Paid In Full

A couple of weekends ago Ian and I went away. Thankfully, the beautiful country we live in has beautiful little getaways very close to home. Romantic, huh? Well it was. Butttttt, let me tell you. Going away for a day and a half has its price. The piper was getting a wicked bonus from me.

Okay, Let’s walk through the scenario, shall we? The days leading up to our getaway. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Presenting the mind of this mother! I invite you in momentarily.’ –

‘Yay! We are going away! Gotta stay on top of the laundry this week. Okay, shopping list..shopping list…for the kids..for us to take with us…for my brother’s family..

*drift away for a second..’this is so awesome of them, we really need this. Oh wow, and she’s almost due.. awwww, a new baby, wait! Refocus!

Okay. List. Lists are good, they always help.

• Shop
• Cook for Ian and I
• Cook for them
• Change all linens
• Catch up laundry
• Clean
• Get twin easy foods
• Decide sleeping arrangements for kids
• Leave the kids medical cards, and B&B info
• Pack for us

• Brush Prince

* drifting again… ‘Oh wait, who has Bnei Akiva (Sabbath afternoon children’s activities)? I need to find out times. Ummmmm.. oh, also leave basic schedule for babies… I wonder if they have those snacks they like at the store. Alright start this stuff first, I can add as I remember.

Above is how I started my Sunday morning. I was thrilled because my housekeeper(who is basically my favorite person in the world) was coming to help me. I knew she’d help me kick start the week properly, thus making our upcoming getaway less stressful. Here I am, running around…picking up after the kids, feeding the twins, keeping the twins out of the toilet, changing the twins, folding three pieces of laundry, taking dog food out of the twins mouths, you get it. Amidst it all I get a phone call. I answer, it was a call from a previous client. I had done a photo shoot for her sons bar mitzvah a couple years prior. Her next son in line was up for his bar mitzvah and she was inquiring about my availability and pricing. I opened my sliding door to the backyard and sit down so I can focus on the task at hand. Mateo sits inside, in view, playing nicely (for a change). Ally waddles outside with me. She inspects the floor. I’m pretty used to dodging my eyes back and forth watching the children while I go about the day.

It’s like a Wimbledon game with a bunch of schizophrenics running around in this house normally so I must have put my guard down for a few too many seconds. There was only two out of the six home (there is school on Sundays in Israel), I could relax. Yeah? No.

Ally walks up to me with a little pebble she finds on the floor. “Thank you sweetie”; mind you I love the little treasures they bring me. Normally it’s a moldy cheerio, or dried up bug so imagine my excitement when she handed me a pebble. A moment goes by. Another pebble. And another. Then, somewhere between “that’s a gorgeous location” and “sure, that date is fine” my beautiful blue eyed baby walks up to me holding a teaspoon in her mouth that’s filled with some kind of white powder.

My phone call was ending right as she walked up to me. I scrunched my eyes to inspect what my child had just consumed. She spits out the spoon and vigorously rubs this powder in question all over her face. She looked like she spent a night partying in Vegas, and she was regretting it immediately. And then, light bulb! I knew what the powder was.

Now I’m sure a ridiculous amount of mothers know about this ongoing trend of slime. Kids LOVE it. They love to make it. They love to play with it. They love to watch other people on YouTube make it and then play with it! They love to leave a trail of it through my house and on my clean linens. I HATE slime. With a passion. I’ve banned it so many times that I can’t count. But somehow, it finds it’s way back in. The girls have figured out that if its stays outside in the backyard I won’t notice as much. Little did I know, but they left the borax (an ingredient used to make slime, kill ants and other uses) container open with a spoon sitting inside of it.

Ian was working from home for the day so I grab the baby and run upstairs with her. “Ummm, Ian… Ally just ate a spoonful of borax”. “Are you serious Ruth? Okaaaay, I’m calling poison control”. With that, we swoop up the twins and follow poison control’s instructions and head over to the local hospital. To be completely honest, I wasn’t overly concerned, she seemed to have spit most of it out. She seemed fine.

But since Ian and I don’t take chances with our children’s lives we figured better safe then sorry. Poor baby, they put a camera up her nose and down her throat to make sure she had no chemical burns, which she didn’t thank G-d. After hours of observation and clean blood work we finally left the hospital with a healthy, exhausted toddler. Thank GD.

The next days went by in a blur. Between “the list”, a burst water pipe in the house, a school meeting, cooking and cleaning for the weekend and also keeping my flock attended to, Thursday night arrived and I accomplished only a fraction of what I wanted to. I decided to let things go, and reassure myself that everything was as good as it was gonna get.

We ended up having a lovely, relaxing mini vacation. My brother and SIL took care of my kids (plus their two beauties) flawlessly. We came home Saturday night to a clean home, well fed, happy children. Not that I expected any different from my SIL and brother. Still a major shout out to them for giving us a well needed break.

Here’s the kicker, as they walk out the door my SIL mentions to me that Ally felt a bit warm. Sure enough, by Sunday morning, she had a full fledged flu that passed to all but one of my children over the next two weeks. That’s right, 102-105 degree ranging temperatures, vomiting, drooling, crying, coughing, up all night nasty flu’s. FML.

I foolishly thought that the week before the trip was the cost for our outing but I guess I was wrong. The piper only took that as the down payment.

Consider us paid in full now. Please.