Kiddo #1 crouches to the ground beside me. Our fingertips and tippy toes touch the carpet while our butts are high in the air. Kiddo #2 aims the My Little Pony high in the sky (we don't allow guns in our house) and squeals a sound that we take for "Bang!" and the race is on!
We leap over her baby gate. I crash the top of my foot into the top part of the gate, which normally would have me cursing and yelling, but we're in the middle of this race, I suck it up and move on.
We run down the long hallway from her bedroom, and around the corner into my bathroom and begin brushing our teeth with vigor. She, with fewer teeth of course, finishes first, rips off her Tinkerbell PJs and sprints to the kitchen.
I, in full competition mode, spit out the last of my toothpaste and thunder after her. I'm in luck! The Nutragrain bars I set out for each of us have her flummoxed-- I rip off my wrapper like a groom on his wedding night and set to inhaling my breakfast as quickly as possible. While mashing the raspberry bar into my mouth in a gigantic bite and a half, I glance over to my 4 year-old who has now smashed her still-in-the-packet bar to bits. She's half panicked and is whining for me to help her. I take pity and open a new one; I toss it to her as I run to my bedroom where I now have to pour myself into Spanx.
(You caught me, I put the Nutragrain bars out knowing she'd have trouble with the wrapper-- I knew it would buy me some time to get my extra layer of clothing on. Freakin' Spanx. When I was a kid, I bought push up bras to make my boobs look huge, now that I have huge boobs, I need some industrial wrapper for the rest of me so you can tell where they are.)
But why are we racing? Ah yes. I got caught up in the heat of the moment.
You see, next Saturday, 9 short days from today, my entire family is going to be in Husband's only sister's wedding. I'm the Diva of Honour (Matron just sounded too old and ... matronly, so I upgraded), Husband is a groomsman, Kiddo #1 is the flower girl and Kiddo #2 is the ring bearer. This means that all four of us are going to have to be dressed, beautiful and full of food by 9am so that we can spend the rest of Saturday going in opposite directions, all at the same time, where we reconvene at the church for the ceremony at 3:30. I need to teach Kiddo #1 how to walk down the aisle in her long, Cinderella gown, and I can't do that until I know we can be out the door by 9am. Hence the race.
The track is pretty simple: start in her bed, hurdle the baby gate in her door, run down the hall to the kitchen, slam a Nutragrain bar, run to my bathroom, brush teeth, wash face (although this is a step we keep forgetting, so I'm packing some baby wipes in the suitcase just in case), ram on the easy clothes (the ones you can take off without mussing hair or make-up), flip flops and be standing at the door with suitcase rolling beside you in 5 minutes. I figure, if we can do it in 5 minutes, then when we add those crazy things that happen when you're rushing (like power outages that screw with alarm clocks, or a dog that pukes on my wedding shoes or whatever) we'll be able to get out in 45, which is how long it seems to take me to get out of the house on a normal day.
Ta da! Method, meet my good friend, Madness.
We meet at the finish line and I look at the stop watch. 14:37. This is not good. Very not good. If my estimations are correct, that means it will actually take us 1.5 hours to get out the door. Not good at all. And, now that I think about it, how does this work with Kiddo #2? He's been busy chewing on the My Little Pony and banging/crawling around -- the kid isn't anywhere close to dressed. Or washed. Or fed. Frickty frick frick.
Kiddo #1 is also not looking great. She's got a crazed look in her eye (although she might be squinty because she has rubbed some of the bar into her eyebrow where it's now snowing crust into her eyelashes). Her dress is on backwards, kinda? Um, I think she's punched a new arm hole in the front of the dress in her panic to just get the dang thing on.
There's a lot of me in her, you know.
And, let's not forget about me. Looking in the mirror, it seems I have my Spanx on, although, I didn't take enough time to pull it up to my bra. My legs are bringing Sexy back, while the rest of me is muffin-ing out the top like so much ice cream. Dear Lord. And my yoga pants are doing nothing to help me out. Dear Lord, and Lulu Lemon.
Kiddo #1 and I look at each other with pity, and then we bust up laughing. "Momma, this isn't working. (pause) I know! Let's go to the hair salon in our PJs and just get breakfast sandwiches on the way."
Out of the mouths of babes. Done.
Now to teach Kiddo #1 how to run and walk in a long, flowing, princess dress and to get Kiddo #2 to walk or crawl down the aisle to a precise location.
...
After a dozen rounds of Musical Chairs, with the two of us in our dresses and Kiddo #2 in his ring bearer vest, bow tie and white pants, it's clear we're both able to sashay in gowns. It's also clear that I need to make another pair of white pants for Kiddo #2-- he's crawling, inside, on my (recently cleaned) carpets and has rendered them less than pristine, and we're going to be all over the in and out of doors for wedding pictures.
But, the truest test of Kiddo #1's mobility in a princess dress came later that afternoon, when some kid showed up selling weekend newspaper subscriptions. I had Kiddo #1 run that kid off our property. She did it, beautifully, without so much as stepping on a seam. The only thing, is she lost one of her shoes. But that actually makes me excited; the pumpkins we're growing in the backyard should be carriage-sized by October, and we all know how everything worked out for that other girl who lost her shoe while running in a princess gown.
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