The Curious Caves: A Day in The Life

Somewhere in the last week or two we seem to have shifted into feeling a little settled. I can't really pinpoint when it happened, or what is different, but the boys are doing really well and I seem to be getting the hang of our new routine. So I thought today I would regale you with the tale of our morning. Which, of course, requires some backstory, so here we go.

On Saturday, Little Brother fell with his face on a toy. As the toy was being introduced to his face it busted his bottom lip and cut his upper gum. Fun times were had by all over the next few hours as we spent part of our Saturday at the ER. We were given a phone number and told to call the dentist on Monday to schedule a follow up appointment. Which I did.

On Monday, I scheduled a dentist appointment for Little Brother at 8am on Wednesday. "Great," I thought. "We can do it early and still get him to Mother's Day Out reasonably close to 9am." I was told to call insurance before we arrived to get this new dentist's name on our account. Which I did not do.

Thus began my morning. At approximately 7:24am I made my first call to the insurance company when I realized I hadn't followed instructions. The card definitely says 24hrs/day, so you can imagine my surprise when I said all the right words to the computer and pushed all the right numbers to navigate my call to the right person only to hear a recorded message tell me I had not called during office hours. I still had 36 minutes before they could help me. I also had 36 minutes until I needed to check in at the dentist with a confirmation number from insurance and my boys might have still been in their jammers. Great.

So now I'm the lady in the waiting room with the huge double stroller (because it's just easier when they are contained) who doesn't have a confirmation number yet and isn't answering the gentleman at the front desk when he calls my son's name because I'm on the phone with insurance. Yeah, that's me. Oh, and then there's barely any service in the office and my phone is about to die so I'm wandering the room for pockets of service while trying to push the right numbers to navigate my call and then asking the nice lady to repeat my confirmation number because I only heard the first three numbers and the last two. Ok, got it.

After that, things went well with the dentist. They have all these cool vintage video games and toys, so the boys were totally happy, until Little Brother needed an x-ray. I had to sit with him in the chair, hold him down and let them get a picture. Then he had to get in the big chair to let the dentist check out his gum. Thankfully, we got good reports all around, he was just mad because we held him down. I would be too.

Now it's time to leave. Both boys are screaming as I put them in the stroller because they have to leave the toy cars behind. We LOVE cars. But the dentist gave them each a balloon shaped like a sword. They made it from the office to the outside of the car. As I was putting bags in the car I heard the first pop. Little Brother decided to chew his sword and all that was left was the tiny curve of the handle. The next thing I know, he's grabbed Big Brother's balloon and Big Brother is screaming. Then came the second pop. Little Brother bites again! There was no refrigerator to hide behind and I wanted to laugh so bad, but I held it together for Big Brother.

Little Brother goes into the car. Big Brother goes into the car clinging on to the tiny handle left of his balloon. And my shirt is wet. Which means Big Brother's pants are wet. So, out comes Big Brother, stripped down to t-shirt and socks with diaper and pants on the ground beside. On goes a new diaper and (thankfully) the shorts that were in his backpack. Back goes Big Brother into the car, along with the wet pants and diaper in the floorboard, because parking lots don't have trash cans and why would I have anything to store a wet diaper in? Oh, wait. I'm the mom. Oops.

We made it to school and found a trash can. Big Brother dropped off the cookies he made for his teachers. And I'm still wearing the pee shirt. Oops again.

Never a dull moment. I so wish I could show you their sweet faces and beautiful smiles. I know they would brighten your day, just like they do for all the strangers we meet at the grocery store. They always tell everyone hi and I can literally see people's countenance change because of the kindness of our kiddos. It's a great reminder to me that we have lots of joy to share with the world.