This morning was rough. It started at 5:00 am when my perky 6-year-old decided he had slept enough. But I’ll give him credit because he knew better than to wake me (even though I heard his footsteps and was already up). Merrily, he colored outside my door while singing Christmas carols for a whole hour. But I was okay with this. After all, he healthily amused himself, despite the earliness.
As most parents know, getting ready for school is a crap show (sometimes literally). Sure, we have our step-by-step routine down pat, but kids are kids, so there are still those days where no routine will save you.
Today was one of those days.
First, my 6-year-old couldn’t find his shoes because he had forgotten to place them in the shoe rack. This resulted in a frantic housewide search. Luckily, we found his kicks underneath the bed. “I scooted them under there after my bath last night,” he said with a quirky grin.
After finally finding his shoes, we were able to get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast, all that fun stuff, and book it out the door — somewhat on time.
But the highlight of this whole ordeal has to do with my son’s tiny minuscule robot, a gift from his robotics teacher. (Yes, I know, we are very lucky to have our son in K-Robotics.)
Let’s just say my son loved this little robot, resembling a green plastic cockroach that buzzed when you hit a switch. We even agreed he could bring it on our 35+ minute commute and then leave it in the car.
Here’s where the excitement kicks in. Two minutes into our drive, my son dropped that noisy robot in between the van seats. Naturally, he was upset and wanted me to stop the car.
Usually, I would keep on moving because our rule is if you drop something when I’m driving, it stays there. However, in this case, all I could hear was a loud buzzing sound echoing from in between my van seats. And, after a semi-stressful morning, I couldn’t take it. And neither could my sensory sensitive son.
So, I stopped the car and got out, trying to look for this buzzing robot. I looked and looked and couldn’t find it. I swear it was like the backseat ate it, and I know many of you parents out there relate to this ordeal.
Meanwhile, my three-year-old — still buckled in his car seat –wanted some attention, so decided to take his shoes and socks off then proceed to whine about I don’t even know what. At the same time, my 6-year-old was getting very frustrated because, as I said, he loved that darn plastic robot.
At this point, I knew my best move was to step outside of the car and tell my boys that I needed to take ten deep breaths. So, luckily before any curse words escaped my mouth, that’s what I did.
Let me tell you; we must have been a sight for sore eyes: A minivan pulled over in a retirement community, an open van door exposing a barefoot whining 3-year-old and a 6-year-old with his head under the back seat searching for a $2 robot. During this experience, all I kept thinking was, you can’t make this stuff up.
Anyhow, we never ended up finding that pesky robot, so for the next 30 minutes of our drive, we all listened to the constant buzz. I even tried to find it again after dropping my sons off, to no avail.
So I then drove the 25 minutes back, listening to the buzzing robot. But instead of freaking out, I decided to take action. I stopped to get the car washed and even cleared out and vacuumed the minivan. And even though I never found that damn robot, I will tell you this, I cleaned my car, and somewhere along the way, I either vacuumed that robot up or moved it in such a way where the buzzing stopped. In short, that’s a win-win in my book.
This all happened before 9:00 am. If you’re still with me, the point is that rough mornings happen.
And instead of getting super stressed and freaking out, I stepped aside to breathe. Additionally, instead of doing nothing about this buzzing robot that drove me nuts, I did something productive about it: I cleaned a car that really needed it. And in the process, I ended the buzzing.
In a nutshell, a lot of positives came out of today.
It started off as a chaotic haze, but we all survived. We all made it through. And even though we lost a cockroach robot my son adored, This crazy mishap resulted in me taking action and cleaning a very messy car as well as breathing during a time when it was not easy to breathe.
As Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor and creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic once so eloquently said,
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
As a parent living during a worldwide pandemic when thinking positively has become a conscious chore, I realize that I’ve started to “surf” more indeed.
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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The post Lost Shoes and Buzzing Robots All Before 9 Am (Getting Ready for School Can Be a Crap Show) appeared first on The Good Men Project.