The Day the Babies Crawled Away

Subtitled: The Day I Should Have Just Bought Myself a Latte Instead of Saving $4 by Bringing My Own Coffee

Today was art day.  A local art alliance has been offering free art classes for the KP Homeschoolers this year.  Fiona and Genevieve have really loved going.  I spend their class time wrangling little ones in our tiny children's section of the library. The children's section isn't any bigger than my living room and the whole library is smaller than my house.  When we are at the library, all the patrons know.

As the subtitle suggests, I left a little late because I decided to make a quick cup of coffee to bring with me instead of driving over to the latte stand after dropping the girls off.  I feel ripped off when I spend $4 on coffee.  Buuuuuut..... our pothole-y driveway plus an open beverage cup equals coffee splashed all over my cream-colored capris.  Nice.  It looked like a baby pooped on me, but I was late enough.  No one would care if I showed up to the library with six kids and coffee stained pants.  Everyone would understand.

The girls went to their class and I went to the children's section with Daniel, Lula, Heidi, and Jason.  Daniel and Lula each made a beeline straight to two of the four computers to play games.  Heidi ripped a pair of headphones out of a third computer and walked around pretending she was listening to something and grinning at me when I frowned.  But I was stuck with Jason, who couldn't be distracted with blocks when he could do this:

The title of the black books says it all

I took the picture above and quickly posted it to Facebook after picking up the books. I went to show the librarian because the title of the book was just too funny.  This is when the story turns bad.  This is when Heidi starts walking around whispering "ouch" and holding her bum.  I ask, "Heidi, do you have to go potty?" No.  We color a picture together.  She says ouch again and reaches back.  I ask her again if she has to go potty and again she says no.  I could have dragged her to the bathroom, but I couldn't just leave the other kids yet I couldn't bring them all without making a huge scene either...

(Did you know that Heidi is scared of the sound of bathroom fans? And did you know that the library's bathroom has a very loud fan that turns on with the light? And did you also know that the last few times we've used the bathroom at the library, Heidi screamed at the top of her lungs while sitting on the toilet and everyone could hear her all through the entire library?)

Jason starts crawling away again, so I follow him around making sure he can't pull more books off the shelves.  I see Heidi heading over to Lula's computer holding her backside again, so I decide to check and see if she had a scratch or something on her back that was causing her to say ouch.  Because she usually doesn't say ouch about anything.  Never if she has to go potty.  She just tells everyone she has to go potty.  But instead of seeing anything, I smelled something. Something awful.

So, to make a gross story short, the whole library could hear Heidi screaming in the bathroom as I cleaned her up with wet paper towels.  She screamed while I washed her purple boots.  She screamed when I washed her feet.  She screamed when I wrapped her undies in paper towels and threw them in the garbage. And as soon as I turned off the light in the bathroom, she stopped screaming.  Darn fan.

If I would have just left on time, dropped the girls off, and bought myself a latte to drink in the van in the parking lot, I could have had a different afternoon. Next time.