear-filled laugh.
15. i made the kids their popcorn and they peacefully let mary take them away.
16. deep breath. i made it.

for all those moments when things seem impossible, hold fast. God is faithful and he has a serious sense of humor.