Seriously, what's wrong with me?

I was feeling like a pretty good mom yesterday. I got to daycare on time, we had a fun snack of cheese and crackers at home and headed to the park for still more fun. The weather has been glorious. The girls ran around the softball field, rolling in the grass like puppies. We headed home as the sun was setting. I made them fresh pasta with homemade sauce for dinner, bathed them and tucked them into bed. It was 8:30 by the time Jeremiah and I managed to push some food into our pieholes.

I had work to do still, but the evening had been so busy and I was so tired, we settled onto the couch to view more of season one of Veronica Mars on DVD. Jeremiah can't figure out why those insanely rich, spoiled kids attend public school but we're enjoying the show anyway. Just as we began a second episode, I thought I heard Sarah crying. We'd left the monitor in our bedroom. I muted the show. "What are you doing?" Jeremiah demanded. "I thought I heard Sarah, but I guess it's the show". I turned the volume back on and we sat, slackjawed, on the sofa for 45 more minutes. When we turned the TV off we definitely heard Sarah crying. That hoarse, tired cry of a baby who's been going on for, oh, 45 minutes. Jeremiah ran upstairs. Sure enough, Sarah was so distraught she was inconsolable. I ran up after him. I took Sarah while he searched for one of the magically disappearing pacifiers. I felt terrible. I didn't want to put her back down when she settled, so consumed with guilt was I. She kept sticking her finger in her ear. I knew it wasn't suffering from any illness at all, so my next guess was that she got water in her ear during all the splashing. I kept her on her side hoping gravity would do its work. Every time we moved she stirred and cried. Finally she and my extreme guilt settled enough that I could put her back in her crib.

Ah, that's good now, peek at Kate to make sure she's fine and...where's her pull-up? Why is she buck naked? I began looking around for a discarded pull-up, feeling annoyed because I'd just put the only set of clean twin sheets on her bed before tucking her in. Then it dawned on me. I forgot to put a pull-up on her. Fingers crossed, I tiptoed up to her bed and...oh dear...soaked.

So let's see here...left my baby screaming for 45 minutes while I watched a kids' TV show, put my not quite completely potty trained pre-schooler to bed without back-up. I had to move Kate to the guest room because I had no more sheets for her bed. I'm sure she woke up confused and disoriented but, I figured, it's good practice for college. I laid awake feeling like a complete failure for another hour and subsequently skipped my workout this morning. For my next trick...more coffee.