straws

I've hit the wall, folks.  The air is whispering fall, the news reports are predicting a heavy winter this year, I fight the urge daily to take WonderGirl out of school because I miss her so blasted much and I don't think she needs to be learning phonics for the 4th year in a row, and Monday morning the Dude crawled into my bed and quietly asked me to take Thing 3 back to the hospital because he didn't want a new baby anymore.

The problem he doesn't have a new baby anymore - that was tolerable.  But having a crawling baby who touches your stuff is another matter entirely.

Oh, how I love the Dude - but he has been working my last nerve this week.  He has had the hardest time transitioning to being a 4 year old kindergartner, sobbing at the prospect of another 3 hour class 4 days a week.  Today I was rushing around before he went to school and he was following me around asking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but before I could do that I had to feed Thing 3 a bottle and then take a shower and change because he had a diaper malfunction and soaked us both in pee.

By the time I got up both of us cleaned up, I came downstairs expecting to see a violent tantrum from a poor, sandwich-less, misunderstood 4 year old.  But instead I saw this:

You guys - he'd decided to take care of the lunch situation - so he'd gone downstairs to the deep freezer, lugged the big paint can off of it, dragged a box of chicken nuggets out of it, closed the freezer and managed to get the paint can back on top of it, came upstairs, somehow got a plate from a high cabinet (how on earth he did that scares me!) and put a few dino nuggets on his plate and then came to ask me to please put them in the microwave for him.

I had to grab the camera.  Surprisingly, I haven't had that urge in a while.  I've been taking rotten, blurry pictures lately and it's just too depressing on top of all the other tiny, unimportant but annoying things I've got in my sights lately.  Like cleaning out my closet - and having to get rid of most of the clothes from a time gone by where I didn't have to take into account the myriad of ways a child could tug on my top or pull up my skirt and expose my underwears in public.  What I have left is just kind of depressing and a statement about my current lifestyle that I should not examine too closely.  And then I had to thin out all the stuff in the bathroom, like all the gunk from back when I had time to put on lotion or makeup or dry my hair - good heavens, I haven't been to a hair stylist in over a year.  My natural color is NOT my friend.  It's not a big deal, but when you stack a few of things things on each other, they get a little heavy.

Thankfully my medication was tweaked a few months ago so my chemicals are all cooperating with each other, so I'm less likely to tear any heads off.  Heck, the fact that the Dude is still unscathed after the last few days is a testament to modern psychiatry.

But why can't it be summer every day??

and then there was one

Also, he just had his first day of school yesterday.  I was bawling my face off as I got into the car, but then discovered sweet Dude had left the door open which drained the battery and the van was dead as a doornail.  So in 100+ temps and 5 minutes until school started, I was madly trying to install Thing 3's car seat in the the Jeep and coax the Dude into the car.  Thank HEAVENS for a winter car.  We were only 5 minutes late and I was so stressed and distracted I didn't remember to cry until after I got back into the car.  It was all kind of handy seeing as he would have cried had he seen me crying.  So... thanks Dude?

There's no guarantee I won't bawl my face off today though.

mommy 1.0 vs mommy 3.0

It's Monday and I have nothing to write but feel like I should.  I think NaBloPoMo is going to be a big help this year - I'll have to find a way to mix my mommy-ing in with my blogging.  Because those two things are so vitally important.  Hrm... I was going for sarcasm in that last sentence but it's kind of true.

The other day I was thinking about hose early days of parenting.  A lot of you were there for that - blogging through post partum depression, Brasil, and my complete lack of knowledge of basic child care.  I look back and I tear up almost every time.  How did I survive it?  It was so dark.

Years ago as I was driving myself through the New Mexico desert to start grad school in Arizona,  the transmission blew up in my car and I was stranded.  I had a cell phone but no reception, and was terrified.  I looked at the oncoming traffic next to me and it was all I could do to not jump in front of it.  I was blessed by some angels in the form of a family of strangers and learned a lot that day about prayer and faith.  But whenever things get bad I remember how rational it seemed to step in front of a moving truck, and how close I was.  That first year of WonderGirl's life was like that, for the most part.  I tried to enjoy her and love mothering, but I was almost always just a few steps away from giving up in the worst way.  The fact that both WG and I survived is nothing short of a miracle to me.

But that year felt like 10.  Every day was a looming mountain to climb.  You know how some people say they look back and it's all a blur to them?  It still feels like it was 10 years.  Now we're hitting blur-time, and I understand what people mean.  I'm not a natural, but I've gotten pretty good at this.  Thing 3 hit the mom lottery, while poor WG got a clueless, sobbing hack.

But then again, I hit the kid lottery.  I was bumbling along but because she has huge brains, she figured out most things without needing adult intervention.  Then the Dude has a mini-mom who practices reading and piano and violin with him while I'm tending Thing 3.  These kids seriously rock despite my best efforts to ruin their childhoods.

So now we've got this angel of a baby and in the blink of an eye, he's gone from being born to scooting across the floor in a desperate effort to lick daddy's electric bass.  I wish this time could feel like a snail's pace.

PS:  I started this on Monday.  It's now Tuesday.  See what I mean about time going so fast I can hardly keep anything straight?

good morning?

Y'all.  Yesterday this happened.

FIRST GRADE.  I was such a mess I threw up at 4am. Well, it was either that or a mess of medications I'd taken, but whatever.  The husband prepacked her lunch with a sweet card, gave me a blessing and had dinner marinating the night before.  Because he knows me.  And is awesome.

I survived yesterday, but it was hard.  I loved all my boy time, but I missed my sunshine all day.  This summer, I soaked up the WonderGirl time and made every day count.  It was amazing.  Thank heavens the Dude was still home - he doesn't start 4K until next week and I predict I'll spend Monday sobbing and snuggling Thing 3 until his ears pop off.

But that's next week.  I woke up this morning around 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep.  I really, REALLY did not want to take WG to school today.  I didn't want the throw up again so I decided I'd go downstairs and do some photo editing to cheer me up - and then I discovered I'd accidentally deleted a weeks worth of pictures off the computer and SD card.  Y'all know me about pictures.  I document EVERY.DAY.  I started really freaking out, so I decided to try a last ditch effort to calm myself down by blogging, and found the N key was missing.  You can't type END or DEVASTATION or FREAKING without the N.  At this point I was ready to hide under the bed in the fetal position and cry all day, but I figured it was more productive to cry in the shower instead.

The husband was still home and listened to my sob story.  By the end of my shower, he had a recovery program sweeping the card for the deleted files and gave me a new keyboard and a kiss.  I still want to spend the day crying, but I'll manage to do that while doing other stuffs and not hiding under the bed.  How can a girl be sad with a husband like this??  Oh, and he restocked my emergency chocolate supply.  Sorry ladies - this guy is alll mine.

Now the only thing wrong is a massive zit on my chin.  But in light of everything else I've gone through this morning, I think I shall overcome.