Another challenging morning

I got enough responses to my 'alarming morning' post that I thought I would share my other recent challenging morning.

The first thing to know is that I have a cross-dressing two-year old. He only puts on boys clothes if he's going out. His preferred outfits are his sister's pink floral dresses. He wears her shoes everywhere and he loves playing with Barbies.

Sunday mornings I am on my own. Andrew is normally already at church by the time the kids are awake and its up to me to get everyone dressed, fed, groomed and out the door for the 9:30 service.

On this particular morning, the two year old who had been dressed correctly, found the pink floral dress about five minutes before we had to leave. He undressed completely and put it on.

I was in a rush and he wasn't going to take off the 'pink', so I put him in the car with the intention to dress him once we got to church before he got out of the car.

We arrived to find no spots in the concreted car park, so had to park under the trees. But it had been raining and the dirt had turned to MUD. I opened the door and started to dress the little boy. So far so good, but then something happened that never ever ever happens: my five year old got out of the car by himself. Normally this would be a great achievement. The only problem was that he slid his feet (no shoes) straight down into the MUD.

So I had a half-dressed toddler squirming to get out, a five year old screaming with muddy feet. The complicating factor in all this was the new cream upholstery in our brand new car.

Somehow I managed to wipe feet, keep seats clean, dress a kid, put on shoes and get both of them out and into the church building so that I could head to the kitchen and prepare the morning tea I also had to carry in with me.

However, I made a fatal mistake.

The toddler wanted that pink dress so much that I let him carry it inside with him. While I was busy in the kitchen, he went to the creche, took off all his clothes and put the pink dress on again.

The next thing I knew was my son was running through the church hall dressed in a pink floral dress with a huge grin on his face. I swiped him up and plonked him back in the car, whipped the dress off and got rid of it. He started to tantrum and refused his clothes. I had to leave him naked in the car while I went back to get the five year old who can't cope without me at church.

In the end, it was a matter of waiting out the tantrum. You can normally time his episodes to about 25-30 minutes. Once he'd cried it out, he was happy to get dressed in his shorts and head into church.

Amazingly, I was laughing. It was an amusing morning! And you can see a picture of the dreaded pink dress in the photo of our cubby house two posts below!