It's not like I'm all that new at parenting. I'm not even all that new at home schooling. And yet, I managed to be blindsided completely. Again.

It's been beautiful, and I was basking in the beauty. I find sun motivating. So the house gets cleaner faster, I get up earlier, and I get more work done for my job as well. On top of it all, I'd been getting up early enough to get yoga in before work started. And by yoga, I mean push ups and lunges and being yelled at by Jillian Michaels. I've been sticking with it, can almost fool myself into seeing results and overall feel like I'm returning to myself. It's as if I've settled down to mothering five children, working and am no longer living in a remodeling chaos zone. Life is good.

The bulbs that I haphazardly planted in the fall, being very clueless about bulbs, have bloomed. Our front yard is bursting into color. And color makes me happy. So I sat by the front window, soaking up the sun and beauty. I had graded every math test in my inbox. I had worked out so I sipped my coffee as Cinco pushed the other ottoman about the living room. Mac sat at my feet, confirming that various words had long and short vowel sounds. Baby toiled away at the kitchen table and Baba sat on the couch reading about nutrition. All of this took place in a clean house. It was good. It was very very good.

Did you notice? Did you realize X-Man was missing from this picture? Did you forget, as did I, that there is no peace, there is no quiet when there is a two year old in your life. Oh sure, it might seem quiet and peaceful, but you are just borrowing trouble, compounding the amount you will have to deal with later.

And there it was. I realized that the quiet that I had been reveling was actually the equivalent of an air raid siren. It offered as much warning and the potential for as much distraction. I set my coffee down so rapidly that it spilled, perhaps a portend of things to come.

I ran upstairs, three steps at a time. I heard it before I encountered it. Water running. I felt it before I saw it. Wet carpet. I dreaded it before I knew it. Flooded bathroom. X-Man had chosen the upstairs bathroom, not by chance, and gone to work. It's a downside to the potty training. He became enamored with washing his hand and playing in the water. And when he used the potty, he would then wash his hands. Along the way, he discovered how to plug the sink. And the good times began to roll.

The water had poured out of the sink, pooled on the floor, run down the counters and into the drawers. It had run under the door. It was a mess. A very wet mess. Starting with X-Man himself. The boy who reacted to a shower as a vampire to garlic, had soaked his head, along with his clothes. I scolded him and scolded him and started laundry.

And then it was lunch time. Peaceful relaxing time was over. Life started up again. After lunch comes nap time. I got X-Man settled down for his quiet time, and yes quiet is used loosely here. As I headed down the stairs, Baba met me and said "So the ceiling is leaking."

Cinco was staring up. See the water was dribbling down onto the ottoman that she had been pushing around the living room. And there was a lot of water dribbling down. Through the new ceiling we had put in. I searched for the source of the leak in the bathroom and figured I had found it. The less than ideal bathroom remodel done before we moved in, had a gap between the counter and the wall. I then told the girls I would knock on the ceiling and asked them to tell me where it was upstairs.

Baby decided that the noise was coming from their closet. Which, although I knew it wasn't the source, meant that I ripped apart their closet with the hopes that there wasn't an overturned water bottle in there. There wasn't.

But there was an unattended baby left on the main floor, abandoned by her older sisters who were certain I didn't know the first thing about plumbing disasters. I don't. But they aren't exactly helpful themselves.  Meanwhile, the baby was left with a bowl of water, contaminated with plaster and a disturbing yellowish color. Which of course made it delightful to push about the hardwood floors in the living room, while the ceiling continued to leak.

On the other hand, my first foray into online shoe shopping was highly successful. I don't know which news will be worse to the father figure.