In case you forgot, I have 3.5 kids.

Every now and then I feel the need to provide my future self an accurate description of real life as a pregnant mom of 3.  Some days are glorious.  And other days are full of Braxton hicks, marker on something that shouldn't be colored on, and lots of saying "Give each other space!" etc. 

Today was one of the bad days, though it wasn't supposed to be.  Today was an IKEA day.  I treasure these trips since we only allow ourselves to take them once a year because a) IKEA is almost 3 hours away and b) we could spend a lot of money there if we didn't have self-control.  I was excited to go, even though I'm 34 weeks along.  Here's a run down of what happened:


- Leave 12 minutes late.  Not bad.
- Pick up some Bojangles because that is our tradition for any multi-hour roadtrip since we take them so rarely.  Boberry biscuits and chicken biscuits.  The day is starting well.
- Take a new route to IKEA.  It's back roads and farmland 90% of the way.  In other words, free therapy.  There were only a few, "Are we getting close?" and "Sort of, we're only 2 1/2 hours away!" comments.
- Arrive at IKEA at the same time as my parents.  Score!
- Make the kids go to the bathroom as soon as we arrive.  They are deathly afraid of bathroom fans so we had to wait for a family bathroom to become available.  No biggie.
- We start our journey through the maze of furniture amazingness.  My heart issues kick in immediately.  I start losing my hearing and vision.  In the meantime, Lily and Skyler are really bummed that we didn't put them in the play land right away (we were waiting to do that later).
- I try to see how far I can go on my own two feet.  It's not far.  Maybe 15 feet at a time before I lose my hearing again?  Eventually my dad gets a wheelchair for me.  This fixes all of my whooziness. 
- Lily and Skyler continue to complain about not being in the cool play area.  We all convince them that we'll be eating lunch soon and as soon as we're done eating they'll get to go play.
- Eat lunch.  Make the kids visit the bathroom again.  Drop kids off.  Yes! 
- 10 minutes later my dad hears someone say over the intercom that "Heather Macbeth is needed at the play area."  My dad wheels me back at lightning speed.  They tell me that Skyler pooped in his pants.  "They have to be potty trained to come in here."  "He is potty trained."  "Well now we have to shut down the whole place."  I watch as a screaming Skyler and Lily come out of the play land.  I also watch as the line of parents who want to drop off their kids are turned away.  "Oh, so can we just drop them off later?"  "No, we're closed for the rest of the day." I'm embarrassed and extremely frustrated.  Because anyone who knows Skyler knows that when he's upset, the whole hemisphere knows about it.  I try to quiet him unsuccessfully.  Ben takes him to the car to get cleaned up and changed.
- We hurry and get our things out of the warehouse which takes some time since we lost our list of aisle and bin numbers.  While Ben and my parents are checking out, all 3 kids are whining and I'm still weak from my heart.  I am emotionally and physically drained.  We take our stuff outside in the 95 degree heat and I'm dying of thirst.  So we stop at a McDonalds to get water for everybody and to take one last potty break before the rest of the trip.  I take Lily in.  The automatic toilet flushes itself before she even gets on and she screams louder than I've ever heard her.  After 5 minutes of this, I give up on any hopes of her doing anything.  We leave.
- Lily sucks her thumb on our way home (we've been working hard on getting her to stop for the last couple of weeks) and lied about it.


I was ready to yell, "Bedtime!" as soon as we got home at 5:30, but I knew we would pay the price for that tomorrow morning. 

But almost immediately it was like the skies cleared (not literally.  It was pouring buckets) and I noticed our newly delivered rug waiting on the porch.  I was a little giddy.  Rugs are expensive.  But we were able to combine a sale and a coupon and get a pretty awesome deal on a rug that miraculously matches our house really well.  Pay no mind to the matchbox cars that are vrooming down the roads on our Moroccan Rug.

I'm feeling a little bit better now.  But here's my new problem.  Our rug is made of wool and comes from India.  As Ben put it, "Our house smells like a dairy farm."  Here's to hoping our guests don't think we're making our baby live in poopy diapers when in reality we just have a gorgeous rug that puts off that aroma.  Cheers!