Saturday morning, George, Riley and Mallory found a 7 person tent at the mark down aisle at Walmart. This must have sparked the camping out idea. They had tried it once before months ago when it was cold outside but the scary noises got to them and they ended up sleeping in the living room on their blowup mattresses. And now it is Saturday night about 7:30pm and we realize the house air conditioner isn't blowing cold air anymore. It is 80 degrees in the house and it seems to be getting hotter.
Now Mallory is three and a half (don't forget to say half or you will hear about it) and really needs to go to bed at 7 (if she has been really cranky) or 7:30pm. She no longer naps on any kind of a regular basis, even though she may need it, and she fights it tooth and nail so the cure that I have found is to put her to bed earlier. And since I am with her 24/7 and deal with the tantrums and crankiness when she is tired, it is I who am adamant that she go to bed at her designated bedtime.
It is now around 8:15pm and the decision is made for George to go out and purchase a room air conditioner unit as it will be until the morning when the A/C repairman can come (and we need a unit for our hurricane preparedness anyway.) It is not pleasant to be in a house in South Louisiana in June (or about 8 other months of the year) without A/C. I am now hot, bothered, and waiting for George to come home and put the A/C in my bedroom. My job is to get the girls ready for bedtime in the tent. And they are bouncing off the walls with excitement. Our energies are not matching at all.
It is now 9pm, and George is home and working on installing the A/C and it doesn't work. For some reason the fan portion of it doesn't blow, but I am about to blow. I try to not lose my cool because the girls have been so excited about this since the morning time and had talked about it all day. They had made smores outside using a portable grill. They had glow sticks and were bouncing up and down on the mattresses while I was trying to read their stories. It is way past Mallory's bedtime and way past the time when Momma needs her downtime after I have put the children to bed. Whose idea was it to camp outside? Not mine.
George gives up on the non-working A/C and comes outside and I can finally go inside to my hot house and Ga Ga (my mother in law) and I each have a fan blowing directly on us in addition to the ceiling fan to make it through the night. I toss and turn all night but the girls have made it outside all night this time!! George stays at home to meet the A/C repairman, and the rest of us go to church. It is now 11am, and we are leaving church, and I realize that Mallory is super duper cranky and repeating over and over that she wants McDonald's and not to go eat out at a restaurant as we had planned. She also states that she is "not going to yoga." I want to be amused by this but it is beginning to get on my last nerve as we are trying to walk out of the church and she is whining, crying very loudly and anybody who is coming to the late service can hear us. I have signed us up for parent/child yoga this week and have talked it up now for about two weeks. And in her crankiness and sleep deprivation, she repeats her mantra over and over, "And I'm not going to yoga."
In the end, I make the executive decision to drive around until
Mallory falls asleep because I cannot live with this child in her current state or mine. George is sitting at the restaurant waiting for us, and Riley is about to blow because I keep driving past the route that she knows will take us home. After three phone calls, George finally deciphers what I'm quetly trying to tell him, and he does pick up lunch and meets us at home. Mallory does fall asleep (Yes!!!) and I feel the cool air of our newly fixed air conditioner as I carry her to her bed and she takes a well needed two hour nap.
I now have to remind Mallory that we have yoga later this morning??!!
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