I laid the diaper on the floor between the stalls and, crouched down in front of the toilet balancing the baby on my lap while I removed my toddler’s diaper. Then I picked up the clean diaper. The now dripping clean diaper. What? Dripping? How? Then I saw the yellow puddle from an earlier child’s visit.

I needed a new diaper and someone to hold the baby, but there was no one else in the bathroom. No problem, my husband’s office was just  two doors down. I’d be back in a jiffy. I left my half-naked three-year-old with instructions to, “Wait here.”

I peeked through the crack of my husband’s office, but didn’t see him. Maybe he went to High Priests today. I speed walked down two hallways. No husband. Back up to primary. I handed my baby to one of the teachers and nearly ran back down the stairs, through another hallway, and out to the car for another diaper. Then back inside the church and down two more hallways while I prayed (literally) my diaperless three-year-old still waited.

Two doors down from the bathroom (where I had stopped to grab a roll of paper towels and bottle of disinfectant), I heard a sing-song voice echoing from the bathroom, “I’m all done  . . . I’m all done  . . .”

I don’t know why I fall into bed on Sunday nights.

(Thanks for sharing, Chas.)

I was also wearing this. Please notice the ample spit up staining front and center as well as across the shoulder. Though both the pants and shirt are blue, they don’t match.

And yes, I was also wearing these. I adore these boots. They don’t match velour, wide leg pants, but they are easy to put on and keep my feet dry and warm as I trudge from the house to the barn where I parked the suburban. Besides, I was only taking my oldest daughter to piano lessons and picking up two other children from piano lessons. No one would see me. *Insert evil laugh here*

To top it all off I put on this pair of gloves because I was running late and didn’t want to spend time searching for mates. Did I mention that I’d actually gotten in a shower that morning so my hair was clean and dry just not anything else like curled or straightened? Yep, I was pretty stylin’.

So out the door I ushered my oldest daughter and three little boys. We pulled up at the piano teacher’s house, dropped off one child and picked up two more. Then I decided I had time to run to Walmart and pick up the 8×10 prints for my children’s Reflections projects.

Inside the store with a crying, hungry  baby, an upset, tantrum throwing three-year-old and, three school-aged children I remembered what I was wearing. That’s okay, I’m sure we weren’t calling undue attention to ourselves and no one would notice.

In that moment I remembered another November day near Thanksgiving and a family member’s wedding. That day I was also in Walmart picking up enlarged photos for my children’s Reflections entries. However, that day my mother -in-law stopped by my house to drop off the ingredients for the green bean casserole I was making for the wedding breakfast the next day. She stopped by while I was at Walmart and saw every surface in my dining room and kitchen covered. Every surface. I’d been making two skirts with overlays, two velvet jackets, and a velvet baby boy outfit. The children had been working on a couple of Reflections projects EACH. And everybody still had to eat and do homework. A lot of living had been going on and very little cleaning.

On the way home from Walmart that day my three-year-old daughter sat in her car seat and threw up the Cheetos I’d bought on impulse as we left Walmart because it was one o’clock and the children were hungry. Then I hit a dog. With the car.

After seeing my house and then hearing about my ride home from Walmart (the throw-up, the dog–who turned out to be okay), my mother-in-law called to see how I was doing. While on the phone with her, I was moving a load of whites from the washer to the dryer. The load with the white shirts to go with my daughters’ skirts and jackets for the wedding the following day. In the middle of reassuring her that I was fine, I said, “AACCK! What in the world!? I just found a huge piece of manure in my laundry.” I pulled out a palm-sized piece of manure wrapped inside one of the white shirts. It happens sometimes on the farm. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I want to know how.

My mother-in-law laughed and said, “Are you writing all of this in your journal?”

And so dressed in my Motherwear with a baby carrier and fussing baby slung over one arm and pulling a yelling three-year-old with my free hand , I realized there are worse things than walking the runway of your own personal unfashion show in Walmart.

]]> http://www.katrinapalmer.com/2010/12/01/worse-things-than-an-un-fashion-show/feed/ 8 http://www.katrinapalmer.com/2010/10/18/more-cow-cow-anyone/ http://www.katrinapalmer.com/2010/10/18/more-cow-cow-anyone/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:38:03 +0000 Kate http://www.katrinapalmer.com/?p=2518 This boy loves chocolate milk. When he began speaking he called it cow-cow. Now our family all calls chocolate milk cow-cow. I’m sure you have similar words in your family. Please share them and help a friend of mine.

This is my amazing blog friend named Kimber. Her posts on Mental Maytag are always so refreshing and real. She’s a wife, a mom, a daycare provider, a writer, and a student.

A student. That’s what she needs help with right now. She’s working on a master’s project with the Applied Linguistics Program at her university. She needs 3,000 unique parent responses of words their children came up with when learning to speak. That’s a lot!

So please help her by clicking here and leaving your child’s special word(s) along with the translation(s)/correct word(s). If you prefer, there’s a tab at the top of her blog labeled Language Acquisition Study where you can print the form to fill out.

I know she’ll very much appreciate your responses! And it’s always fun to remember the crazy things your children said as toddlers. Now I’m off to dig through the basket of treasured papers where I’ve tossed papers with each of my children’s peculiar words.

The children were all finally in bed. I turned to Nate and asked, “Do you remember when we lived in Springville and you would come home from work? We’d eat dinner, I’d do the dishes, and we’d all go for a walk?”

He nodded.

I glanced at the clock showing 9 PM. “I’m still on the do the dishes part.”

The teacher went on to explain that this illustrated the need for balance in our lives and how we shouldn’t accept more than we can handle. I didn’t listen to a thing she said after that. I wanted to jump up and demonstrate how the volunteer girl could have accepted more if only she’d been willing to take a moment and reorder the books in her arms. It’s how I’ve always lived my life: shuffling my responsibilities and activities around until things run smoothly.

I shared this experience with my sister-in-law Hayley a few years ago. When my husband was called as bishop when our fifth child was four-weeks-old, Hayley told Nate, “Tell Katrina it’s time to restack the books.” And I did. And life continued.

However, these last seven and a half months I’ve felt like an iPod stuck on shuffle . The magic reordering remains illusive. Seventeen years later, I finally understand the object lesson. I had to put a few books down last night. Relief? Yes. Sadness? Yes. Peace? Yes.

Yesterday.

Today.

“Mom why are you trying to be fat?”

“It’s not fat, it’s the the baby,” I said.

“Uh-uh. I can see your back. It’s bent. You’re pushing your tummy out.”

Many are bemoaning the recent heavy snowfall. However, I’m grateful for the storm. We need several more just like it if we want water enough for our summer crops.

Perhaps we could all learn a lesson from my children who played until well past dark enjoying the new snow. Today as they donned coats and boots before school, they were discussing the improvements they will make to their tunnel system this afternoon. (Snowball throwers just happen to make great tunnel diggers with the side benefit of creating perfect snowballs.)

Enjoy the moment.