buggy

ugh. the ants are back. with a vengeance. and IN the damn diaper bag. I am vigilant about not having any food (unwrapped) in there, but there are crumbs and drops of juice, I’m sure. anyway, I had to take the whole thing out into the carport and dump it all out. and clean it out. major mess. and now we still have ants on the counter where I’ve been keeping the diaper bag. they really aren’t after the bag, just that was thefirst thing they came to when they came up through the crack in the corner of the countertop. oh this sucks. I called the exterminators; they’ll be out at 3 this afternoon. three trips in the month of August. joy.

observations of a 4 year old

K: “I want my own cd player. with a cassette player on the side. and a tv in my room.”
Me: (incredulously) “In addition to the bike and the camera you want?!”
K: “I need more stuff. So I can have a junkier room.”

energy is finite

Just like with mass, there is a finite amount of energy in the world. I finally figured out why toddlers and small children have so much energy: they have sucked it out of the very marrow of the adults around them. It really isn’t that the children can generate that much energy on their own; it’s that they have very craftily drained all the energy of their parents and/or caregivers and, being of small bodies, they can use the energy from an average size adult for days on end. Whew. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Me, Me, Me

Sometimes I feel so selfish and childish. I think sometimes, deep down, I just want someone to take care of me. I get tired of being the mommy, the grown up, the one who always has to “be there” for everyone else. yes, there is great reward in it from time to time, but it is exhausting and mostly thankless work. and lots of time it is drudgery. sometimes I just want a Mommy of my very own. I know I should just pull myself up by my own bootstraps, but I get tired of having to come up with seemingly neverending reserves for myself.

I am trying to enjoy these moments of total dependency on the part of my children because I know I will miss them when they are gone from me, but I find that what I really want is balance — a little bit of dependence on Me The Mommy and a little bit of a break from it. What I wind up with is more like either feast or famine. Down here either I am the Only One who can take care of my little ones or I have to put them in some kind of full day care program and let someone else raise my child. I’m seriously missing the “drop-in child care” situation and trusted babysitters situations that I had in our former town.

she wins

I’ve been reading the Strong-Willed Child. I don’t have the strength to be the parent of one such child anymore. I’m too damn sick. and tired. She wins. I wound up letting her watch TV too long and then I skipped her brushing her teeth because I was too worn out to enforce the rules. She wins. and it fills me with anger. It is all I can do not to go ballastic on her. I hate the way she forces me to parent.

stained glass ceiling

Yes, we all face it. This article why I have to decide almost every week whether or not to stay ordained. I both love and hate The Church.

on the road to recovery

K is noticably better this morning. She is eating at least. And says her tummy doesn’t hurt at all. E seems fine, too. Maybe that means that T and I will be done with this by tomorrow.

gross

Last night, I found K in her own vomit. Tonight I hear E crying like he’s trying not to wake up. He had thrown up right there in the bed, too. Poor kids. I hate this for them. and for me.

sick

We’re all sick. all four of us. with some stomach bug. K’s been a bit better today, but T and I have really been in bad shape. It is amazing we all (especially T) got through all the stuff that happens on a Sunday morning. Ugh. For the record, this sucks.

favors for friends

So we have a friend who took her kids to amusement park nearby to us today. Earlier in the week she had emailed to see if they could drop by to visit around lunchtime and maybe even eat with us. I had said “sure that would be great!” I am excited. So are the children. She calls mid-morning and says they are just now leaving home and now plan to eat a picnic lunch in the parking lot and can they come late this afternoon or this evening to visit. I ask if they want to eat dinner with us. They say yes that would be helpful and very nice. So, in spite of the fact that I rarely cook on a Saturday night, I agree to make a dinner. One that is safe for K and child-friendly enough for her kids. Eventually I settle on chicken pot pie – relatively easy but cooking nonetheless. They are to be here at 6pm. At 6, she calls. Stuck at the amusement park; will call when they are on their way to our house. At 7 pm, the same situation. I have long since fed my kids – after all, since we eat around 5 usually, E got hungry at 5:30 and was nearly beside himself by 6. We are now moving into bedtime mode, wind-down time. I like to get the kids in bed by 8, which means bathtime and storytime and quiet playtime begins around 7 or 7:15. Heck, sometimes we start as early as 6:30 with baths. Anyway, I feel kinda stuck. And tonight is an important night, what with tomorrow being Sunday and all. We have to get good sleep because Sundays are always long busy days at our house. Sigh.

post script: At 7:30 I call her back and explain that K is already headed to bed early since she didn’t feel all that well. I mention that there is both a restaurant and a fast food place near the amusement park if they need a dinner plan. We agree to cut our losses on this get-together and try again another day.