Oh Hello Again....

Oh hello blog.

I've missed you.

Did you even know I was gone?

I was.

I'm having a really hard time with one of my children.

She (or he, but let's face it, you all know Maddox would never make me crazy) has been driving me insane for the last week.

Sloane, I mean this nameless child, pooped in the shower four times last week. FOUR. By the third time, I realized that she was intentionally doing it when I wasn't looking. After the first two times, she noticed that I was watching her rather closely, she would wait until Holynd, I mean, a different child had me good and distracted and then would just POOP in my shower. NOT lovely.

She also crashed our computer this week. Completely crashed. New hard drive. Lots of lost data. This made me very very very sad. And pretty upset.

I had to live without a computer for four days. Luckily, because of Instagram and Facebook, I didn't feel too out of touch with the outside world... but I have desperately missed my blog outlet.

This nameless child also completely destroyed our video monitor and took most of the stuffing out of one of my couch cushions.

She also REFUSED to get a haircut and threw a huge tantrum in the middle of the salon.

I was a little bit fed up with this child.

But at the end of the day, I still love her more then anything else in the world.

Did I forget to mention that Holynd destroyed a laptop at 2 years old too?

Yep.

And believe me, I have been pretty overprotected of this laptop and somehow Sloane still got to it.

Little Miss Diva

I took Holynd to get school clothes on Saturday. G-Ma and Aunt Twitch came along.

The morning before we left she asked me if we were going to find her Hello Kitty backpack. I thought that this was really weird because Holynd isn't a Hello Kitty fan. In fact, this was one of the first times I had ever heard her mention Hello Kitty.

I told her she could have whatever kind of backpack she wanted. (As long as I could pick out all her clothes. Fair? I think so.)

We ended up at Old Navy first. We walked in the door and guess what was staring right at us?

A pink Hello Kitty backpack.

Holynd looked at me and said, "There it is."

She still talking about it. 

I was really worried about how I would handle Holynd going to school. This was part of the reason why I signed her up clear back in February. I wanted to sign her up and then forget about it.

I didn't completely forget about it, but it did make it a little easier.

Summer came and we started playing and playing and playing and playing.

Pretty soon, Holynd was bored with all of our favorite spots and I was running out of ideas on how I could keep it interesting.

About a month ago, she started asking me about school.

"Is school coming tomorrow?" she'd ask. "Please mom, can it start tomorrow?"

She was so bored with being at home with me and so excited for school, I decided to put her in three-days a week instead of just two.

Holynd loves to be busy and when she's not, I suffer.

I can actually say that I'm really really excited for school to start.

Little boy...

This little man is nine months old now.

I can't even begin to explain how much I love him.

Maddox is happy, kind, smart and loving.

He is also starting to get mobile now. He army-crawls all over the house. Everyday his army-crawl starts to look more and more like a regular crawl.

It won't be long before he's under my feet all day long.

Maddox has decided that cutting teeth is his new favorite thing. Having two babies cutting teeth isn't very much fun, but for the most part, Maddox doesn't complain very much.

I can't imagine life without him.

Maddox has gotten very very hungry lately. I haven't been able to keep up, so he takes a bottle twice a day, nurses four times a day and eats two meals - breakfast and dinner.

I remember a few people telling me that boys ate more then girls.

More is an understatement.

Playtime..

The hardest part of my day starts around 5pm.

It lasts until bedtime. 8pm.

I've discussed this with my friend Nicole several times. It doesn't matter how well the day has went, everything goes to pits at around 5 'o clock.

Basically, all three of the kids go nuts. At least one kid has a complete meltdown.

I don't know why I continue to think that I've got this part of the day figured out! Without fail, someone starts to fall apart right before dinner.

I've started to rate how bad dinnertime goes by how many kids are acting out. Hence, a "1" means that only one kids is on the floor crying hysterically, throwing food at the walls and refusing to take a bath.

I'm ok with "1" days. "2" days are pretty common around here. Usually it's the girls who are sick of each other and sick of me. Every once in awhile we have a "3" day. Those are the days when Matt usually has to talk me out of getting in the car and driving away forever. ;)

No matter what rating the day is carrying, I've started to just turn on my iPod and blast Jack White. I'll sing along and pray that somehow we'll get through the chaos.

Yesterday was a "1". All three of the kids were really wound-up. But I'll let you guess which kid was having the meltdown.

This picture has a conversation that goes along with it.

Holynd: Mom, I have something I need to tell you.

Me: What's up Holynd?

Holynd: Mom, I farted during dance class.

Me: Wonderful.

Holynd: Yeah, it was stinky.

Me: Lovely.

Happy Friday.

Count your blessings....

Last week, Matt and I joined Facebook.

I had a moment of anxiety where I worried what would become of my blog.

Then I remembered why I keep updating this humble blog.

For my kids.

I've always wanted this blog to be as honest as I can make it. I don't want my kids to feel threatened by the idea of "perfect parenthood" like I have so many times.

There are so many days where I just want to sit down and cry. There's never enough mothering to go around. My patience runs dry around lunchtime and the days can sometimes be so long.

I get discouraged when I don't enjoy every minute because everytime you turn around someone is telling you that these are the best days of your life.

So, I blog. I blog hoping that when my kids feel like they're being torn in 16 different ways, they'll know that it's ok to feel fed up.

I know I'm blessed. I love being a stay-at-home mom. I love my kids and I love my husband. I just hate those moments where I beat myself up non-stop because I don't thoroughly enjoy EVERY SINGLE MINUTE.

It was really hard to love the moment when the girls walked in covered in lipstick. 

Then it got even harder to love the moment when I discovered my brand new bedroom set covered in lipstick. 

Then it was sheer torture to love the moment when I saw that my duvet cover had also received a lipstick treatment. 

It took two seconds to post this picture to Facebook. Then, only a few minutes for people to comment and "like it". And for a split second I thought, "Now I won't have to sit down and blog about it."

But no, for my sanity, I needed to sit down and admit that this situation made me mad. I did not find it endearing or even funny (at first). I was downright angry.

After I had a moment to pout about the situation, I started thinking about other parents.

"No other mother would have ever gotten that mad", I thought.

"My kids deserve a mother who would appreciate this experience."

Pretty soon I was telling myself I was awful. "I'm an awful mother. Just horrible".

I don't want my kids to feel that way.

So here it is in writing, I got mad. More mad then I needed to be.

Don't dwell on it. Don't beat yourself up. Count your blessings and just keep doing the best you can.