Wednesday....

It was a day. Whoa, Nelly, was it ever a day!

For the last few days I've felt like I've been just completely thrown under the bus and just need to come up for air and sanity but the instant I start to head in the direction of the light... I get sucked right back down again. It's almost painful.

Today, I thought, would be somewhat of a "normal" productive day, but it wasn't. Everything I did, was undone by a little person who is the BUSIEST little person I have EVER.KNOWN. Holy frijoles the kid is into EVERYTHING!

It's one of those things that you just have to realize that when you step into the home of someone with small children... and their house is clean... the woman of the house either

1. has a nanny
2. has a maid... that came THAT DAY
3. cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and then cleaned some more while the children were shipped off to someone else's house to play so she could give off the impression that her house is Martha-good but is completely hiding the fact that her feet are killing her and she'd rather you not stay for dessert so she can get out of those "so cute" shoes and lapse into a coma... as she smiles as you admire how immaculate her home is; or
4. There's someone like me.

I'm the person...

... that will really not bat an eyelash at the fact that I have a Pampered Chef medium scoop on top of my bathroom toilet tank...

...that both tubes of toothpaste from both of the bathroom drawers (mine and Andy's) are in the floor. Not in the bathroom floor, mind you. They're in the floor next to the garage door and I simply just don't feel like dragging them all the way back for the third time. So tonight, when I went to brush my teeth, I just opened a new box of toothpaste....

...that I have an entire sink and counter full of dishes more that likely because the second the little person hears the latch on the dishwasher, he's in a full-on toddler sprint to either grab anything breakable and try to launch it across the kitchen, grab any sharp utensil out of the silverware basket, crawl up on the door, or shut it while I'm trying to unload it which then means it's basically trying to shatter anything breakable on the bottom drawer of the dishwasher as it slams against the back wall.

... that has Moose-bunnies in almost every corner of the house (I seriously think Andy needs to sweep daily since he has the dog that produces these little friends) though I will vacuum them up at least every 3-4 days. Any more than that and it's just too much maintenance. Stupid dog.

... that has the contents of an entire bag of cotton balls scattered all over bathroom floor on a regular basis...

... you're getting the picture, right? It's crazy having toddlers. It just is. There's no other word for it and you love your kids but man alive it's hard to like them a lot of the times at this age.

I was up at 5:50 because I needed to run to QT to pick up a jug of milk. I knew I wouldn't have enough for breakfast for everyone so it was easier to just grab one early. Then, I thought to myself, "Self, get a treat for the boys." So, I made a quick drive to the donut store for the boys.

I got the boys up and eating. They thought that was a pretty neat treat having donuts in the middle of the week for no reason at all. Sometimes, it's nice to do unexpected things that bring people joy.

Drew was supposed to have free dress day but I didn't remind him. He left for school in his uniform. I remembered at about 8:15 and called Andy. I was going to take him something to change into up to school as soon as Ben woke up.

Ben slept until 9:20 a.m. today. I thought that would be a great start for his morning. He'd wake up hungry.... and realizing he had donut holes, actually EAT SOMETHING! WRONG. He ate the equivalent of one donut hole. That's it!?! Well, I just loaded him up in the car and to school we went with Drew's favorite Star Wars t-shirt and some shorts. I walked in and thankfully the secretary recognized me and I told her Drew earned his free dress day.. she grabbed his clothes and walked them down. I didn't have to do anything. So, he spent two hours of his day in his uniform, the other in his free dress day clothes.

We returned home. For the most part it was a typical day... but it seems like since Ben woke up late that everything else happened early. When I looked up at the clock, it was 11:40! Yikes! Time for lunch. I made a Lean Cuisine and then prepped my salad. Unfortunately, for lunch time, I can't eat at the table -- because Ben does NOTHING the ENTIRE time I try to eat lunch but try to crawl up on the table. I can't eat my lunch in the playroom with him on the floor because if he's not trying to stick his hand in it, he's trying to pull it away from me. So, I stand. Yes, I not only stand to prepare it. I stand to eat it and I stand to clean up. My feet HURT by about noon... hurt.

I make a quick trip to Hobby Lobby to get some supplies for the Cub Scout membership rally tomorrow night and then put Ben down since he fell asleep in the car on the way home. It's maybe, a five minute drive. It was about 2pm. Yes, he'd been up WAAY too long.

I put him in his crib and started on my project - making dice for the boys to play with to aid in learning their Bobcat requirements.

The boys got home from school and came in. Drew started off completely on a great note. He made a 100 on his AR test (advanced reading) -- the kid can read on a 4th or 5th grade level. He needs help with some words but he generally can still get an understanding of a story by the context clues even if he has to skip some words he doesn't know. It's amazing! Then he proceeds to completely forget where his brain is.

We have a little chart we go through every.single.day of a school day. 1) come home and empty your backpack and/or lunchbox; 2) eat a snack; 3) do your chores.

Every day we do this.

EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.

He just fell off the turnip truck today I guess.... it was annoying. I had to get onto him.

Then, Ben wakes up so I ask Drew to watch these wooden blocks I was letting dry on the porch and make sure Moose didn't eat them. My exact words. I went upstairs and got Ben and came downstairs. I changed his diaper and it was all of maybe 4 minutes. I walked back to the dining room and my blocks were all over the porch and he'd eaten one. In four minutes? I jumped DREW for it... where was he? Turning on the television. Grrrr...

He's grounded from the television now.

My throat is starting to get sore. I think I'm getting someone's bug.

Grrrrr...

Andy comes home. I take Josh, because he's sleepy, to Kroger with me. A Lady Gaga song came on and I told him that she went to the VMA's in drag. Then I explained that it means you dress like the opposite sex. I pulled up a picture on my phone once we were in the Kroger parking lot. At dinner tonight, Andy told Josh that that stunt was her "jumping the shark" moment. Has anyone else ever heard of that? He gave a reference to Happy Days and Fonzie, but I'd never heard of that. Josh thought it was kinda weird. I think she over did it a tad.

We had fajitas for dinner. I made fresh pico with lots of cilantro. It was good. I had bought some pre-grilled frozen chicken and a bag of onions/peppers to cook. Easy dinner, but one that I could eat with them. That's one thing about dieting that I really, really dislike... I'm not only making, cooking, serving and cleaning up for everyone else.... but then I have to make myself something completely different. That's why it's so hard to diet with a family. It sucks. DIE-T. Bleh!

Ben, I'm not sure he ate much of anything. I tried to give him a piece of chicken and you'd think I had given him nails to eat the way he spit it out.

Drew kept running through the kitchen while I was carrying hot things, holding knives and the dogs were getting excited which meant all kids of little feet were under my feet. He was told to stop or he was going straight to his room.

He chose to ignore me.

He ate alone in his room.

Moments like that I hate having to enforce my word.

Josh ate a bite of a fresh jalapeno.

A big bite.

I think he's dumb.

Kind of like those women that go through childbirth with no drugs... they're idiots too. You don't get a trophy for going through that with no epidural.

I head upstairs and sit with Drew while he finishes reading the last chapter of The Boxcar Children. Andy actually read it to him last night but for some reason, he paid absolutely no attention to him and couldn't remember how it ended so I made HIM read it. He acted like it was the worst thing ever (there aren't a lot of pictures). But at least we finished it.

He read his next AR book, too.

They're really, really too easy for him.

I went to put Ben down after giving him his medicine. Andy had entertained him in Drew's room while we read. Ben is a nightmare to put down right now. I think he's having separation anxiety because he does NOT go down easily anymore. You could (a week ago) just taken him to his room, said goodnight and he would roll over and go to sleep with his aquarium on. Now, he is crying, screaming, emptying the contents of his crib, then screaming because he has no blankie, bear, Elmo, binkie... yeah, it's pretty severe. Then you go in there and he's a snotty mess.... it's just so, SO hard on me emotionally.

Last night, I sat down in the bathroom on the CLOSED toilet while he was screaming his head off blood curdling screams and I prayed...and cried... and prayed some more for peace, for his ears to be pain free, for him to relax... and literally...

literally....

it was seconds after that prayer, he went to sleep without incident.

Tonight, I was so flustered I forgot to pray. I went back up there and glared into the media room where Andy (and Josh) were both sitting just watching television while Ben was screaming his head off. How they can sit there and do nothing is just beyond me.

I go in there, wipe the face, wipe the snot, put the crib contents back in the crib and off the floor, give him a much-desired binkie and try to lay him down while rubbing his leg/back/stomach/head.... ANYTHING to get him to chill out and calm down. Tonight, it was the belly... and half way through, he had a fixed gaze on me... and he grabbed my thumb and wouldn't let go. It was then that I realized.... nothing else I "needed" to do was ever as important as making sure this little man realized he was safe, secure and loved... that he wasn't alone and that I would stand there and rub his little belly for an hour if I had to, just so he knew everything would be okay.

I watched as his grip loosened on my thumb and his eyebrows raised while trying to hold his little eyes open. He was calm, he was relaxed. He knew he was safe, he had his blankies and he was asleep.

I snuck downstairs, took my vitamins, changed, brushed the fangs and immediately hopped into bed and right now am SO ready to lapse into a coma.