The Rest of the Story

Just so the story is complete, I thought I would post an update. Jacob had his nap, Maddie had a movie break on my bed, I had some grown up time (blogging my rotten morning). Then we went to the park for playgroup, got Ben from the bus with his buddy, sent Ben to a playdate with a great old friend and got to chat with the other mom for a few minutes to catch up, packed for the camping trip and went camping (in a downpour). Everyone smiled lots and lots. My family is still happy. I guess I post the rotten things in life for two reasons. The first being that blogging seems to take the form all to often of a happy travel log of our fun advenures. If you read enough blogs, you'll start to think you're alone in the world and your life is totally rotten and everyone else has a beautiful amazingly cool life with kids that behave and always say the cutest things. My blog is reality based. Some days just suck. The other reason I blog the bad is to vent it out. It sort acts as my pressure relief valve so to speak for you engineer geeks out there. My kids will read this some day when I'm gone and they'll realize that it's okay to think your losing your mind with your kids once in a while. Just wanted you to know everyone is happy and healthy in the Zufelt Zoo once again.

Days it's Okay to Cuss

I've been feeling crappy all week long. My neck and back hurt so bad I couldn't always move my neck from side to side without waves of nausea so bad I wanted to bend over and vomit. It was bad. It makes me cranky and mean when I'm that sick or in pain. Monday morning I called to schedule and appointment to get things fixed up. Thursday at 9am. Done. Got the babysitters lined up. Went. Within five minutes of working on my back it was beginning to pop back into place and feel better. By the end of the hour, I felt like myself again. Had a pretty darn good day after picking up the kids. I had playground duty last night while Brian went to soccer practice with Ben. I endured it well and even played imagination games with the kids the majority of the time. It was sort of fun. Then we came home and everyone was tired and cranky and didn't want to go to bed. I got in bed when the kids did and fell asleep, but they woke me up with their playing and fighting in bed and Jacob crying endlessly. Jacob was up at just a few minutes past 5am today. Screaming bloody murder. It went on and on and on and on. It's becoming a regular problem and I don't want to encourage it, so I won't get him out of the crib. I offered a binkie, blanket, milk, rubbed his back in the crib, but the second I move from the side of the crib he starts yelling and screaming as loud as humanly possible. It grates at my fragile nerves. By the time the rest of the family got up, I was in a terrible mood. Turns out everyone else was too. Because we had soccer last night, the dinner mess was still all over the kitchen. I tried to clear the cups of water before Jacob could climb up on a chair and dump them, but two cups slipped out of my hand, spilling all over the floor. I cleaned it up and went to lay on the couch in the living room. I must have missed a spot because soon I heard little feet slip and crash down on the floor. Maddie was crying and hurt. Brian comforted her while I cleaned my missed water spots. We manage to get some breakfast in the kids then send them to get dressed and brushed. Maddie shoves Ben off the top of the toilet where he is standing to put toothpaste on his toothbrush and he goes crashing to the floor yelling. Brian removes Maddie and she is screaming to get back into the bathroom to brush. Finally Ben comes out. Maddie goes in. I pass the doorway as she is holding her tube of toothpaste high above her brush with a long, long string of paste waving around, ready to fall and make a huge mess in the already sticky bathroom. I grab it just before it drops putting about 10 times what is needed on her brush. Of course, she is shrieking again and yelling unintelligible words. The volume and intensity increases when I tell her I can't understand her words. She wipes her hair out of her face, toothbrush in hand, leaving gobs of stringy toothpaste all over in her hair. I walk away to take a shower before my head explodes. In the shower I compose a resignation letter and pray for an added measure of patience to survive this disaster of a day, realizing it's not even 7:30 in the morning yet. How will I possibly make it today? We're supposed to go to playgroup at 10am. Fat chance of that. Jakey's gonna be a disaster by 10 am. I probably will be too for that matter. Then I have to get the kids at the bus after kindergarten and pack for a camping trip. Tonight. In the rain. Then I have to leave the campsite by 7am to take the church girls on a required hike for their camp certification. That leaves Brian to break down camp, tent and all solo with three kids, make that two kids and a monster. Last year we put all our pillows and blankets in the trunk and laid Jakey inside while we did the tent. He was happy as can be. No way that will work this time. Back in the present the morning disasters just keep coming. Maddie wants something and I say she needs to finish her morning chores. Today she still needs to put her glasses on and get her hair done. Then she's free. Unfortunately we can't brush her hair because of the toothpaste. I tell her to wash it in the bathroom sink with water. I very specifically tell her how and where to do it. She can choose either the upstairs or main floor bathroom. She wanders off to do it. Three seconds later I hear a cup, a FULL cup of water splatter on the kitchen floor. I roar like a lion. What the heck was that?!?!?! She bursts into tears. Water. What was she doing? Washing her hair by dumping an entire cup of water on the tips of her hair while she stands in the middle of the kitchen floor. I scream to get a towel, clean it up and get in the bathroom. I just have to walk away. Jakey keeps hitting and shoving both me and her. He's a mean and rotten bully. Time out makes him laugh right now. He doesn't know I'm punishing him. He'll catch on soon enough I hope. Now Maddie's hair is washed (she actually did a great job getting the sticky out), glasses on. Jakey is stealing her toys and being a bully. It's 8:22 am. In 8 minutes it's nap time. It is simply in the best interest of our family today. Assuming we all want to survive until bedtime (in the rain in the woods). Heaven help us, please, because these are the days I think to myself, "It's totally okay to cuss when you're having a day like this."

Peased

Today has been intense to say the least. It all began early enough. I cleaned the house for preschool, put everything in order so my lesson would flow smoothly from one activity to the next, taught preschool (that is another post all together - made TWO kids cry), kept one cute kid a while later to help a good friend, managed lunch, juggled Jacob missing BOTH nap times (not because I didn't put him down, but because he screamed for an hour each attempt), afternoon play date here, proded Ben back to his friend instead of neglecting his play date because the brand new Lego set was just too enticing to resist, a mad dash to the eye doctor to get Ben's lenses changed and Maddie's fixed before he left for the day, lugging a finally sleeping baby into the house for a much needed nap and reading a monstrous pile of library books to Maddie (and Ben in the vicinity listening as he built his Lego creations), I just want to be alone and crash. I snuck to the kitchen for a teensy little second to check my email and got sucked into blog reading or at least an attempt at it. The barrage of Maddie questions never slowed. I had all of sixty seconds "alone" if you can even call it that before she was on the kitchen chair next to me leaning ever closer to me and finally on my right arm so I couldn't properly manipulate the computer keys anymore. I asked kindly that she please move to her space and let me have mine back. Not fully understanding what I meant, I gently explain what I was asking and show her a magic area that she should fit into quite well. (I have MAJOR space issues and she was greatly testing my limits today.) Still she is shooting questions non-stop. I am doing my best to ignore her and pretend to escape into a warm sunny place while I have a mental break from her/them/it/all of it. Questions. Questions. Questions. Seriously, it takes all I have inside me to not just tell her to "Shut Up!" I'm nodding and saying "yep" to random stuff she asks and tells me in a blind attempt to appease her and not have to really hear her words. Can she not just go away for two minutes? Come on. I need a break. I chuckle at some of the cakewrecks I see and she asks why I'm laughing. "Because I saw something funny." "Where are your glasses mom?" "In my eyes." "What do you mean?" "I stick them to my eyeballs. They are called contacts." "Oh. Why do you do that?" and on and on and on. Finally it's onto another subject of which I can't recall nor do I care to know what we "talked" about. I just throw out more Yes and Uh-huh's as seem appropriate by the lulls of silence in her speech. Somehow I snap back for just a moment with her and she asks why I'm saying such-and-such. I give her the honest truth. "Mostly to appease you." "Oh. I don't want to be peased." She knows I am ignoring her. She doesn't want to be "peased" and I know it. I tell her mommy can't talk for five minutes (hoping to type this blog post of my current mental state as an outlet and let it vent). She seems okay with that and leaves the room. Returns one minute later with questions. I remind her mommy can't talk for a few minutes. She tells me "Okay. I'll do my ABCs then. Mommy, how do we.....??" Remember the part where I don't talk? And now, after Jacob has slept for a precious 45 minutes (most of which I spent reading to Maddie) instead of the needed 3 hours today, he is wailing at the top of his lungs to be saved from his prison crib. Alas, I realize I am a mother. My time is not my own unless it is after midnight. I love my angels. Maddie is the sweetest thing and only wants to be near me. I feel bad for putting her off, but after 4-5 hours of undivided attention to her today, I'm needing a mommy break. Still, her innocent love for me melts my heart. Her love is just too pure for words. She will be an amazing mother someday. And then, maybe she'll understand this post as I know my mother friends of today do like no one else can. Now to go set a good example for her and love her right this minute.... Sigh.... I guess I can be alone after midnight, right? Here I come little people.

My Life as a Rock Star

Ben just saw the Potsy pictures in the last post and asked what I wrote about. At his request he sat by my side and I started reading it to him. I wasn't more than three words in and he was giggling. By the end of the second sentence he was force laughing so hard and so loud it was flat out ridiculous. I hadn't read anything funny yet. Or maybe I didn't realize how funny I was. So goes my life as a rock star. It is hard having an adoring crowd like that. They follow my every move incredibly closely (so close that they are always underfoot getting fingers or toes squished while I cook and do dishes, little bodies knocked over when I turn around or heads whacked with the baby carrier car seat while I try to find my keys at the front door). They are everywhere I am all day every day watching me like short little paparazzi with mental cameras shoved in my face recording all my stealth or stupid moves (I always have to hide to sneak a piece of chocolate from the pantry but I'm getting better at palming things like a magician which at the very least ought to make Brian proud). I just can't seem to escape my fans (they hear that darn pantry door open every time and come running as they yell, "What are you eating?" and they enjoy talking to me through the bathroom door while I'm "alone"). Their faces light up when I enter a room (especially the tiny guy when I come to release him from the prison bars more commonly known as a crib). Yeah, life as a rock star is harder than I thought it would be when I first signed this highly lucrative deal. Only one question. When is my first paycheck supposed to arrive? It's been five years and I'm getting a little worried it might have been lost in the mail.

I'm Taking Up Smoking

Ever notice how smokers are the only people in the entire world that get their full break time and never ever miss that sacred break time at the office? They have a physical need that basically requires them to leave work and have a smoke. The federal government has decreed that everyone gets breaks, but not everyone takes them. Being a stay at home mom, I am not afforded such luxuries as federal mandated breaktime. I was just hoping that if I took up smoking, I would be able to abandon my children to go sit on the front porch steps for fifteen minutes every four hours and have a little time to myself. Doesn't that sound relaxing? In a coughing, hacking, stinky, gagging kind of way, it does. Of course, cigarette smoke has always given me splitting headaches, so it may not work out in the end. Plus, Brian is pretty sure the kids would just follow me outside and continue to nag me while Jacob tried to steal the cigarette. Maybe this isn't the best idea after all. A girl can dream though, can't she?