"...now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." *

We had a delay this morning, and I don’t mean the fact that none of us woke up till 9:30.

I wouldn’t know, having slept through it, but apparently at 6:30 this morning, it was snowing and blowing rather fiercely, causing public schools to call a two-hour delay.

Good thing. (And I sincerely mean that, a statement which would have been met with incredulous stares and raised eyebrows not twenty-four hours ago.)

A child perpetually aware of his physical limitations, Segundo ate a hearty dinner at Grandma’s last night, had two small cookies, and immediately crumpled into my arms sobbing, “I want to go home RIGHT NOW!” Don’t need to tell ME twice – I bundled him into the car, got him home, upstairs, changed into pjs, and teeth brushed in record time, and in bed ASLEEP by 6:50 pm. In which state he remained until 9:30 this morning.

Ah, if only the other two were that simple.

In the twenty minutes it took me to accomplish the above, Primo smashed the back of his head into his grandmother’s coffee table and H had to bundle him up and drive him to Children’s to get stitches. They were home in an astounding hour and a half, complete with three staples in his scalp, some sort of numbing gel all over his hair, and blood spattered on his hockey jersey. (Is there anything cooler to have all over your hockey jersey, I ask?) By the time I got him settled and in bed, it was close to 10:00, and then he asked me to stay with him till he fell asleep. My response to that one is usually, “No WAY,” but seeing as the poor kid had just been unbelievably stoic about his head wound, I complied. (Can I just tell you, confidentially, dear ‘netties, that every time someone called to reassure me that he was fine, I found myself inappropriately wanting to warble in a really bad British accent, “It’s only a flesh wound!” See, this is what happens when you let totally ill-suited people become parents of small children…)

During the hour and a half while Primo et al. were at the hospital, Uncle D drove Terzo home and deposited him, crying and stinky, into my arms. I got him ready for bed, read him a couple of books, and got him to sleep in record time, only to have him wake up sobbing and screaming for me at 4 am-ish. He was simultaneously dripping huge amounts of snot AND completely stuffed up, plus coughing up lungs. Like the Grinch, I got him a drink and sent him (back) to bed, where he alternately slept, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead, and whimpered “Mommy, Mommy, MommyMommyMommyMommyMommyMommy” until I thought my head would explode. He finally truly fell asleep about 5:30 or so and slept till 9:30.

When *I* finally awoke at around 9:30 myself, I had one thought:

I should have eaten more of that damn Good Luck Pretzel. That’ll learn me to be rude to my mother-in-law.

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* Mark Twain