The Triad and Me

I played a fun game of Single Mom this weekend.
Bob went down to Phoenix to tile his brother's new house leaving me alone with The Triad.
I was expecting bloodshed, tears, horrific cartoonish violence, total exhaustion...and that was just the prediction for my own behavior.
In the end it turned out fine. We're all still alive and only moderately damaged.

The days were no problem since I'm totally used to being solo with the kids during the day. It's when the sun went down that I started to get crazy.
The first night was the worst. Every little noise I heard all night long was obviously a serial killer intent on eating my babies, right? It couldn't just be the cats running around in the plastic pool on the back porch. That would be too logical. Obviously, it was Hannibal Lecter.
Being a creative person, it doesn't take much for me to extrapolate the sound of a pine cone falling onto the roof into a murderous, bloodthirsty ManBearPig salivating outside our front door while he tries frantically to pick the lock to get in and devour us in our beds...because murderous creatures don't knock down doors, they are master cat burglars as well.

So yeah, that first night was the worst. I had all the kids with me in my room with the doors locked. Being tucked away like that only amplified every noise outside of our master suite cocoon. What I normally would have dismissed as a kitty jumping off the couch rapidly turned into four or five tweaked out criminals looking to steal my television and first born child and pawn them both for drug money.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morning and not one thing in my house was stolen and all the children were still alive and happily snoozing.

Sunday morning I bathed and dressed all the children (a process that took about an hour) and we ventured into town to Safeway for groceries. I Faux-by carried Benjamin while Dylan rode in the baby seat and Elizabeth walked alongside so there would be room for our groceries.
This trip went MUCH better than our first Safeway outing, mostly because I had TWO hands to steer the cart with! That rocked.
It was also refreshing to know that the Faux-by totally works.
The big kids didn't even melt down when I refused to get them doughnuts.
The baby DID start to freak out a bit toward the end of the trip. He howled through the checkout process but quieted down once I started pushing the cart out of the store. Naturally.
On our way out, Elizabeth bought herself a lottery scratcher from the ticket machine and actually won a dollar. She was impressed with herself.

I was surprised that we all didn't just end up eating PB&J for all our meals. I actually cooked dinners every night Bob was gone and we had actual nice lunches too. Granted, the first night I "cooked" a DiGiorno, but still!
Sunday night we had pork chops and broccoli, I even made a mushroom sauce for over the top of mine! Last night I made beef stir fry and rice.
Bob came home just after dinner last night and the kids were THRILLED!
The baby was sleeping and the big kids went out to water the garden with their daddy. Very sweet.

As hard as I thought the weekend was going to be it actually went very smoothly. I worked out every day, the house stayed clean, we all took baths or showers and brushed our teeth...everything held together pretty well. I watched "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" to remind myself that THREE kids wasn't soooo bad. It helped.

This weekend Bob is going back to finish the job but we are going with him and we're planning to go to the Phoenix Zoo on Saturday morning. At least, that's the plan right now, but it's only Tuesday and any number of things could happen between now and Friday night to change the schedule.

PS Gas prices over $4 a gallon....kill me now.