Single Parent in Strange Land

Mom left on Wednesday March 14. I am now officially a single parent until Tom visits. Here's a brief glimpse of our life here and a plea to all readers to pray for my sanity:

The night before her marathon flight and the real possibility of not making all her connections or having a seat as she was flying stand-by, mom took a sleeping pill. She was out. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the middle of the night....

Austin peed in his bed before I could wake him. I found him butt naked in Cole's bed - smart boy, why sleep in pee when you can get in a warm, dry bed? I then took Cole Ryan to the bathroom who promptly had stomach issues which shall I say resulted in a messy bathroom and son. After cleaning up the bathroom and Cole, dressing Austin, and rearranging Cole's bed to fit two bodies, I went back to sleep. Madisen had a bloody nose sometime in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep. (She didn't wake me, but used it to her advantage later when explaining her foul mood and why she just couldn't wait 15 minutes for the store to open and me to buy milk).

And mom was still in Yerevan....

Despite pee and poop problems just a few hours before, boys were up early and were able to say bye to nana. After Nana left, I wanted to shower and turned on the TV so that the boys would be zombies and not get into trouble. Well, CR is flipping through the channels and comes across a naked woman and of course pauses there. (Note: mom went through all the channels when the satellite TV was installed and blocked the porno/nude ones or so we thought. The channel that CR found airs cartoons during the day and is obviously misnamed "The Family Channel".) I flip the channel back to cartoons and take the remote in the bathroom with me figuring that CR is unlikely to drag himself off the couch to manually change the station back to the nudie channel. (Yes, I realize that you all think I am an idiot - especially the men reading this.) According to Austin that is just what CR did. Austin said that CR was watching TV channels that he shouldn't watch, but of course Austin was not because he turned his head.

Between poop, pee, blood, and porno.... single parenthood at its best and mom had been gone all of 30 minutes.

Follow up: I became an expert at blocking channels (it took two days to figure out), CR's stomach was luckily a one time thing, Austin is doing fine at night, and no more nosebleeds for Madisen. And, mom got home safely. I couldn't have done this adventure without her help. She was crucial - she flew 8000 miles with sleep deprived grandchildren who were definitely not at their cutest, settled the kids into a routine, went through culture shock, ate oatmeal for days when we couldn't figure out what else to eat, and dealt with crappy weather, not knowing the language, food poisoning (beet salad is the suspected culprit) and two moves of massive amounts of luggage. Thanks mom. I love you.

Stay tuned....