Megow Mornings!

Originally posted March 8, 2016

“Don’t pour your milk in the bearded dragon water bowl” 

“You cannot wear bedroom slippers to school” 

“Ok, who just cut their hair and hid it under the table?”

The other morning, I found myself saying each of those quotes consecutively while trying to get my kids in the car for school. I stopped and just thought I should share a little about our mornings with the world.

Titus is almost always the first awake and secretly searching the house for some type of sugar. If he can’t find sugar, he usually is just eating something freaking weird in the mornings when I wake up. I swear the other morning, I woke up to find him quietly sitting on the couch in his underwear eating cold black eyed peas on of a can. He’s always so excited when I wake up. He is always busting with ideas in the morning and greets me every morning with the hugest smile :D He always hints at our morning song… “Dad, Its…. Going…. To…. Be…. A…. Great…. Day…. Today….” He loves when we sing it.

Now it’s not sunshine and rainbows in the Megow house every morning. Some of better than others. One a good day, I typically have clothes picked out and the kids bathed the night before. Those are the good, fun mornings. However, sometimes there’s the other kind of day. Let’s go into one of those mornings. This is kind of an overview experience of what a typical “non prepped” morning would look like. (i.e. what happened this Monday morning, haha)

...The alarm beeps at 6:30. I roll out of bed and trip over a child that decided my floor without any covers or a pillow would be more comfortable than an actual mattress with bedding. I lift up the toilet seat to pee to find that Olive pooped on it and it’s on my hand. While washing my hands in the sink, I realize that the kids used all of my sink soap to make bubbles in the tub. So I use some shampoo to wash the poop off of my hand while yelling to wake everyone up (besides Titus) who is currently running around the house in his whitey tighties yelling something about how he has changed his name to “Jaden”. I yell again (over Jaden) for everyone to get dressed and brush their hair, while I jump in a quick shower. So I make out to the living room to see the kids all sitting around still in their underwear fighting over who gets to play with the half inflated pink balloon they found lodged between the couch cushions. I just stare at them. “Guys! Come on! We gotta get ready!” 

This balloon has been in our house I believe since January 

Olive is the youngest and “least morning person” so I have to pick her out an outfit. I hand her some underwear, some leggings, and a Minnie mouse shirt. I send her to go get dressed while I look for my glasses from the night before, so I can see what kind of crazy outfits they kids have put themselves in. I find my glasses and the kids line up for inspection. Literally every hectic morning , I always have them line up to see what needs to be changed about their outfit. Lately Titus has been going through this “button up dress shirt/sweatpants” phase. Sometimes I intervene, but other times I think his choice is too epic of a combination to prevent, so he gets approval. Stevie is next. This girl has her dad’s fashion sense. She always wants to wear what she wore the day before. She hates picking out clothes or dressing up in general. So almost every day, she’s wearing what she wore the day before. I tell her to change. She stomps off to her room to find something. Neela is next. She’s always my mystery dresser. You never really know, but lately, she’s been doing pretty well. (Pretty much this means her clothes fit.) Today she dressed herself in a red Christmas shirt that said “Dashing through the snow” with a reindeer on it with purple leggings with pink hearts. There was no mud on the pants or spaghettio stains on the holiday themed shirt, so she passed inspection and ran to do her morning duty of caring for her pets.

By this time, I notice that Olive is crying from her bedroom. I run in to find her literally with her waist and both of her legs stuffed into one leg hole of her panties. She also has managed to make the leggings some sort of shirt with her arm and the top of her head both stuck in one of the pants legs. She’s just standing there with her arms stuck in the pants and fixed in an upright position with her forehead and her legs and upper thighs bunched together My favorite part about this scenario the top of her head was stuck within the waist band. All of the skin on her face was being stretched and held back by the elastic. Her eyelids were pulled back and unable to blink. 

I didn’t have my phone to take a picture, but this is pretty much what her face looked like. 

The moment I walk into the room, she stops crying and we just kind of stare at each other in amazement. Well, I stare at her and trying not to laugh, while she unfortunately has no choice but to stare back because her eyes are pryed open from the leggings and she literally cannot move because she is stuck standing in a crucifixion pose due to the nature of which she dressed herself. HAHAHAHA. I get her fixed and ask where her Minnie Mouse shirt is. Good luck with asking Olive any sort of question. So we run back to the clean clothes pile to find her a different shirt.

By now it strikes me that it’s Monday morning and I forgot to go over Friday folders. So I’m kind of digging through the clothes pile, while trying to hop into some work pants, and yelling to Stevie that she can’t wear one of my old t-shirts to school. I silently pray to God the kids haven’t used their school bags to collect mud and tadpoles over the weekend and ask them to set out their folders on the counter, while I finish getting dressed and Olive dressed.

Stevie comes out of her room with an “acceptable” outfit. Praise God, the kids all find their Friday folders. However, I go to sign Titus’s little weekly sheet but it’s gone. “Where’s your sheet buddy?” I ask. He responds calmly, “I drew monsters on it and gave it to my friend yesterday.” So I sign two of my three kids’ folders and look at see that they are all dressed. I tell everyone to go brush their teeth while I find a shirt to wear to work. While browsing through the clothes pile, I find a shirt that I think will match my pants (I’m colorblind) and hear my kids screaming in the bathroom. I scream over them to “get those teeth brushed or I’m coming in there!” I get my shirt ironed and on.

I look at the clock. We have to leave the house in five minutes. So I grab little Ziploc bags and hand them to Stevie and Neela and ask them to start pouring some cereal in bags for people to eat on the way to school. I start pouring some milk for people to drink real quick before we run out of the door, only to find a small pile of blonde hair hidden underneath the table. I do a brief scan of everyone’s head to find that Titus had invented a new hair style.

We call it “the ringworm” 

Meanwhile Neela has gotten out the art bag and is painting a picture at the table. I try to quickly clean it up without making a huge mess and getting paint all over Neela and her clothes. To my surprise, I dripped some paint on my shirt and had pink spots on my chest the entire day at work.

Mr. Mom Professional Dress 

Everyone is given shoes and socks, hair is brushed, ponytails are created, and we all dash into the car. I’m in the dropoff line and the kids are just talking about random stuff amongst themselves when I hear my favorite quote of the morning.

Neela: I can’t wait to be a mommy. I think I’m going to be a mom really soon.
Stevie: Well Neela, you can’t just be a mommy.
Neela: Why not?
Stevie: You need a credit card first.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
Seth