Well, you know it's a bad day when...you have to call Poison Control...!!
As most of those who are reading this probably know, we live in a tiny village of about 300-350 people in the middle of the flat prairie farmlands of Illinois. Yesterday our little village had its Founder's Day celebration/festival. I was really looking forward to a fun day for our family since the kids are all old enough to enjoy at least some of the activities now.
Well, Jeremy ended up having to go to work in the morning. Sylvia was really sluggish and tired, so we took out time getting around since Daddy wasn't home anyway. So, I was in the shower at 10:00 and all of the sudden I hear a patriotic song BLARING outside! Annah comes running in the bathroom, "Mommy! The band is outside!!" Apparently, they decided to have the parade earlier this year. We never received any schedule of events this year, as we have every year before, so I didn't know. I was really upset about this, because the kids were so looking forward to the parade. It goes right in front of our house, and I was in the shower as it was going by! Grrr! I told Annah I would hurry as quick as I could to get out of the shower, but she came back a few seconds later saying a lady from the parade was on the front porch trying to give them popsicles because she saw the kids watching out our front picture window. Gee, don't I feel like a great mom when I have to tell my kid she can't let the lady into our house to get the popsicles because I am not dressed! Arghhhhhh. I got dressed as quickly as possible and ran outside with the kids to catch the end of the parade. They got some candy thrown to them, so they were happy about that.
After the parade I finished getting ready, put sunscreen on all the kids and headed down to the festivities. We walked through the community center, but the kids didn't want to try the cakewalk or face painting or anything. I couldn't talk them into it no matter what I said.
Daddy finally caught up with us and we got Annah to go on a pony ride. She loves horses, so she was really excited about that and enjoyed it!
Then Annah decided she wanted to jump in the inflatable house thing, so we wait in line for half an hour. The girl who was supposed to be monitoring it wasn't, and kids kept going in in front of Annah until she finally decided she didn't want to go in.
We did meet some people who moved to town a couple months ago, who were super nice, so that was really cool. There were some good things about the day. But, once the kids were significantly exhausted, whiny, and hungry, we went back home.
Caeden had rubbed his sunscreen into his eyes, and by the time we got back to the house, he was miserable. His eyes were all red and he just kept rubbing and rubbing them. I started completely freaking out, and trying to flush his eyes with water. Jeremy and I got in a huge fight during the process about the sunscreen and the flushing and blaming and yelling...It was awful. Then, Annah starts weeping and wailing because she doesn't want Caeden to go blind. Oh my word! I'm on the phone calling Poison Control because Jeremy doesn't believe that we're supposed to flush Caeden's eyes for 10 minutes. Poison Control Guy tells me it should actually be for 30 minutes and takes Caeden's name and our zip code and tells me I need to call him back to let him know how Caeden's doing. (I'm thinking, "Are they going to turn me in to DCFS?!" "Is someone going to hear us yelling and think this is a case of domestic violence?!") Mass chaos!!
We got Caed's eyes flushed and put in some antibiotic drops like the guy told me to. He let me rock him to sleep (which he rarely does) and he was fine. I called back Poison Control and told him everything was fine. Whew!!!!!!!!!!
We (Okay, I) calmed down and we stayed home all afternoon instead of venturing back out to get all flustered again.
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Since Annah saw the movie Chicken Little she has been interested in baseball. So, I bought a bat and ball a few weeks ago and Daddy taught her how to hit! She picked it up pretty quickly, and was excited about it.
As far as the rest of Founder's Day...we went to the fireworks at night. That was really nice. We took popcorn with us and all snuggled together on a blanket on the ground. Caeden was so adorable watching the fireworks. He made big faces and said all kinds of cute stuff about them. It was a nice, calm ending to an otherwise crazy, wild, not-so-much fun day.
Ahhhhhhhhh...
