What have I learned this week one might ask? Well no one is humbler than me at the moment and I have not one, but all three of my children to thank for this character building experience. This has the potential to be a long post, but if there are other mother’s out there willing to share, girlfriends… I’m ALL EARS!

Let’s start in the order in which the events occurred shall we?

Friday is a snow day, and the buses are canceled. I thanked the heavens for allowing me a morning in which I need not hit the ground running for one day of the week. Everyone is in a state of, “YA! Let’s relax and enjoy”. So I take my time getting out of bed and starting on the laundry (which I do every morning before coming down). The kids are playing nicely and BOB FM radio is on. Jordy hears the number to call for requests and says to Daddy, “I’m going to request a song for Mommy!” Court says great and then leaves for work. So I come down, she tells me she did this and we start to listen. Then I hear the following:

So we have 11 year old Jordynn from Kanata on the line, what can we do for you Jordynn?

I was wanting to request a song for my mom to get her butt out of bed.

You’re mom’s not out of bed?

Well she probably is but she’s not downstairs so I thought I’d request “I Love Rock & Roll” for her to get her moving.

What are you going to do when she gets downstairs?

Probably help her with chores.

the song plays…

Well Jordynn, I hope that got your mom downstairs. So don’t you all wish you had a kid like Jordynn to help out with the chores? That’s great!

Jordynn’s intentions were very sweet, and she just wanted to see mom rock out in the morning with the kids, but now the rest of Kanata, the upper Ottawa Valley AND surrounding area probably have the vision that I woke up, shot up some heroine and narrowly avoided knocking the empty vodka bottles off my nightstand before greeting my kids good morning.

Yesterday Court and I were all excited about parent/teacher interviews with Quinn’s teachers. Oh! What nice things they’ll tell us, and we’ll walk out of that school with our chests puffed out and so proud. Well we did manage to salvage a small part of our pride at the end of the interview. Quinn is described as innocent, and follows direction very well, and is a very capable and contributing student. They are really pleased with him, but you can imagine my horror when I found this note in his backpack just hours BEFORE going to the interview.

“Dear Mom and Dad, Today Quinn was singing that he was going to hit himself in the bum and his “balls” outloud during snack. I spoke to the two boys about appropriate words at school. They both missed playtime. Can you please speak to him tonight about appropriate language at school. Mme Lisa “

We’ve discussed the term “balls” and he has no clue what other meaning it could possibly have. The teachers at the interview said that they know he doesn’t know what it means but the other boy sure does. Great. So, instead of educating him on the dual meaning, I just said, don’t use that word without the word “bouncy” in front of it. He seems cool with that and has no idea that he was ever in trouble in the first place. The whole experience was completely lost on him unfortunately.

Today… I decided that a little face time for just mom and the boys was in order. Off to Rockin’ Johnny’s for lunch and to the Dollarama afterwards. Oh, great fun! Each boy gets to pick something out if they are good and get a wee treat. Perfect. Well all went well, the boys were great, people smiled down at them as they shopped. People talked to them and just thought we were freakin’ fantastic until…..Cael pulled the fire alarm on the way out. Sigh. Now we are mud. What does one do? Make a friggin run for it that’s what! OR, you can take what I thought was the high road and publicly take responsibility for it saying very loudly and waving my one free arm, “I’M SO VERY SORRY, IT WAS MY SON! THERE IS NO FIRE! I’M SO VERY SORRY! NO FIRE, NOPE! SO SORRY!” As I looked around me and the deafening “TWEET TWEET!” was blaring, I could see all the cashiers rolling their eyes, and as people walked in they said, “What is that noise?” to which I replied, “I’m sorry, it was my son, it’s the alarm and there is NO fire.” As I did the walk of shame to the van, every single human I passed was talking about it. I can’t be certain that it doesn’t actually affect the whole building because I could hear it the whole way to the van. The manager of Rockin’ Johnny’s was standing outside, hands on hips and wincing. The people inside the restaurant appeared to have their hands on their ears.
SERENITY NOW! I’m surprisingly not as mortified as I thought I would be and I give the credit to my kids for my new found humility…