And bad mistakes...I've made a few...

I bought a poster-sized replica of this sign at Notre Dame when Todd and I drove cross-country in 2001.  He condoned my pilgrimage to the campus on our way back home.  I played the Rudy soundtrack in the car while we drove around, and I'm pretty sure that somewhere, I have a picture of me by the football stadium.  I hung the poster above my classroom door, and maybe three or four of my students got it, and would leap up to tag it on their way out.  Now that I have a house with stairs, I'm thinking of putting one on the high wall of our stairwell.  Let the following scene serve as one reason why.

Late this morning, I speed-shuffled through the parking lot while schlepping Rudy's overstuffed diaper bag, my overstuffed purse, and Marley's fairy wings to gymnastics class.  I was also carrying Rudy herself, howling in her infant car seat because she wanted a bottle at least twenty minutes earlier.  As I was reaching for Marley's hand, I noticed another mom running behind me with her daughter, carrying her younger son.  We laughed at each other, and then she yelled, "Don't you feel like such a moron?  Like, every day?"

Maybe not a moron, exactly.  But something.  Because I had felt like such a champ only two hours earlier.  Marley and Rudy were dressed (and Rudy was bathed!) without catastrophe before we left the house.  Plus, we were going to the doctor's for Marley's and Rudy's lab work after gymnastics, and I already had two pee samples cupped, bagged, and on ice in an insulated lunch bag plus I had remembered the actual lab slips, too.  (Marley and Rudy both have x-linked hypophosphatemic rickets, a genetic condition that requires them to take supplemental phosphorus and vitamin D throughout the day.  They get blood drawn and urine tested often, and I am experienced enough with a u-bag to ask for my own whenever we're at the doctor's so that I can stick it on to my daughter at home, leave her diaper looser than the pants of any G-Unit member, and watch her bum so intently that the moment pee starts dripping, I catch it before too much soaks into the diaper.  I can get Marley's pee from her potty now, but this morning, I was actually thrilled when Rudy peed on me.  She was resting on my chest during Matt Lauer's segment on Michelle Obama's People interview, and suddenly my tank top was wet, but that was the alarm that helped me to get at least a tablespoon of baby pee into its cup.)  Anyhow, a champ.

But we were still racing into the building late, partly because sometimes I am a moron, partly because Marley panicked when she realized her fleece vest had no superballs in its pockets before we left home, and partly because we had to close her car door three times  before it happened the way she wanted it to.  (Later today, she did the thing where she squeezes the "smushy thing" inside the car door nine times and chants, "One-two-three.  One-two-three.  One-two-three."  Uh, kids need routines, right?)  So, no longer a champ.

Could it help to bang my hand on a poster above the stairs before rinsing out Marley's potty or after getting Rudy to sleep in her crib?  I guess it couldn't hurt.  Unless I slipped on the stairs trying to reach it.