Moments I Won't Miss

Yes, I will miss a lot of this stage of my kids' lives.  I know I will.  There are some moments, however, that I am pretty sure I will not be missing.

Moments like this one, for example:

Baby is covered with...yuck... from head to toe.  This is possibly related to the yuck that has upset the teenage boy because it is on his school chair and his hands, you know, during his online class.  Thanks for the visit, baby bro!

I wipe off what I can and start the bath, the one that now only runs as a shower.  It's lunch time, and tween girl is in the middle of a baking project for lunch that is really helpful but not exactly independent.  Let's recap the timeline so far:

Kids are hungry.
Food goes into the oven.
Cue the teen's yell with icky baby held out disgustedly before the oven-timer-tween-can't-set-by-herself is set.  (No timer=burned lunch, in case I forget to tell you that detail later.)

I run off to wash the babe and realize the towels are across the hall in the drier.  Off I go, baby instantly slips in the shower-to-be-bath and then comes to get me (head first out of the tub-with-no-water, I assume).  He slips and slides down the hall dripping blood from his face, water from the attempted shower, and...yuck...from everywhere else.  I run to get him but still have no towels.  I, um, have no towels as I may have mentioned,  so I can't wipe him off to see from where the blood does gush.  And he's still not clean, at all, but wants snuggled because he is hurt and is gushing blood.

I yell for tween girl to get me towels.  She brings me 100 of them.  The one I grab for baby instantly falls in the tub, getting water and who-know-what-else on it.  Good thing there are 99 more towels.

A too-big-washcloth (AKA a hand towel) helps to wipe away a face-full of blood.  I cringe to see if a tooth is missing, if he is somehow covered with deep gashes, if an ER trip is in our immediate future.  Whew!  No.  It's just a bloody nose, and it doesn't look crooked.  At this point, I decide that I will quickly scrub him clean as he screams so we don't have to start all over again.

I scrub.  I wrap in a towel.  The bleeding stops.  He's as happy as can be.

In rushes a boy from outside to inform me that a littler boy has discovered for the first time ever in the history of our family how to open the side gate, leading him to the front yard.  The van.  The street.  The wider world.  I rush out front carrying the naked baby in his swaddling towel.  I don't see anyone.  I look in the van.  No one.  I see the open gate.  I yell his name.  No one.  I rush into the house to grab shoes and tween girl as back up in the search.  I am ready to panic.  Did he really run away just like that?  Before my shoes are on and search instructions are yelled, little one is spotted at the back door, pants-less, as usual, but safe and still in the yard.  Whew, again!

Lunch is ready and blackened, but the dining room table is still covered in the project the rest of us were engrossed in before the incident began.  When I say covered, I do mean covered.  And it's a big table.  I make messy piles, trying to rescue the usable stuff from the water-that-will-be-spilled.  Water tastes extra good with blackened food, you know.

Lunch is served.  Crisis is over for the moment.  A beautiful morning turns into a crazy 10 minutes and turns right back into regular life.  Whew!  Regular life.  That's the stuff I'll miss.