It's been such a long time...

*for the lovely Mrs L, who emailed me, wondering where I've been :)

It all started when I was looking for a shirt in Audrey's room. I had a bridal shower to attend in the afternoon, and I was considering taking her with me.

I wanted her to wear the shirt in question with a skirt I'd been eyeing at Target just the day before. It's so easy with a little girl to go overboard buying clothes, so I try to rein myself in as much as possible. She's been on quite the growth spurt this summer as well, all the more reason to exercise caution.

It's very hard to exercise caution, however, when the little girl in question is just so damn cute.

Anyway, as I searched her drawers, I felt my pulse start thumping as I realized everything was hodge-podge and things that should be here were there. Her closet was equally as bad and as I sighed and surveyed the room, it seemed as though every single scrap of paper, every single misplaced sock, every bit of ittybitty toy was screaming for my attention.

The huge pile of toilet paper, unwound in the corner is what did me in, and I less-than-calmly hollered for her and Ryan to come to their room and take care of things.

And so the rampage-rant began. It was not pretty.

I railed against the falling standards of their cleanliness and as I walked into the living room on my way to the garbage can in the kitchen, I went after my next target, Ben; and turned on my heel to reach out and grab Nolan's headphone from his ear, so that he could hear me too, when suddenly, Mr W appeared in the doorway and said: "Hey. Hey, settle down. Why don't you get ready, and go get the present for the shower, and head on over there?"

The look on his face was of the "my wife is a lunatic" variety and I was a little embarrassed that he was pretty much asking me to leave; deflated, I took a deep breath and agreed.

But the bridal shower was in like, oh, 4 hours or so and while my toilette can be dragged out when I want it to be, there's no way it's going to take me 4 hours to take a shower and put on some lipgloss.

He went back to our room and I decided that I was hungry, so everyone else must be, and I made breakfast.

I took his to him, and he looked up at me, surprised, and I half-expected him to ask me to taste the food myself first, you know, just to be sure I didn't lace it with rat poison; but instead, he asked, "This is for me?" as I rolled my eyes and put it in front of him. "Of course it is," I replied, making a face as I showed him the grape jelly on his toast.

"Do you know what I like about you?" I asked him. "I like it that when I am all sweaty, and I look awful, and smell worse, and we're leaving the gym, you still open the door for me." (which he'd done that morning) "And I also like it that when I turn the corner, onto Bitch Avenue, you always check me and let me know I should knock it off."

"You didn't just turn the corner onto Bitch Avenue, you gave it the gas as you took it on two wheels," he replied.

I hugged him anyway.

And I'm sure that after I left for the bridal shower, the kids all hugged him too.