Once in a while...

I remind myself that there are a lot of things The Boss Lady does that I can never replace around here. Yesterday's chaos would be a great example.

The kids and I went to Burger King. The Princess had a Dr's appointment and The Talker was heading to My So Called Aunt's house for a couple of hours. I figured that letting the kids eat and play for a few minutes would be a good plan before we went our seperate ways. And if the boy wore himself out and wanted to nap while we were gone, so much the better.

Within 5 minutes of sitting down The Talker was off playing. No big deal. I packed up some of his food to send with him. He could eat later, when there was not a huge playscape beckoning. And the girl and I could chow down while he played.

And this is where The Boss Lady would have excelled.

I asked The Talker if he wanted fruit punch or lemonade to drink. Red fruit punch won out, after he debated for a while. Making things easier on myself, I filled both kid's cups with watered down fruit punch. The Boss Lady would have been smarter than that.

But of course, The Talker did not drink anything, because he was playing. And I was watching him, not watching her. Because that is when she decided to wear the fruit punch. It covered her pants and shirt. We ran to check for spare clothes in the diaper bag, but no luck. What a feckless daddy.

So I packed the lunches, grabbed the kids and we headed to the aunt's house with a quick stop at Target to pick out a new outfit for the girl. I matched, with the help of a nearby mom, a pair of pants and a sweater to a white onesie shirt and we split.

I was about to pull off the trifecta. Fed the kids, redressed the girl and still on time for the Dr's appointment! And the rest of The Boss Lady's expertise would have kicked in right here.

Auntie and I tag-team dressed the girl and it was obvious that the pants were sized for the wrong kid. The boy could have worn these pink leggings. And the sweater seemed a little tight, but a quick roll of the pants legs and she was dressed.

When we met up with The Boss Lady she checked the girl over. She found pants two sizes too big and a 19 month old girl squeezed into a 6 month sized sweater. But the colors matched really well.

My big mistake? I never looked at the tags on the clothes. I checked the hangar tags. See, a mommy would not have done that. A clueless dad, maybe.

And a smart mommy would have never given The Talker a choice about drinks. Lemonade would have not left a huge stain all over The Princess' clothes in the first place.