Day from Hell

Oh my god! What a day from hell! This is the beginning of Emil's summer holiday, so it was my first day with the two kids alone. David has finally found some work and was off to work today. So we go to the park in the morning until about 11 where we met an American woman who is here on vacation with her three kids. This was nice, to be able to chat a little with someone in English. She isn't really my cup of tea, but whatever...Then we come home and the baby wants to nurse pretty much every hour, which I am finding really frustrating and don't know why this is happening. She is three months old for pete's sake! But the day goes pretty smoothly and then she falls asleep finally for a long nap and I get the dishes done and the floor swept. I debate cleaning the floor but I don't know how long the baby is going to sleep and I want to do something just me and Emil. So he and I bake a cake, a banana cake and we have a good time doing that and then I have a brilliant idea that I will make homemade pizza for dinner. So I throw some oil, flour water and yeast together and think, okay, now I have to go to the store to buy some mushrooms and some tomato sauce. So Emil lollywags getting his shoes on (at about age 4 and 5 it takes them 3 hours to do ANYTHING!) and we finally get out the door. We get downstairs and Chaya decides that is the moment she needs to wake up. It is 5 o'clock. So back upstairs we go and feed her and back outside we go. 5:30. She cries the whole way to the market and back again. As usual. She seems to pretty much hate leaving the house. She may be agoraphobic. We get back inside and I am so so frustrated. I sit down to nurse her AGAIN! I am doing that when all of a sudden I look down at the floor and there is like an inch of water everywhere all of a sudden. I throw Chaya (Literally) into her crib and run to the kitchen. The tube that connects the hot water from the tap in the wall to the tap on the sink has burst and hot water is flying everywhere. I turn off the tap and now I have to set about cleaning all this water. 6:15 pm. I am trying to do it as quickly as I can. In the meantime, I put too much oil in the pizza dough, so it is a bust. Emil hasn't really eaten since 11:30 am. But he is happily watching tv. Then Chaya starts to cry again and now I am about ready to have a nervous breakdown. I call David, three times, no answer. I don't know why he has a cell phone. I want to kill him. So I go into "that is it, I am moving back to Canada or we have to move to either Haifa or Jerusalem. " I go to my neighbor to ask her to come and just hold the baby while I clean up and she isn't there, but her daughter comes and holds her. Chaya falls asleep in her arms and I finish cleaning the water. I take her from the neighbor and she leaves and I try to put her into her stroller but she wakes up and starts screaming again. 6:50pm. I resolve that Emil is not going to bed at 8 like usual but what the hell it is the holidays anyway. I whip together some pasta all the while the baby is screaming her head off like I am pulling out her nails one by one. I get Emil a dish of pasta and back to feeding the baby. Now she falls asleep again and lets me actually put her down and I grab some food for myself. Calculate that the last time I ate was also 11:30. No wonder I am about to have a nervous breakdown. Oh yeah, tell Emil to turn off TV for dinner and have to repeat myself 3 times culminating in me yelling "TURN OFF THE TV!" Not my finest moment. 7:30 pm. Go to run Emil a bath but there is no hot water as it all flowed onto the floor. Skip bath, tell Emil to get his pajamas on and now baby is awake again happy as a clam. We read him a story kiss him goodnight and I lay on my bed drained. But baby is still awake. Entertain her for a bit, then she starts to get fussy again and feed her and finally she seems to hopefully be out for the night. Now there is laundry to hang and an icing to make for the cake and dishes to do. All done. On the upside, my floor is clean! I guess G-d wanted me to have clean floors for some reason!