Uncategorized
Early Weekend
The kids don’t have school tomorrow, which means that our weekend starts early. Hooray!! We’re all tired and in need of an extra day off.
Uncategorized
Uncategorized
Uncategorized
Bedtime Blues
I remember thinking, when the kids were toddlers, that once they got older their bedtime rituals would be simpler.
I was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Bedtime is hairy. We are all exhausted by the time 8pm rolls around, and some evenings we don’t get home until after 9pm.
Let’s all just cross our fingers that this situation improves soon. This mama is tired.
Uncategorized
Life
“Hey, when you’re out, pick up a new board game that we can all play later!”
These were the words from my husband this afternoon, and I agreed; it sounded like fun. Before my daughter and I left Target today, we stopped by the toy department and selected The Game of Life. My sister and I used to play this all the time when we were kids. We loved it! I was excited to share the game with my kids.
As with most things, we should have waited a bit longer before trying this.
Nobody could keep track of their paydays, there were cards scattered everywhere, everyone was talking over everyone else. Ugh. Not fun at all.
There were a couple of funny parts, but the game became exhausting and grew old. Appropriate, I suppose: life is tiring, stressful, and if you’re lucky, kind of funny sometimes.
After the kids cleaned up the game, I slyly slid it under a cabinet with my foot. I hope they forget we own it, at least for a few days. I need time to recover.
Uncategorized
Ballad
After we (finally!) made it through Alex’s homework assignment tonight, he told me that he was sad today because his friend Erick had to leave school early. Apparently, Erick got sick in art class. After explaining this to me, Al grabbed a nearby toy to use as a microphone and launched into a ballad worthy of long hair and leopard print jeans:
Errrrrrrrrrick!! I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiss you!
But you threw uuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
I looooooove you!
(Repeat, at least 14 times.)
Erick, we hope you feel well soon!
Uncategorized
Monnnnnnnnnnnnnnday
Longest. Day. Ever.
Actually, just from 4:30pm to now has been awful. The rest of today, not so much. But good gravy has this evening sucked.
Alex got all smiley faces at school today, which lends a perfect explanation as to why he is so difficult tonight. From battling over homework, dinner, more homework, and the reasons why we can’t eat Oreos after we brush our teeth, I have completely had it with this day.
Mark bowls on Monday nights, and I texted him earlier asking for peanut butter pie and some Valium. I didn’t get a response (his phone either died or he turned it off so as to not feel obligated to read my pathetic play by plays of life at home), so Plan B is to dive into that bag of mini Reece’s that I bought yesterday while watching what’s left of Dancing with the Stars.
Seriously, is it Friday yet?
Uncategorized
Lessons from Andrew
This just happened:
Andrew came skipping into the kitchen. “Mommy, can I have a grape juice?”
“You already had one,” I answered as I sorted through all the papers that came home from school.
“What?!? That does not answer my question, Mommy.”
“NO, Andrew, you may not have a juice because you already had one,” I replied, with perhaps just a smidge of exasperation.
“There you go, Mommy. Now that’s an answer. You just had to be more pacific.”
“Well, ok then, buddy. Go play.”
Then he went skipping back out of the kitchen, en route to the next bout of mischief.
Happy weekend!
Uncategorized
Torture – Otherwise Known as Homework
Here we are, trying to get through another night of homework.
Part of tonight’s assignments: a subtraction worksheet. We’ve been arguing over the first problem for the last ten minutes.
“Al, what’s 15 – 11?”
“Six.”
“No, Buddy. MINUS.”
“Six. Five plus one is SIX!”
“Well, yes, but this is subtraction, dude.”
“But it is six.”
Ugh. We’ve got eight more problems to argue over before we move on to spelling words.
Uncategorized
Going and Going…
My kids seem to have Energizer Bunny genes. They don’t stop; they just keep going and going and going. All. Day. Long.
I’m certain they aren’t the only kids like this, and they do have their quiet moments throughout the day, but I feel like most of the time they are bouncing from one thing to the next without stopping to take a breath. It’s exhausting.
Add to it toilet training (I told Alex today, for about the 352nd time, that I am OVER it, and he just needs to get rid of pull-ups), behavior issues (Andrew has been closely studying Alex for more than five years, and thinks he can also pull some of the same behavior crap), and a daughter who goes sideways if her brothers so much as look at her, and you’ve got a full fledged recipe for chaos.
I figure we’ve got several more years of this coming our way before they grow out of these behaviors (and adapt new ones, fun!), so I will just have to suck it up and promise that I’ll keep trying, day after day. What else can you do?
And so, with that, I’m off to bed. I hope you’re enjoying the weekend.
Uncategorized
Reading Rainbow
I’ve always loved reading. When I was a kid, Reading Rainbow was a favorite show; it brought together two things I enjoyed: books and television. It was almost soothing to sit and listen to a story read while primitive animations brought the whole story to life. And who doesn’t love Levar Burton?
With the recent campaign to bring Reading Rainbow back to kids, I couldn’t help but notice a dvd of an episode on a shelf at our library. I quickly grabbed it, not knowing who would appreciate it more; at the very least, it was something the kids and I could sit and watch together, maybe even during the magical, mostly non-existent “quiet time” that I stubbornly try to enforce every day (and mostly fail at implementing).
Tonight seemed like a good night to introduce RR; not knowing what it was, the kids were intrigued. Andrew just wasn’t ready to go to bed, and Addie loves anything that is associated with rainbows. As soon as it began to play, though, I got worried; it’s not like any of the shows that they watch now. It’s more low key and laid back, gentle and soothing. I figured they might call it boring, and abandon my idea of “quality family snuggle time on the couch”.
I was totally wrong. They loved it.
We watched the two episodes on the disc; halfway through, they were already asking if there are more than the two we have from the library. I will soon be reserving more!
Beyond the quality snuggle time, the quiet, and the relaxed kids, these shows spurred conversations that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise had tonight. “Mommy, do you like whales? What do whales eat? How did that manatee get hurt? Do you like the manatees at the zoo?”
Awesome. But, as the saying goes, “you don’t have to take my word for it!” Share these with your kids. I can’t wait to watch more with mine!
Uncategorized
Realizations
Having three kids, one of whom has Down syndrome, with busy schedules, I often hear things like “Wow! I don’t know how you do it!” and “You look frazzled!” and even “You just need to relax!”.
I usually blow off these comments, with a smile or laugh, and keep chugging through the chaos. I mean, I really don’t know how I do it, I am frazzled, and if I knew how to relax, I totally would. It’s just not that easy. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Right now, we’re still battling the transition issues that Alex experiences every time there is a change; once (if?) we get settled, it will be time for something new to start, and everything will fall apart again. Sleep patterns are inconsistent, which throws behaviors for an awful loop, and we never know when the next meltdown will occur.
That’s just one small component of what we experience with one of the three kids. We won’t even talk about the behaviors that the little one tries to get away with (apparently, he is trying to take advantage of my frazzled state to try and get one by), my disaster zone of my house, or the fact that I haven’t found time to hit the gym in nearly a month.
It all just totally hit me, though. I am ready to admit it: I am overwhelmed. I am tired of all the battles we fight to advocate for our kids. I get ridiculously jealous when I hear of other families, with kids of comparable ages, doing fun things around the city or on vacation, because it is just so difficult for us to pull off the same type of outing/travels and we usually just don’t even try to do so anymore. I want a tidy, organized house, where I don’t lose at least three different things a day because I am so distracted by everything else that is going on.
I think the answer to “How do you do it all?” is this: I can’t stop to think about it. I just do it, or face the possibility of sitting around, freaking out about it. For now, the end result is me looking frazzled, or tense; soon, I hope to figure all that out, or at least start making small steps to being more organized and relaxed. But, as long as it all gets done (or a majority of it, anyway; I have doubts that this house will ever be as clean as I dream it could be!), I can’t really worry about how we get to that end point.
Right?