At only twenty degrees, yesterday was a frightfully cold day in our local neck of the woods in Texas — so cold that the majority of schools either closed down or started late.  Nevertheless, my three older, half-crazed, half-dazed, superhero monkeys and I woke up early planning for a regular school day.  Little did I know what I was in for that morning.

Wayne, my seven-year-old, second grader, whined like a newborn baby without his bottle, the minute his eyes blinked open from me waking him up.  I had to sit with him on his bed threatening coaxing him to quiet down and get off his bed to get ready for school.  Of course, it didn’t help that Mother Nature decided to have a cold festival on the same day Wayne had his whine festival, making it more difficult for him to crawl out of his delectably warm bed.  After two hugs, three kisses, two threats to take away his Christmas toys and ground him until eternity, and two promises to buy him a new toy and a Burger King Junior Whopper, he finally calmed down and crept off the bed.

By now, we were running late, so I quickly dressed, skipped combing my hair and rushed to get the monkeys out the door with my hair looking like an old, overly-used mop.  As I held the front door open and hurried the kids along, I noticed Kal trying to sneak out the door with the same dirty clothes he had on from the day before.  Calling him by his first, middle, and last name, I demanded that he tell me why he was wearing the same grimy, muddy clothes that he had worn to the car shop the day before.  Stare and shrug was my answer, so I ordered him to change his clothes.

Five minutes later, he walked back out from his room, claiming that he had no other clothes to wear.  His pants no longer fit him or were too noticeably ripped to wear.  When did this short, bony boy become too big for his britches?  There was no way he could have grown that much, so I spent five more minutes rummaging through his muddled up pile of clothes on the floor, but to no avail as every pair of pants he owned were either high waters on him or looked like they had been thrown mistakenly into the paper shredder.  Whatever creative feats little boys do with their pants to make them look like that, I guess I will never know.  I tried asking my husband once and got this long, long explanation that went nowhere, so since then, I have tried to avoid asking.

However, Kal still had no pants. Lucky for him, his mom was a genius!  I rushed to my closet where I had bags of pre-pregnancy clothes from even before I had my oldest daughter, Autumn.  Despite my husband’s begging, I couldn’t bare throwing out perfectly good clothes that I knew I could fit into again one day with just a little more exercising (which will happen someday).  I practically tore the bags open as I dug through them until I spotted the smallest pair of boyish-looking, baggy jeans that I could find.  Although Kal fussed and sqealed, he finally put the pants on and somehow or another, they fit with just a little slack at the waist, which was nothing that a belt couldn’t fix (Yes, I used to be that tiny *sighs*). I guess my husband will now have to thank me for being such a genius and a pack rat.

Anyway, we were finally ready to head out the door with just fifteen minutes left before 8:00 (which was when school started)!  That’s when my daughter called from the living room, “Mom, school starts at ten today!  It was just on the news.”