Urine and Steak Sandwiches

There is a blog post that I read from a mommy blogger that lists all the things that are wrong and that went wrong and that could go wrong if she isn't a perfect mom.  And one of the things she lists is that the potty training toddler smells faintly of urine and the baby smells like a steak sandwich...and this reminds me that Baby Girl needs a real bath because I can't remember the last time I let her play in bubbles in an actual tub instead of throwing her in the kitchen sink for a quickie or scrubbing her from head to toe with Baby wipes for a quickie-er.  And no matter how much I do scrub my potty training Baby Boy, two minutes after he is clean he is proudly showing me how he stands up and dribbles pee into any concave surface like a big boy.  I would use the f-word here but I try to stay family friendly, so just imagine me slowly thunking my head against the wall.

This week is burying me alive.  Our children are unbearably demanding.  Baby Girl is starting to crawl so I must be hyper vigilant about every little speck on the floor.  Baby Boy needs to pee every 20 minutes and needs to learn to sleep in his own bed at a decent hour and needs to break the bottle habit.  I had not one, not two, but three parent teacher conferences.  There was a band concert, a pair of basketball games, an 8 th grade parent trip meeting...all to get children and/or myself to.  Tomorrow we have a birthday party at our house and I haven't managed to get the dishes fully done one freaking single day.  Jack  is work literally all day and I am in the house slowly sinking this week.  So tonight, when all the other inhabitants of my house are finally, finally quiet and not tugging on me or needing me...even though I know I should try and sleep while I can I seek out my mommy blogs and find a little comfort in seeing that my problems are not unusual, but normal.  My smelly children have counterparts.  No one else can get their kitchen clean daily.  Somewhere someone else is staring at surprise pee puddles in disbelief.  This week is brutal for many.  I am not the only mommy thunking her head on house parts.  And - because they keep blogging - I know that they survived. 

Academically, I know the odds are very good that I will survive, too.  I will likely look back at this post in a few years and laugh at what a drama queen I was.  But right now, right this very minute...I am sitting in our dark living room at midnight.  I left both the babies in bed with Jack and crept down the stairs for a moment alone to breathe.  He will never even know.  I broke into a secret stash of Oreos and am eating the middles out of a half dozen.  Someone is walking around over my head and I don't know if it is a baby or a dog but I am not moving.  No one knows I am here, and I need five more minutes.

No one will die of I eat Oreo middles for five minutes in the dark, right?

A Strategically Placed Lap

Baby Boy and I pretty much have a showdown every night before bed.  It lasts about two to three hours and although I am victorious in the end, it never feels that way.  I win the war, but these battles are giving me gangrene.  And not simple gangrene, but the nasty maggot loving kind of gangrene.

I am still not sure why he hates bedtime so very much.  He falls asleep for nap in about 2.4 seconds every day.  I suspect that after a quiet boring day home with just me and Baby Girl, he gets all wound up when the big kids and Daddy come home and he never wants it to end.  It could be from the ice cream he has for dinner.  We may never know.  All we know is that bedtime is a battle.

As befitting the epic nature of our battle, my son has many weapons.  Some of them are stealthy.  The pretend-to-be-asleep-so-you-loosen-your-grip move.  The fake have-to-go-potty move.  The aw-look-how-cute-I-am smile move.  The I-love-to-read move.  Slyly pulling in Daddy with the I-want-daddy-no-now-I-want-mommy move.

Some of them are overt.  Scream.  Wail.  Thrash your body like a grounded shark.  While screaming and wailing.  Rum (screaming and wailing) down the hall that tragically leads to just a different torture room with beds.  Fall dramatically to the floor in hopeless misery...while screaming and wailing.

He is also very adaptable.  When things aren't working he retires them for a while, only to yank them back out on an unsuspecting mama a few days or weeks later.  He also creates new moves when neccessary.  This picture illustrates his latest move...the "Mama...Lap!" move.

In this move he basically refuses to lay anywhere but my lap.  And he is super specific about how he does this - any part of my lap won't do.  He must be laying in between my legs with his whole little body curled around one leg with his head up on one hip.  Which, unless I cut him an airhole, means that is as high as I can cover up with my blankets.  It also means I need to lay on my back, which I hate and cannot sleep on.  Also...bladder pressure.  Damn kid was supposed to stop putting pressure on my bladder after I pushed him out, wasn't he?  I think it was in the contract...

I will prevail.  I come a little closer every night.  The minor victories are starting to pile up.  Last night he slept on his own bed for ten full hours straight.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.  I just hope the gangrene doesn't get me before I see it.

What Do I Do With My Arms?

Sunday mornings my alarm is set for 9:15 AM.  This is the latest I can possibly get up and still get my family in a church pew before the opening song.  I rarely need the alarm because my house gets moving pretty early, but when the babies have a rough night and we go back to bed at six or seven...well, then I need the alarm.

This morning I needed the alarm.  It went off and I turned it off and I don't even remember.  Jack had Baby Girl downstairs with him as of 8 am after a grueling night, I was fighting for covers and mattress space with Baby Boy - which shouldn't be as difficult as it is.  Kid has a death grip and a scissor kick.  Dangerous.  Not even my alarm could save me.

I woke up on my own at 9:45, panicked, and ran down the stairs.  I found Baby Girl bundled up, snoozing on her boppy pillow.  Jack was doing dishes in the kitchen.  No better way to start your morning that to encounter a hot husband...doing the dishes.  Be still my heart.  And then it got better....Jack told me to go ahead to church and he would watch the kids.  What?????

Now, I love taking my kids to church.  Nothing makes me more proud than to look down that pew and see my beautiful family.   As a stay at home mom, this is what I do...this is why we make the life choices we do...these kids are where almost all my energy and passion go.  I enjoy seeing the product of all that energy and passion all together holding hands and praying.  It makes my heart happy. 

But with an infant and a toddler and antsy  big kids...we have our hands full.  My main concern in church is to not drive the people in the pews around us screaming out the door.  We are always shushing mouths or wrangling flailing body parts or catching flying bottles or whispering treats for good behavior.  So to go to church alone...was something new and different and a little more reverent.

It felt off the minute I left the house.  I was driving in the minivan...alone.  That is not right.  It clearly states - in MSU stick people on the back window - that there are seven human beings in this family...and three canines.  It seems statistically impossible that I could be alone.  But I am.  So I cranked the radio to a child inappropriate rock song...that sadly is playing on a 'classic' rock station...and drive to church.  I spent an inordinate amount of the drive talking to traffic to fill the space where my toddler's questions about everything we pass would normally go.  I check over my shoulder to make sure the empty car seat base isn't sitting at an uncomfortable angle.  I park and automatically open all the van doors for my children that aren't with me.  Thank God I am at church where no one judges you...or that would have been embarrassing.

Walking in, I didn't know what to do with my arms.  How long has it been since I could walk somewhere without holding someone/something?  I usually have 4 or 5 someone/somethings I am juggling - holding the infant car seat, diaper bags over a shoulder, toddler attached by a hand or an entire arm if necessary.  Grocery bags or swim gear or some other soccer mom paraphernalia from time to time.  I forget how to move empty arms.  I settled between crossing and swinging them.  I probably looked like a weirdo alien that stole a human body and was trying to maneuver new and strange body parts.  

When I actually get inside church, I can sit anywhere.  No need for a long empty pew.  I sit in the same place as always anyway.  I do notice though this time that there are neighbors.  People do sit around us.  Huh.  I shake their hands and smile and wonder in my head if they saw me opening van doors for invisible children or playing with my rediscovered arms.  I actually sing all the songs and no one takes my order of worship and tears it apart to beat me with...although my nephews one pew up make periscopes out of theirs and check out the little boy across the aisle doing the same thing.  Cute.  I listen to the actual mass parts and the homily.   At the end, I just walk out.  Nothing to pack up, no one to herd out.  So strange.  Maybe I really am an alien.

But I am starting to feel like I have left something behind.  I feel like something is missing.  I have a quick lunch, run a fast errand, and hurry home.  I walk in the door and there on my couch is my gorgeous, kind, smart husband and our beautiful, happy kids.  And they all have big, giant smiles for Mama.

It was nice to have a morning to myself, infinitely nicer to come back home.

"Sleeping"

The top two pictures are of me "sleeping".  I had to take two to make sure you could tell that is me under the baby, the toddler, and the dog.  Those bits of gray are my sweatshirt - the one that I need to wear because Baby Boy is obsessed with sleeping not only in my bed...but in my lap.  Literally in my lap, curled up against a leg...sleeping.  Thus, I cannot pull my covers more than thigh high without suffocating him.  Thus, I need my sweatshirt in bed.  Baby Girl was just looking for a good cuddle and some body warmth so she is here until she falls into what I like to call wet-noodle-sleep.  The kind where I could flop her anywhere and she wouldn't care?  Yeah, we are waiting on that.  Then I will attempt to get her in her crib and Baby Boy at least on the pillow next to me....and then I will attempt real sleep, not "sleep".

The bottom picture is how my husband sleeps.  It is also why he has so many unexplained bruises in the morning. 

So Sad To See You Go

I just give up on sleep.

While I am at it...

I also give up daily showers, any form of shaving, peeing alone, getting a chore done from start to finish without interruption, owning any clothes that don't absorb baby bodily fluids well, eating any meal at the same time as my family, eating dinner at all, making it through a day without discussing poop, having an uninterrupted conversation, expecting empathy from my snoring husband, empty laundry hampers, watching tv in real time, semi-regular haircuts, words longer than two syllables, candlelight, reading for pleasure and not homework, current music, high heeled boots, finishing a to-do list, sick days, and....sanity.

Nice knowing ya.

No Socks

Here is the worst thing about laundry...

IT IS NEVER DONE.

NEVER.

Sometimes I feel all productive and efficient when I rock out a bunch of loads on a day spent home in my pajamas.  (Bet you didn't know you could feel productive AND be in pajamas, did ya?  Welcome to my world.  Don't be afraid.). So I will stare happily at the bottom of all my sorting baskets that are lined up and feel proud. 

Look at those empty baskets!

Tangible proof that I did stuff today!

No one can tell me they need a baseball jersey/blankie/favorite hoodie/lucky socks washed because...

...it is ALL clean!

Want something?  Look in your drawer!  No laundry here!

Ahhhh....

So I feel all happy and smug and I mentally cross the laundry room off my radar for the weekend.  I wear anything I want all weekend, no matter what the crazy Michigan weather is doing.  No problem.  I have burp clothes and blankies in every station in my house, no searching for one when Baby Girl uses her intestinal muscles to protest peas.  No problem.   I get kids' clothes out for church on Sunday morning and it all matches and is hole/stain free.  No problem.

Sunday night I am in bed working on shushing down babies.  Jack is standing at the dresser getting out work clothes for the morning, because after many mornings of me shooting upright and blinking like a crabby owl on speed, he has discovered that I am not fond of brights lights in the morning.  As he gathers his little pile of clothes, he says this...

"This is my last pair of socks."

What?????  How is this possible??  Laundry is DONE.  Over.  Finito.  Where are all your socks?  You must have misplaced them.  Stray animals with cold tootsies must be breaking in and stealing them.  You must accidentally be wearing six pairs at the same time.  You are acting like one of our kids and throwing clean laundry in the hamper just to make me do more and more laundry.  There must be SOME explanation, right?

Yes.

It is this...

Jack works.  Gets dirty.  Showers.  Puts on new socks.  Repeats all weekend.  Big Boy steals socks for "baseball socks". Crazy beagle dog stages war on any left in reach.  All five kids also wear clothes and pjs and use towels....

All.Weekend.Long. 

The nerve.