GO!

It all started this morning with a bit of misinformation.  On their website the YMCA announced that their water-park opened this Saturday.  As you can imagine this has been a date that the Wagner Z's have been frothing at the mouth to come.  While at child watch today (where, as I predicted when he demanded to put them on this morning, Zane pooped in his underwear; potty training is not coming easy to that one) we saw an ad flash on their big screen television that the Y water-park opened on Friday, May 29th.  This was confirmed by the front desk staffer that it did indeed open at 4pm.

Now this information was parenting gold.  Like finding the golden ticket in the last Wonka Bar we could muster up enough change for.  "Get in your seat or we won't got to the pool", "stop screaming or we won't go to the pool", "Zoe and Zack are listening well, so they get to go to the pool, Zane stays here", "the pool won't open unless you take a nap"; we got our money's worth out of this one.

Small problem (and if you are a detailed person you may have already picked up on this).  As Zoe and Zane sleep in their beds with visions of waterfalls and duck slides in their minds, their mother decided to confirm that indeed the pool did open today.  It did not.  The ad read Friday, May 29th.  May 29th is a Saturday.  No pool today.  Problem.

Zach was really disappointed.  We had to come up with something.  Earlier in the day we stopped in a video game store and Zach got really excited by the new Mario game, Mario Galaxy 2.  So Julie and I devised a way that he could use his savings ($24) dollars and some trade-ins to get close enough that Julie and felt comfortable making up the difference.  This did the trick.

When Zoe and Zane woke up and we told them the news that the pool was not open.  They took the news surprisingly well.  We piled in the car and head off to get Zach's video game.  We were about a quarter of a mile away from the house when the first drop hit the window.  Then another drop and another and by the time we traveled the mile and a half to the video game store the weather looked like something you see some poor, brave soul from the Weather Channel reporting from in the heart of hurricane season.

I dropped Julie and the kids off under cover that allowed them to walk to the store without getting wet.  I went to search for a parking spot in one of the most ill-conceived parking lots in America, too few spaces, blind spots and spaces that were seemingly built for the 1994 Mazda Miata.  By the time I found a spot the rain somehow was coming down even harder.

I took a deep breath, opened the door, hit the lock and started my daunting trip across the parking lot.  Despite dodging cars and cursing my decision to wear flip flops, I made it to the door and made my way to the counter where Julie and the kids were working out the details of the trade-ins.

Julie caught me up to speed with where they were in the process while keeping an eye on Zoe and Zane.  Then she looked at me and did a sort of double take.  She looked at me with a very puzzled and ever increasing concerned look and asked, "Where is Zadie."  I peered back, puzzled at first, but with growing recollection that Julie had the 3 older Z's and I was responsible for our youngest.  That's right, I left Zadie in the car.  I felt the need to reflect on the fact that I forgot that one of our kids was left in the car alone and what that represents for our life, but Julie's response of "GO!" led me to the conclusion that I should probably make haste in returning to check the status of our stranded infant.

Zadie, of course, was fine with the whole ordeal.  There was silence when I entered the car and when I peaked back over the seat, she gave me the biggest smile.  When I smiled back and told her, "Zadie, I left you in the car", and by the way she laughed and kicked her feet I think she thought it was all pretty funny.

Maybe all those random strangers I meet are right ... maybe I do have my hands full (well I guess the problem tonight was that I didn't have my hands full enough). (Hands Full?)