One of those Mornings

Just in case you think you're the only one who has days like this:

While my oatmeal was cooking, I went out to water the garden. A large and possibly poisonous spider has taken up residence in the place I have to reach my hand in to turn the water on. On my way in from battling the spider, I discovered that Sam had pooped in his underwear. I turned off the oatmeal and took him upstairs and made him help clean his messy underwear, which made his scream, then bathed and dressed him. By this point Ellie was screaming continuously, so I went and picked her up and discovered that she had had one of the worst blow-outs I've ever seen. I bathed her and scrubbed out her clothes. Then I rocked her to sleep and left her on my bed. I went down and ate my oatmeal, cold, at 10 am. (I think I got up at 7:30?) Ellie woke up and wriggled clear over to where I had left some photos on my bed that I was going to put in an album. I was really excited about this little project. I heard Ellie noises so I went into my room and there was Ellie in the middle of all the photos, drooling on them and crumpling them in her hands. Just as I was getting the photos resorted, the doorbell rang. On my way to the front door I discovered that Sam had colored on my living room wall with permanent marker. Anyway, it was my friend Eve at the door because I had told her I would watch 3 of her 5 boys for a couple hours. She said, "the older two want to stay at your house too, can you keep all of them?" I just threw up my hands, "whatever!"

Actually, the 7 boys did pretty well together. There were only a few minor incidents. Then when Eve got back and we'd had lunch we all went swimming at the YMCA, where Eve used one of her membership guest passes to get us in. My kids loved the Y pool. So things didn't stay totally rotten all day.