The past 2 weeks have been crazy…but nothing could have prepared me for the flood of chaos that came over the past few days.
Wednesday seemed like a normal day. The kids and I played in the morning, then lunch, and nap time. When they woke up around 3ish I knew I had 3 1/2 hours to fill before daddy came home. So I decided to go for a leisurely walk with them. Since I hadn’t anticipated for this to be a power-walking workout, I had on flip-flips and a tiny clip holding my hair in a loose bun, jeans and a dark t-shirt. About 4 blocks in to our walk I decided to go about another 4 blocks to the park. I get the kiddos out of the stroller, they go down the slide a few times….and the I get a phone call.
“Hi, Mrs. Sciba it’s your social worker. I am on my way to your house for the final home visit for Luke’s adoption.” WHHHAAATTT!!!! I didn’t know she was coming, or did I and forgot. Oh man what do I do? I must have sounded confused over the phone because she said, “You didn’t know I was coming?” I had to be honest, “No, ma’am. Let me call Matt and see if he is on his way home and I will call you right back.” I am loading the kids back into the stroller while trying to call Matt. Mary was NOT happy to only be at the park for such a short time! Since Matt just started a new job, I did not have his work number programmed in my phone and he wasn’t picking up his cell. I began running back to our house in shoes that were NOT made for running. I lost my favorite clip and my hair was swishing all in front of my face. I could feel my hair becoming 10 times heavier as it’s absorbing the sweat running down my neck. I was hot and exhausted and convinced that sweat stains were evident through my shirt. I needed to get home ASAP to look up Matt’s work online and pray I could reach him. I finally reach Matt and his VERY generous boss let’s him leave early. He gets home about 7 minutes before the social worker arrives. From the moment I got home to the time she showed up, I was frantically picking up my house (it was a complete disaster) and throwing anything and everything into my bedroom because I knew she wouldn’t look in there. Our house looked presentable, I was able to freshen up a bit and the visit went great!
As it turns out, Matt had responded to her request for a final visit the day after his grandmother passed away. He thought he had Cc’ed me his response that we could meet Oct.3….totally understandable case of miscommunication. Anyways the last question the social worker asks is if our marriage is doing ok. I told her it may seem as if we do not communicate very well but I assured her that we do in fact have a great marriage and all the circumstances just made life a little hectic. But all went well and she said we had a beautiful family!
Then comes Thursday. I made plans with another mom to meet at a nature park with the kids for a toddler nature walk activity. The park is quite a distance from our house so we decided that we would do a picnic at the park so the children would be fed and happy on the long trek home. Before we head to the park and Matt goes to work, we had to go get some papers notarized. Anytime I am trying to pack up the kids and on a time crunch, I go a little crazy in my head hoping I have everything I need for a whole morning away from the house. Anyways we are in our cars and I was going to follow Matt to the notary’s office. As I am ready to pull out of the driveway I notice I do not have my purse. So instead of turning the car off, I just take my house key off the ring, run in the house, and retrieve my purse. I didn’t want to make Matt wait any longer so I just threw the house key in the console of my car and off we went. The visit to the park was great fun, the kids had a great lunch but Mary was getting alittle restless as I was packing up. So I rolled down the windows of our car and let her play in it while I loaded everything up. She got into a few cd’s but nothing bad so I didn’t think anything of it. I was so happy that they would be ready for nap as soon as we got back and that meant some free time for momma! We get home and I go to unlock the door and I have no house key. I could not find it anywhere! I have NO idea where Mary put it (and neither does she) and I spent about 30 minutes rummaging through every crevasse in the car…no luck. The kids were getting cranky since they had still not had a nap (it’s about 1:30 and they go down no later than 12:30pm) I had to swallow my pride, call Matt and let him know I was on my way to his work to get his house key since mine was nowhere to be found.
Even though I felt slightly embarrassed, it was great seeing Matt and meeting his boss. We get home about 2:30 and Mary never takes nap. Later she had gymnastics and wore herself out but a super tired kid makes for interesting moments.
We all survived…but I still have not found my key.
A Concrete Way of Love 