Oh, The Humanity!

My children are both crying. One is asking for anything! everything! that could delay actually closing his eyes. He wants juice, a snack, his mom, no dad, some shape toy in Sarah's room. The other is screaming to just be let out of her crib, for-the-love-of-god!


Why aren't there any chocolate chip cookies in this house?

Catching Up in a Nutshell

It always pleasantly surprises me when I have been absent from blogging and people notice. I get emails from dear, sweet bloggers who have noticed my lack of updates, or I run into someone in real life who has been wondering what we've been up to.

In the last few weeks, to tell you the truth, I've kind of retreated into myself for a bit. When my husband's grandmother passed away, it really shook us up. It's been taking us, and more specifically, me, a while to get back into the swing of things.

• I've been waking up around 5 o'clock in the morning for the last month or so. No alarm, just some restlessness. You would think I would be getting so much done, but really it just means I've reactivated my Warcraft account.
• I walk/ran for 24 minutes the other day. And by "slash-ran" I mean my legs moved in a running fashion while the top half of my body ached, bounced and cried. Oh and you know that soft, pooch of a mama belly that reminds you of just how enormously large your body can be? Yeah, do they make some kind of supportive garment that would keep it from reminding me quite so intensely?
• I thought that maybe I could try and walk/run by myself sometime before my husband leaves for work in the morning. I should have thought of this back when the sun was coming up before 7, which is, um, after my husband leaves.
• Jack is potty trained. Completely. All done. It only cost me an estimated $4 in prizes per successful number two for the last month, several future carpet cleaning bills and many, many tolls on my sanity.
• It was supposed to rain today and then turn into fall. Instead it's close to 90 degrees and I think I smell a little.
• I have new curtains, the first curtains I have ever bought. They are delightfully grown-up and elegant. They will soon have baby face print smears on them because Sarah finds them a hilarious place to hide.
• I have no Halloween costumes for the kids yet. I need ideas! Leave comments!

Flickr. Sigh. After reading Zoot's post I have decided to change the way I use Flickr. It seems that since it is such a large, public place for photos that there's a lot of picture stealing. I have read about several bloggers who have had problems with pictures of their children being used for other websites. Nothing completely creepy (that I've heard of), but enough to make me want to change things around. I like taking photos and sharing them on Flickr and on my blog(s), but I am going to change all pictures of my kids so that only family and friends can see them. I wouldn't like it if someone stole a pictures of a flower from my Flickr, but it would not. be. okay. if someone took a picture of my kids.

If you are a blogging/virtual friend: I would like you to be a "friend" in Flickr. Contact me either in Flickr, in my comments, or I will try and find you in Flickr.

If you are a real-life friend: Please sign in to Flickr and I will make you "family." I know it's another login/password thing to register, but I will feel better about knowing who can see pictures of my babies. (I think you can use your yahoo user name and password). Also, you will get to see the best pictures (shh, don't tell the blog friends).

Link to my Flickr; I am MotherBunny if you search for me.

(The links on pictures in my archives are going to be messed up for a while till I get the Flickr permissions straightened out, so, if you actually go back and read them, I'll fix them soon, or maybe never if it doesn't seem like a problem.)

Goopy Love

Sometimes my eyes swell with tears because I have the most beautiful babies God could have ever thought to give me. And sometimes my eyes shoot out hot tears because these two monkeys are driving me bananas!

I recently read something Anna Quindlen wrote about raising her kids and how quickly these precious, chubby years go by. She says, "I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less." And while it was beautifully written and poignantly phrased, it left me swirling with anxiety, guilt, anger, frustration, goopy love, snuggly softness, and teary wistfulness. Which basically sums up motherhood.

I barked at Jack today for being loud in McDonald's while we waited for our lunch. And I growled at him this morning for flicking the door stop again, making an awful noise. And I still am sad that I feel like I didn't really appreciate Sarah's babyness because all I can remember is the loooong, grumpy nights of walking and bouncing and begging her to sleep.

But also, a soft, sweet snuggly boy came and woke me up with kisses this morning. And a precious little girl snuggled into my chest as gave me kisses before I put her down for her nap. And they both made faces and swayed to the elevator music while we munched our chicken nuggets. Sarah pointed out her nose and belly to me and Jack sang his ABCs all the way home.

These babies are the most incredible thing to ever happen to me. I just have to take a deep breath and push away the frustration and the guilt and the anger, and make more room for the soft snuggles, the brilliant baby games, and the overflowing goopy love.

I Don't Want to be That Mom

I don't want to be that mom who gets angry because her potty training three-year-old peed on the floor. Again. And again. It's hard not to become that person when I start off the day at 9 o'clock in the morning to the sound of pee puddling on the floor. It's hard to put on a smiling face and not snap because these are the 7th, 8th, 20th? pair of pants to be peed on in the last 24 hours. It's so hard because I know he KNOWS how to pee in the potty. Or at least I know he CAN LEARN to pee in the potty.

I guess that really, I'm just angry with myself. I'm angry and frustrated because what I'm doing isn't working. I'm not doing the right thing. It's not working for me. If it was, I wouldn't be washing smelly toddler pants every day.

This is one of the things that is SO hard (and self-revealing) about being a mom. I have to smile and keep going, even though, now there is more work for me to do, and I'm already behind on the other stuff and clearly my potty-training parenting is not working.

I just want to yell and force things to go the way I want them to. Isn't that why people, parents, yell? To insist and demand that people listen to them and obey them?

That's why I want to yell. And scream, and cry and stomp my feet. I am frustrated and I don't have a better solution. What I was doing didn't work. So I want to insist and demand that he not pee in his pants or on the floor. Again.

But it doesn't work. Losing my patience just makes Jack push me more. He becomes an octopus in the bathroom pulling down the towels, unrolling the toilet paper across the floor, turning on the sink tap, slamming the door, standing upside-down so I can't change his pants. He tries to see just what I will do since I've already used up the very last of my patience.

So, I don't want to be that mom.

I want to be the mom who has the answers. The mom who can gently and encouragingly and effectively teach this boy to use the potty. The mom who can throw yet another load of toddler boy clothes in the wash with a smile--or better yet, the mom who only has to wash toddler boy clothes once a week!

I don't want to be that mom. I have to keep reminding myself when I start to turn into that mom. I have to just walk away and figure out another plan.

I Can't Do It All

Sometimes the seemingly obvious hits me and I can look around and suddenly see things differently. Like tonight, I was laying in bed thinking of all the things I hadn't done lately. We had a really really busy weekend, Jack had a birthday party, so a lot of the normal things got pushed to the side. Now the house is in complete disarray and I'm trying to match up the random pieces of clothing that are actually clean to make outfits for everybody.

And then that voice in my head starts playing. Why can't you just keep the kitchen clean? If you would just do more laundry you wouldn't have to scrape the bottom of the drawers for clothes. I can't believe the house still looks like this and you've been home all day!

And then the REAL voice chimes in while I'm laying there in bed cataloging all of the things I did with my time today. You played sidewalk paint with Jack. You played with the pretend food with Sarah. You made them each breakfast and lunch. You changed diapers. You changed 45 pairs of toddler underpants. You kept a timer so another human being could be reminded to pee in the potty. You put the baby down for a nap.

And you know what I realized?

I can not do it all.

I can not do the job of taking care of my children and the job of keeping house all at the same time. Sure, I can juggle them and squeeze parts of each job into and around the other. But if it takes an hour to dress and feed the kids in order to get us out the door, I cannot expect to also clean the kitchen, do laundry and scrub a bathroom in that time.

Most importantly, I can expect to be the best mama I can be. And secondly, I can try to be the best home-maker I can be. And when my husband walks through the door at the end of the workday, he will be happy and relaxed if he sees his wife and children happily playing together and full of stories of their adventures. (And then maybe he won't notice that he doesn't have any clean underwear.)

I Just Don't Know

I just don't know what to do with this baby girl. She only has two modes: happy and lovely or tired, grumpy, cranky, annoyed, back-arching mad at the world. If there is anything at all to make her unhappy, then she switches into red-faced, crying, tired-but-not-sleeping mode and insists that her mama be in physical contact with her all. the. time. There is no gradual escalating of the frustration. There is no little bit cranky because her teeth kind of hurt. There is no might be sick, so just be snuggly and sleepy. There is only straight to ten.

At least that's how it feels.

It feels like all I see and hear is the same deafening, cranky sounds and I can't interpret them to figure out what the problem is. I am clearly not understanding her. I don't get it, she must think I'm an idiot at this mothering stuff because I can't seem to do the right thing. Or maybe something is just bothering her A LOT and I'm too thick to figure it out. So I keep putting her down for extra naps and giving her more milk.

I wish I knew better how to help her. I wish I knew what ails her. I would be happy to hold her, snuggle her, put her to bed, give her an extra bath, give her medicine, let her watch her favorite show, tell her brother to leave her alone - whatever it is I would do it. I just don't know what it is. She doesn't want to play with her toys alone or with me. She doesn't want to be held, she squirms out of my grip. She doesn't know what she wants and in my infinite mommy wisdom, I have no. clue. what. to. do.

She is a delightful, lovely little girl. I want to play with her and enjoy being with her. I want to know what I can do to help her. I don't want her to be sad. I feed her, I bathe her, I dress her, I change her, I rock her, I bounce her, I walk her, I kiss her, I love her.

And These Aren't The Last Four Teeth She'll Get, Either

I can't take it anymore. The sounds coming from my baby girl. She cries, she whines, she fusses. She is uncomfortable, she is tired, she is hungry, she is teething. Four teeth broke the surface this week and that is not the end of it. She isn't sleeping, she isn't playing, she isn't nursing. She wants to be held, but then wriggles out of my arms. She chews on some toys and then cries. She cries because I am not in physical contact with her.

I am tired of looking at the kitchen like this. I am tired of not having the energy to clean it right after dinner so that I wake up and it looks like this. I know it's my own fault, I know I'm the one not cleaning it, I'm the one leaving the jar of peanut butter on the counter. I'm the one leaving half a banana sit from breakfast.

But the crying, oh, the crying. The whining from the teeth. I can't think straight. I can't focus long enough to remember what I was doing. I can't concentrate on clearing off a counter. And thank goodness I don't have to cook dinner tonight, I can't comprehend what it entails to put together a meal.

My house has a constant, shrill, painful sound. It is draining me.