Do-over! Do-over!

So when a person, a couple reach that stage where they think having a family would be a good idea, I want to go back there. And I want to travel the non-children route.

I took the children to get their head gear and all that, and Tuck has been sick, so we propped him up in the back of the van and took him with us. Tim has homecomeing week and so I get stuck with all of them. Then Tuck throws up in the van...not something we expected since his symptoms were mainly fever and a cough. Then we ride in this nauteous smell all the way to Bend and back. After we get back home, India has to go to the dentist and get Six teeth pulled, and her front gum slit open to make room for her other big tooth to come in since it's about a year behind. That's five shots and the aftermath of "how can you let them do this to me, your daughter. The pain mother! And now I have no teeth! How could you let them?!. We walk to the van, her mouth filled with gauze, and after a long conversation I convince her that it's better to get those teeth pulled because they were rotting, and two of them were keeping a big front tooth from coming in. And really you couldn't see all those baby teeth because they were hidden under her lips, (that's if she didn't smile) and so she's not happy with me, but thinks socially she might survive, "even though they've already teased me about missing so many teeth." And I'm thinking she'll have to chew everything with her four back teeth for a while, and how that might be interesting, but not sharing that with her. Then we go inside, and Christian is impressed with how many shots she endured, but says, "you've got no teeth now." and I shoot him the evil mother glare, but it's done. And India starts crying in earnest, looking in the bathroom mirror, glad that the blood is oozing out of her mouth and enhancing the whole drama. I ask her to rinse out her mouth and we'll put in new gauze, but she refuses, and lets the blood drip down on the sink and her clothes, crying and slobbering.

Tuck is coughing like crazy in the living room, and I know Tim won't be home until 7p.m. Then Christian says India is faking it and being a baby- which she kind of is- but that's not what we need. So I send him away, and India shoves a towel to her mouth and heads off to her room.

I make dinner, catch up on laundry, and all the while the children are bickering about whether to watch Old Yeller or the new Star Wars DVD. India gives me the silent treatment. Tucker takes a bath, leaving a big puddle which our super watercat Sherbert, plays in and then walks through leaving paw prints all over the clean floor. And the dog's shocker won't work, and she's barking, and Christian, the hypochondriac, thinks there's something wrong with his braces, and wants me to check. I check, and i see braces. He says there's something "back there" kind of pinching on his lip. I offer him some wax, but he declines because it's a more general pain, not a wire kind of hurt. Finally, after everything settles down, and India grants me a truce, Tim comes home.

He's all chipper and somehow I lose my temper with him because he asked if I was going to wash the kids' cool new shirts they got from the orthodontist. I'm thinking, he just doesn't get it. And he's thinking very bad thoughts of me because we don't speak. And I leave to the nursing home, and it is such relief to be with little old ladies who bless me for folding their blankets and shutting their blinds, and who tell me I'm sweet to visit all the time. And I feel slighly guitly that I'm escaping the madhouse in guise of kindness to lonely old people. And my best moment of the day is in telling Robin how awful my day has been, with all the details, and she gets this big grin on her face, and then we slip away from reality into Scarlet O' Hara and the big ball with the hansome Ashley who is about to announce his engagement to Melanie Hamilton.