Cloth Diapers, #FlatsChallenge, Potty Training, Shari Criso, and a hand washing meltdown!

So here is my stream of thoughts inside my head for the night because it’s 11:20pm and I’m exhausted!  Today started out just like any other day…

I drop the kids off at school in the morning and come home to work.  I was actually quite productive today and attended to a ton of projects on my plate.  I had decided to meet some of my girlfriends for dinner tonight with the kids to get a much needed mommy break.  Daddies hours this week haven’t been very favorable so some mommy time was needed.

Picked up my son and then my daughter and we were off to dinner.  Except when I picked up the littlest angel she was wearing school clothes and someone else’s shoes because we had a horrible day of potty training.  I left her with 3 changes of clothes, 3 pairs of panties, and 3 diapers – she went through all of the clothes and panties and one diaper.

The first thing I noticed was the pad folded flat was sticking out from the back of the flip cover.  I guess the teachers are just that (fill in the blanks) that they didn’t realize or think there was a problem with this.  Her regular teacher wasn’t there so I’m not really sure what happened to make today such a failure.  To top it all off they again neglected to take my advice on storing her dirties.  I wish I had taken a picture of it to show you because I continue to be disgusted – they put each outfit into a plastic grocery bag (times 3 outfits mind you) and then they tie them nicely together on her lunch bag!  Why does this bother me?

Do you store your pee/pooped on garments anywhere near your LUNCH bag?  You know that place you store food!!!

I’ve mentioned this several times to them and I always leave a wet bag.  It would be more sanitary and easier to control if they just placed the soiled items in with the dirty diapers (IN THE WET BAG!).  They even have a special place for our wet bag (inside another trash can) so it would make logical sense to me that they should do the same with potty training accidents, right?  OK – off that rant because I have a feeling I’m talking to a brick wall at that place some days!

So my daughter is now in mismatched clothes and shoes and we’re going out to eat!  LOVELY!  Thankfully I had brought a change of clothes but no other shoes.

We go out to eat and only get to meet up with one of my friends because of some communication problems (a friends dead cell phone and mine left in the car) but it was very nice to catch up.  Days get busier as the kids start to grow up and go to school so our time together is becoming rare.  Unfortunately my children were acting like kids tonight and not like the well behaved saints that usually join me for dinner out.  They didn’t do anything wrong but I swear they both had to have eaten a pound of sugar before they left school.  Needless to say dinner was NOT that relaxing.

Rush home, rush to get the kids showered and in bed!  Feel like a terrible mom because once again we’re so rushed that I don’t get to do a project with my son that he’s been DYING for me to do this week.  Oh and did I mention, it’s 90 degrees inside my house?

As luck would have it our AC is not working.  I went to check the drain outside and it looked free and unclogged.  Back inside frantically trying to get my son to bed and get logged on for my guest appearance on My Baby Experts (more on that in a minute); I decided I should go out to the actual AC unit and see what’s going on (as if I have a clue what I’m looking at).  SHIT!  It looks like a giant ice cube in the bottom on the unit.  It looks like Mr. Freeze or Frozone had visited my house and sprayed it with ice.  This can NOT be a good sign.

It’s now 7:45pm and I am suppose to be logging on to Ustream and a conference call in number.  The show starts at 8pm and I don’t want to be late.  Still rushing my son off to bed – he’s not wanting to go to bed tonight because it’s 90 degrees in the house!  Crank up the fans and turn off the AC.  Oh and the dog decides to get all wound up and bark like a mad man.  While I’m logging on and saying hello to some old friends (The Feminist Breeder, Green and Clean Mom, phD in Parenting, and Baby Dickey) I find myself starting to calm down.  Finally the dog settles down and the boy is fast asleep just in time for the show to begin.

Since I wasn’t an active participant the entire show (8-10pm) I decided to multi-task.  I jumped onto Facebook and vented about the AC, I checked some emails, I did a little tweeting, and checked in on the work FB page.  Not 5 minutes after I posted about my AC the most amazing thing happened – our AC guy responded and said he’d be out in the AM!  Now that’s what I call customer service!  I had friended him after our last service because we had some interesting conversations about social media and cloth diapers.  Boy am I glad I did – he gave me some advice on what to do ‘right now’ to avoid a disaster and said he’d be by in the morning.

Back to the My Baby Experts show…over the weekend I was asked to be a guest panelist on Shari Criso’s weekly UStream show.  The topic was “How has the internet changed motherhood for you?”  Boy that’s a great topic and was I surprised to see the lineup of other bloggers –

Gina from The Feminist Breeder (met at BlogHer10)

Sommer from Green and Clean Mom (met at BlogHer10, again at Blissdom, and worked on a few projects with)

Annie from phD in Parenting (met at BlogHer10 and again at Blissdom), and

Emily from Baby Dickey who is the regular blogger for Shari’s show

I swear I felt so honored to be part of the lineup.  Two hours later and I’m exhausted and full of energy (kinda like a Twitter high) I realized I had bags of wet panties and diapers I HAD to attend to.  Any other day they probably would have been left until the morning but since I’m trying to stay true to the #flatschallenge I felt like I should go hand wash some diapers.

Now here I sit – my wash bucket is inside the AC closet catching dripping water and I was left washing diapers in the leaky tub.  Only one was a poop diaper (trainer actually) so I felt lucky for that.  My hands are now raw and dry from the wooden handle on the plunger.  Dry from the water and wringing the diapers out.  My back is sore from leaning over the tub and I’m exhausted!  I left the trainer soaking in a paste of Rockin’ Green Soap and I’ll attend to that in the morning.

Now I’ll log off and go to bed without editing and without adding links to this post because I’m just THAT tired!  After all I have to get up in the morning and do it all over again!  Thanks for listening and allowing me to get it all out of my head so hopefully I won’t lie awake all night tossing and turning…in the 90 degree house!