A Sunday morning adventure

Sunday mornings are always an interesting rush as, unlike other mornings when those of us who leave do it one at a time, Sundays are the one day of the week when we all need to be out of the house at the same time. To complicate things slightly, Matt leads one of the adult Sunday School classes at our church, so it's kind of important to not only get there, but to be there on time.

We have quite a system, which involves one of us (whoever's turn it is to shower for the day) getting up early and making sure Grandma gets going on her bath. Once that's done the rest of the household is usually up and moving, and all of the diaper changing (four of them), and dressing (five need at least some, if not complete, help to dress themselves) and breakfasting happens. Mira, Reuben, and Grandma need their morning meds, and Mira's feed needs to be mixed for the day so she can have it running on the pump while we're at church.

Owen's job is to mix up the batter for our yeast-risen waffles that we have for lunch every Sunday (it sits on the counter to rise while we're gone), and then he usually bikes the three miles to church. Bobbi chooses to stay home on Sunday mornings, and some weeks we set out something she can do to help get a head start on Sunday supper (usually chili - she opens cans of beans and tomatoes and mixes them with the spices that she measures out - or sometimes just cutting up a pile of veggies for soup) while we're gone. Once we get to about 8:30 we start sending the kids who are dressed and ready out to the van with help from Leah who can get the ones who need help with shoes and seat belts get all set. Then Matt or I carries Krassi out, loads the diaper bags and carries those out, then we together lift Mira, who is hopefully by this time in her wheelchair, down the two steps into our "mudroom" (a basement stair landing about 10 square feet in area) and get her into the van while the other one of us checks to make sure that we have the right combinations of wheelchairs in the back.

Most mornings there's at least one child who needs a diaper change right as we're getting ready to leave, and today was no exception. On one of my trips out the door I heard Matt comment, "Well, here we are five minutes after we wanted to be leaving and I'm just starting a big dirty diaper change on Mira!" Which, of course, gives me a few moments to make sure that everyone's hair is really brushed, and no one has breakfast on their face anymore, and to give Reuben a dose of his seizure rescue med since the little drop seizures he'd been having every few minutes for the last hour or two just weren't stopping on their own. Matt sent a quick text to a friend of ours who is in our class asking him to get everyone started reading the section of John that we're in today since we won't be there right at nine. Finally we're set and ready and out the door for the short ride to church.

A few minutes later we're in the parking lot and unloading - also a relatively streamlined process. Leah grabs Owen's Bible which we bring for him so he doesn't need a backpack. Rinnah waits for Krassimir because she knows how to use the lift to get him to the basement classroom they attend together with Reuben. Leah gets Gloria out of her seat; Evania does her own, and Leah walks in with the two little girls and Reuben. We help Grandma climb down safely, and Daddy finishes getting Mira into her wheelchair, and in we go. On this particular morning, I dropped the two littlest girls off at their class and then walked Reuben down to his myself (usually he follows Rinnah and Krassi) because I wanted to talk with his teacher about the seizures. (We are so grateful for an older lady in our church who has volunteered every week for the last three years to serve as a para in the boys' class! Mrs. B has been their summer school para for a few years, too, and after meeting the boys, and recognizing that she went to our church, offered to give her Sunday mornings to the boys in the hour before the church service!! This has been such a wonderful help to us.)

I finally made it up to Matt's class and began braiding Mira's hair (something that didn't get done before we left! But because she always sits with us in our class, it works.) Once that was done, I sat down at my spot and finally noticed that Matt was still wearing his coat. A moment later, I realized why he was still wearing his coat. Peeking out from the zipper was nothing more than his old, white, undershirt! Recognize here, that we don't have very high standards for under clothing around here, so even saying "white" is a bit of an overstatement. And I know what nobody else knows is that not a single one of his undershirts doesn't have a hole...or four...or paint...or...something...somewhere on it. But that doesn't matter when it's under a real presentable shirt. Which it wasn't this morning!

So, not too bad. We were only a few minutes late. Everyone's faces and bottoms were clean, I'd had time to put braids in three of the girls' hair...we had just completely spaced on making sure Matt was fully and properly clothed. 😏 Oh well. There's always next week.