I’ll be honest with you. The thought of spring break scared me. And after today, I feel justified in my fears.

Unlike my normal weekday schedule, where I try not to be with all four kids at once, alone, I knew there were going to be many hours every day where I would be by myself.

Sometimes even with two adults here, bad stuff still happens. No one is sure who is covering who and next thing you know you here screaming from the next room and realize that kid was inadvertently neglected.

I will not go into every detail of this day, but just to give you an idea of how crazy, how absurd, how farcical our lives are, here are the highlights.

It started at 4:50am when Ben woke up.

The morning got going well enough. Ben and Jack were playing so nicely together. I took them to Pump it Up while Angelica stayed with the twins for their first nap.

But that didn’t last long. Within 30 minutes, Ben managed to scrape a sheath of skin off his thumb while sliding on it down one of the slides.

Ice for the Ouchy.

Since Ben woke up so early, I knew he was due for a nap. He fell asleep in the stroller. I bumped him, still in the stroller, up our front stairs and wheeled him into his room.

Angelica, my sitter, left for the day.

Ben woke up 45 minutes later. I put him in his bed and gave him a 30 minute tummy rub. This put him back to sleep.

I ran downstairs and grabbed the twins. The tummy rub made me late for their nap. I quickly put them to bed. Then I help Jack with a computer game.

Next thing I know, Ben wakes up.

The twins only nap 30 minutes. One starts crying, which wakes the other one up. That is definitely not long enough. Especially since the first nap they had with Angelica was short too.

Quickly I run up the stairs, closing both the childproof gates on the bottom and top of the stairs to ensure the older kids don’t disturb me.

I grab both babies, tuck one under each arm and rock them to sleep in the rocking chair. Aaron falls asleep first so I dump him in the crib awkwardly. From downstairs I hear Jack yelling something about Ben not wiping. I ignore it. I need the babies to have good naps, because I know we will be up late for Passover. Finally I settle Sam.

By the time I get downstairs I find excrement smeared in at least 7 different places on the basement rug. Ben is naked from the waste down, patches of brown all over his legs, and dotted on his face and hands. He’s playing with my iPad.

Before I start cleaning, I check out the basement bathroom. Here is what I find….

Oh my, what will the rest of my week look like if this is only the first day of Spring Break? I’m very scared.

In the end I get all four kids dressed and even managed to grill some veggies to bring to the Seder dinner before Adam comes home from work. I did not do it alone. I had some help…

Although we may have looked very put together by the time we showed up at Bubbie’s, I was glad no one had a behind the scenes look of how we got that way. My “shower” consisted of me rubbing some baby wipes over some key areas of my body before changed out of the clothes I had been wearing for two days.

Passover Seder at Bubbie’s.

Passover Seder at Bubbie’s.