Riveting

This time I was up at exactly 5:30am which afforded me an opportunity to bask in the luxury of a slowly evolving morning. I took my time in all phases of my morning prep. Once again the work day was all but a blur given the abundance of activity. I hardly had a chance to catch my breath. I did manage to check with Ashley around noon to see if she made it home form the hospital. Turns out she had just walked in the door. Home without incident. My run was completed around the normal time. It was drizzly-rainy for the entirety. I wasn’t phased by the weather, however. The afternoon flew by and soon I was on my merry way home. Tonight I would be arriving to an empty home. Mindy had parent teacher conferences that were expected to carry on until almost 9pm, and the kids were with their daddy. In reality, I only a little under 90 minutes of free time, though. I was expecting Jim to return the kids at 7pm. I made the most of it in any case. I begrudgingly folded the laundry on Mindy’s wish list, completed my usual after work chores, and then worked on my MP3 player that just went on the fritz today. The kids arrived home while I was playing guitar – at about 7:05pm. Things went swell for the first thirty minutes. I let them play and relax before readying them for bed. Jacob played computer games while Bella snuggled on my lap. From there it went downhill fast. After a wash cloth bath, getting them into their jammies was a bit of a challenge, but ultimately happened. Somewhere while I struggled with Bella to get her dressed for bed, Jacob snuck downstairs and called his momma on my cell phone. When I called for him to come upstairs to bed he refused. I went down and got him. He was in the midst of a full blown crying tantrum and proceeded to manifest one in Bella. Soon I had two small children hysterical for their momma. Jacob was only getting worse. I left his side to work on Bella. She wanted my attention. I was able to calm her rather easily (thankfully). Soon she was playing by the rules and all but asleep. Meanwhile, Jacob began ranting about wanting his mommy and daddy and refused to cooperate in any way shape or form. I tried using a calm, understanding approach but that and nothing else worked. I had no choice but to close his bedroom door due to the screaming. I was admittedly rattled! Mindy called around 8:45pm to let me know that she was on her way home. I let her know how rattled I was. We talked about it more when she got home. We went to bed around 10pm with game 7 of the NLCS tied at 1 to 1.