Puddle Jumpin’

Today, because that’s how my life works, it poured.

Now, I love the rain. I love to stare out the window at it while curled up under a soft blanket with a good book (and preferably my cute husband). I’ve even been known to prance about in it a la Gene Kelley from time to time.

What I don’t like about the rain is getting caught in it, unprepared or otherwise, when I have a full day of activities left to attend to. I just end up damp and miserable, with no desire at all to break into song.

As I was saying, it rained today. And if today had been a Monday, Wednesday or Friday I might have been able to stare happily out my window at the rain-soaked world while my feet stayed nice and dry under a polar fleece. If it had been the weekend, I might even have been able to share the moment with Alexander, before the boys came in and demanded our full and divided (from each other) attention. Alas, that’s not how my life works.

No, today was Thursday. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays I play Shuttle Mom all day, ferrying Lij back and forth from preschool and speech and spending a total of two hours in the car with the boys taking Daddy to and from work (ah, the joys of being a one-car family). So today, when the downpour hit, I was in the middle of loading the boys into our minivan. (And just so you know, the plea, “Would you please get into your seat quickly?! Mama’s getting soaked out here!” got no response.) We made it successfully and only somewhat soaked to Lij’s school, where the parking lot was of course packed. After circling for three laps, we finally caught a break and were able to park (I wasn’t even going to complain that it was the furthest corner of the parking lot from the school). I managed to extricate the kids from the car in relatively short order and we proceeded to dash (as only a third-trimester-pregnant woman carrying a toddler and dragging two preschoolers can) into the school.

Inside the school, wind-blown and wet, I breathed a sigh of relief. We’d made it. And we were only a few minutes late. It was then that Dylan said, in his sweet, slightly too high for a man child voice, “But Mommy, we forgot my shoe.” I looked down and sure enough, his left foot was shoeless, the sock and most of the pant leg dripping wet. I commenced to have a fruitless two minute interchange with him about where exactly his shoe had come off. (The crowds of parents gathered in the hall found this extremely amusing). While I was panicking about having to take all the kids back out into the rain on a shoe hunt (and I’d have to carry two of them this time around – now I was ready to complain about being parked in the furthest corner), a nice lady took pity on me and offered to watch my kids as I retraced our steps in the parking lot. And sure enough, I found the shoe. About five feet from our car. Dyl had walked the whole way to the school, through puddle and parking lot, shoeless - without saying a word.

All I could do was watch as three cars drove over the shoe before I could finally get to it and rescue it. But, with all the traffic in the parking lot today, I figure it actually had to have been run over no less than twelve times before I picked it up. Remarkably, it was undamaged.

So in the end, all was well. Lij made it to his class. We got Dyl’s shoe back. I used the hand dryer in the faculty bathroom to dry Dyl’s sock (he and Cole were particularly tickled when it ballooned out like a windsock during the drying process). And the whole family found it pretty humorous that Dyl now owns a shoe that’s been run over at least a dozen times.

But next time, if you please, I’ll take my downpour with a steaming cup of hot chocolate and a good novel.