When I got home last night with all my children, late enough that Matt actually beat us home, I looked at him as we piled in the door and said, “If ever an outing were worthy of a blog post . . .”

It was kind of like The Beverly Hillbillies Get a Check-up or Family Services Candidates Go to the Doctor or something like that.

Let me back up a little bit.  Natalie has a urinary tract infection.  Again.  On Sunday we took her to Urgent Care when her fever was 105 two hours after taking Motrin.  They put her on an antibiotic, but as of yesterday, she was still running a fever, so my doctor wanted me to bring her in last night.  I gathered up the kids and our overdue library books (to drop off on the way), changed out of my pajamas (yep, at 5:30 p.m.– Don’t judge, I got a lot of laundry done yesterday), and herded everyone to the van.  As I walked past the mirror I realized that I had no make-up on and still had a little bedhead.  Oh well.  Sigh.

We ran our quick errands and made it to the doctor’s office on time.  I obsessively tried to keep my kids from touching everything so they wouldn’t go home with H1N1.  Impossible.  I realized Natalie was wearing a pajama shirt stained with medicine from a previous dosage battle.  Oh well, at least she was wearing regular pants and shoes and jacket.  I zipped it up.

The boys sat in the hall while Natalie and I tried to collect a urine sample.  She peed all over my hand.  Lovely.

Clark has had a messy face since the day he was born. (I joke he’ll have a dirty face in his wedding pictures.)  Today was no execption.  The masterpiece of the day was an artistic blend of pizza and snot.

When we sat down in the exam room, the nurse asked a few questions and left.  It was then that Grant pointed out his shoes to me.  One was a navy blue lace-up tennis shoe and the other was a beige, suede slip-on.  “Grant, WHY do you have two different shoes on?”  “I couldn’t find one of them.”  (Silent eye rolling by me.)

The doctor came in and began to examine Natalie.  When she pulled her hair back to look into her ears, she revealed a large dark blue scribble all over Natalie’s forehead and temple.  “Oh, boy,”  I laughed nervously, “it looks like somebody played with markers today.”

She asked us to wait for a while so she could run some tests.  Grant and Clark both kept passing gas, which they thought was hilarious, but I was disgusted.  I made Clark open the door a little to air out the room because it was gross, and I didn’t want the doctor to have to walk back in to a wall of stench.  I kept getting a whiff of the nastiness and growling at my boys to “Stop it already,” and sometimes they would giggle and sometimes they’d swear it wasn’t them.

When the doctor returned, we discussed her findings, got a new prescription, made arrangements for follow up, and she left.  I helped the kids gather up their books and toys we brought along.  As I started to put on Natalie’s jacket, I had a sudden realization.  “Natalie!!  Did you poop in your underwear??”  She wouldn’t look me in the eye.  Oh.  sweet.  mercy.

We found a bathroom and I remedied things as much as I could.  I shoved a wad of toilet paper in her underwear to sit on in her car seat.  It was now past their bedtime, but we still had to go fill her prescription.

The kids ran back and forth between the massage chair in the pharmacy waiting area and the toy aisle.  I did my best to control them, but eventually gave in and let them chase each other with light-sabers as long as they were kind of quiet and didn’t hurt each other.  Finally I paid for the prescription– get this:  $240.00 after insurance — and we left.

The only redeeming thing about this story is that I called out the manager and asked him to cover up the nasty magazines that were at my children’s eye level.  He was kind and agreed, but I’m sure that deep down inside he wondered how a mother so “concerned” for her children could let them run around with mismatched shoes, markered faces and poop in their pants.  Whatever, man.  I just paid my entire grocery budget on one of your blasted prescriptions.

So that was my evening outing with my children.  How was your day?  Now if you’ll excuse me, I guess I’d better go put up some blinking pink flamingo Christmas lights in my yard or something just to keep our December on a roll.