Running the Gauntlet

The last 2 weeks of Nursery have been the equivalent of running a gauntlet

and somehow I have (barely?) come out alive.

 Last week:

I had prepared a lot of fun activities, a great lesson, 

a fun music time for Nursery that afternoon.

For the most part

it went fairly well.

Except that one of the children who was just visiting that Sunday saw a need to clobber every child in the room over and over again.

This led to a lot of crying.

Also, the air conditioning unit (which, for some reason, hangs from the ceiling!?) was not working.

It was a nice, sticky 87 degrees in that room and I had sweat dripping off my nose half the time I was in there.

To top it off, the AC was dripping.

Constantly. 

Our indoor rain shower created a nice puddle on the carpet which the children highly enjoyed sitting in, running through, and rolling on top of.

I had to explain to several concerned parents that no, I had not allowed their child's diaper to get so full that it soaked through all their clothing; they were just wet from our new indoor swimming pool, of course!

The last 15 minutes brought 4 poopy-diapered children, a hands-on quarrel between three of the boys (I almost felt like we needed to have a bouncer in there to break up the fighting!), a scraped and bloody child, and an understandably-concerned mother who I'm sure wishes to never bring her child back into my Nursery.

Whew!

This week (yesterday):

I couldn't find keys to get into our cupboards (where everything is kept) for the first 20 minutes of Nursery.

I couldn't get to my snacks, toys, books, bubbles, anything.

I was the lone adult in that room for those first 20 minutes with 14 children.
20 minutes without all my "Nursery stuff" produced the following:

2 screaming children, 4 escape artists, and ongoing toddler fights.

The AC still wasn't working = 80-something mugginess.
One of my sweet little kids smacked me with a giant toy truck and gave me a fat lip. 
The less-than-ideal start to Nursery definitely threw off any groove I had and the rest of the time felt like pure survival.
(I wonder: If 2 hours with 14 children exhausts me, how the heck must "Octomom" be surviving with the same amount of children 24/7!?!)

I think it's safe to say that I have A LOT to learn about how to become a Nursery goddess.
But I'm still up for the challenge, and oddly, I'm still happy about it.

(I just hope that by the time my service in Nursery is complete,

all the children will still be alive and well with minimal physical and/or emotional scarring--same goes for me, of course.)

I'll keep trying my best to become a virtuoso at conducting an organized and contained chaos.
It's kinda crazy, a lot of fun,
and gosh darn it, I just love all my little munchkins!