I swear, my children have a contest going to see which one of them can make my head explode first.  Right now, I’m not certain who is winning.

They were out of school today (you know, because they haven’t had enough time off this year), but since I had to work, I was only with them from about 2:15pm to now.  We finally made it to bedtime, but not before they spent hours yelling at each other, tattling, fighting, and not listening to me.  Seriously.  It was a rough day.

Trying to put a more positive spin on our trying afternoon, I offered to take everyone out for ice cream after Alex’s dance class this evening.  When we got there, the drive-through line was really long, and the kids were beyond wound up in anticipation of said ice cream, which made for a very noisy wait (there was no way I was herding all three kids inside Dairy Queen…I’d rather contain the chaos in the car whenever I can).  By the time we pulled away, my nerves were shot.  So much so that I declared the ride home a “Mommy Time Out”, and said that I needed a couple of minutes of quiet.

“Mommy!  MOMmy!  MOMMY!”, was Andrew’s immediate response.

My first thought?  Are you freaking kidding me?  It’s been 12 seconds!!  My calm reply?  “Andrew, if you’re not on fire or dying at this very moment, please wait two minutes before you talk to me.”

“Mommy?  What’s dying?  What does that mean?  Why can’t I talk to you?  When are you going to eat your ice cream?  How many days until the Easter egg hunt?  Is Daddy going too?”

All I could do was shake my head.  Fastest Mommy Time Out ever.  EVER.

So now, as they get ready for bed, I will gather up my (mostly melted) ice cream and the book I just started, and go crawl into bed.  Tomorrow is a new day.  It may not be a quieter day, but it will indeed be a new one, full of opportunities to score points in their Make Mom’s Head Explode contest.