Fits of Giggles

After a day and a half of feeling really, really, really awful, this morning I woke up and felt so much better. Stomach flu is just the worst. UGH.

R and I had a teacher conference with T's kindergarten teacher, which went really well. Mom came over this morning and watched the kids while I met with T's teacher and then went to the gym. As grateful as I am that the Y has childcare, it's also really nice to just be able to go in, work out, and then leave all. by. myself.

Mom and Richard decided they wanted to go to Pizza Hut for lunch, so we were in the process of trying to get the kids in the car. Today this involved a massive fit thrown by the resident diva over wanting to sit in the front seat.

Sigh.

I made her get in the back anyway because that's how I roll, and we actually got out of the garage without anyone breaking anything, or losing their hearing from the screaming, or being permanently damaged from the trauma of not getting what they wanted. Well, okay, I'm not exactly sure about the last one, but I'm willing to take the chance.

And then I stopped by the mailbox to mail some stuff. Big mistake. Huge. S wanted to put the letters in the mailbox, which I had no issue with. The problem was that when we went to get back in the car, we had to rehash the whole "I want to sit in the front seat" thing.

Sigh.

I made her sit in the back because I said so. My punishment for this? She screamed like she was trying out for one of the B horror movie main characters. I mean, the girl has got some lungs. If we could channel it (and if we had any singing talent in this family which we SO do not) she would make one heck of an opera singer simply based on lung capacity. For a minute or two I really thought the windows in the van were rattling. The thing is, I knew she was screaming like this to make me mad. I mean, she's mad, so I should be mad too, right?

And all I could do is giggle. And then laugh, and then snort, and then gasp for air from my hysterics. If someone walked by, how crazy would we look? T so into his DS that he's completely oblivious to the caterwauling, me in the drivers seat, laughing so hard there are tears running down my face, and S flinging herself about screaming at the top of and highest pitch her lungs and voice box would allow. I mean, you had to be there, really you did, but trust me...it was quite a scene. The more I laughed, the madder S got. I truly, truly was not trying to make the situation worse, I just.....couldn't help myself. I don't really even know why I thought it was funny now. Eventually, she stopped screaming and started yelling, "IT'S NOT FUN-NAY!", which just make me laugh more. And within a minute or two, she started to giggle too. And then T rejoined the non video game universe and started to laugh too.

What better time to break into a round of "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt"?

Good times. And we sang it all the way to Pizza Hut, where trying to explain what just happened to Grammy and Grandpa fell a little....flat

Later that afternoon, the kids were jumping on the trampoline. For some crazy reason, they had baseballs with them. T, not paying the least bit of attention, chucked his ball crazily where luckily it missed his sister, his grandparents, me, the windows, and anything the neighbors owned but thwacked loudly against the side of the house. I was worried that it damaged the siding, but I didn't see anything when I looked carefully. I fussed at T about 1) throwing so hard 2)not paying attention and 3) not thinking about where he was throwing (aka aim). This upset T, so he spent about 10 minutes growling at anyone who said anything to him. It also got the ball taken away.

S, who was over being growled at, gets off the trampoline and asks Grammy to play 'basketball' with her. She meant catch. See how into sports we are in this house? Heh! Grammy and S are throwing the ball back and forth and T snaps out of his self imposed exile and wants to play too. It took a little bit to convince S, but she eventually agrees to let him play with them. Grammy throws T the ball and S walks off to the toy box. I figured she was going to rescue T's baseball, but nope! She walks back with a fireman's hat on, visor down, and announces, "I'm ready to play now too" and I just lost it in another fit of giggles. I was laughing so hard that everyone else started laughing and S walks around for about half an hour saying "I'm ready to play now" thinking that's why I started laughing. Which was also true, but it was more that she has the knowledge that she was better off with head protection when playing with T and that she went to get it.....oh my gosh. My stomach muscles actually hurt from how hard I laughed today. I don't think there's ever been a sweeter pain.