some more stuffs

So. Dang. Tired. It's a decent tired. It's the tired of having so much fun your brain wants to explode and then grappling with a 4 year old whose least offensive behavior lately has been eating toothpaste. 

I'm just gonna bullet point this because I'm typing this in my phone. The computer is all the way on the other side of the couch and I'm tired, so brevity is key. 

WonderGirl turned this many:

Those are chocolate chips, bytheby, not bugs. The massive party of 20 screaming kids was a raging success. I mean seriously, check out this cake:

Heck yes, cake!  At some point I will make my way to the other side of the couch where the pics are stored and show you pics of the mad scientist shindig, but that day is not today. 

Then a few days later, I turned more of the 30. My mom was here (first time together on my bday since 1996!) and fulfilled my birthday wish, which was cleaning out the kid's closets. BEST MOM EVAR. 

Also, that was the day WG moved from 1st grade to 2nd grade. I wish I had a crystal ball to let me know how happy we'll be with our decision years from now, but after meeting with all the teachers and coaches and all around awesome humans who are willing to teach other people's children all day, it felt right. If you have any specific questions, ask away, because I don't really have any idea what else to say on the topic. Except that I'm SO crazy thankful my mom was here for all of that - besides just watching my other humans so we could go undisturbed to meetings and also to hug me and tell me I was not a loon. Also, prayer rocks. 

THEN I headed to God's Country (aka Georgia) because my band got booked to play the Stone Mountain Highland Games!!  Usually I just get my one magnificent weekend in June when we play the Blairsville games, but this was a bonus weekend, and an extra treat because my rockstar in-laws came to cheer me on.  Mom2 is trooping through another round of chemo and is doing it in style :)

I'll just spam you with a few of the gazillion shots and selfies stuffed into my phone over the weekend:

HEAVEN. I am so blessed to know musicians this awesome who let me play with them AND are such fabulous humans that I fawn all over them like a crazy person. 

Now, back to reality. It's a pretty great reality, but it's definitely reality. Take this afternoon, when I picked up the kids from school and they charged me, declaring their love and how I am the best mom ever and then spent a good portion of the evening angrily screaming at all the things. 

At least they practiced violin and piano. That makes me far less homicidal. Still, I have to go hide the toothpaste. Gah. 

HAPPY FREAKIN' BIRTHDAY JANE!!!!!!!

I HOPE YOUR DAY SMELLS BETTER THAN THING 3!!!

we need an adult in charge over here

It's 4am and I can't sleep.  Too much is going on for my brain to shut down.  Let's make a list, shall we?

WonderGirl is turning SEVEN today.

My parents are in town.

We are having a party today and I wanted to keep it simple this year.  So just 20 kids this year.  Maybe more, maybe less.  In my defense I really tried to stick with 10, but I didn't want anyone to feel left out.

So I'm throwing a massive party again.  I'm a complete masochist.

Tomorrow WG is having a wee violin recital to graduate from Suzuki book 1. 

Besides inviting a few friends and having her practice, my brain has not started to process putting the recital together.  Refreshments?  Programs?  Some kind of funny ceremony?  Eh, that's a whole day away.  I'm good.

Have I mentioned Thing 3 is crawling?  Actually scooting around like a baby seal - it's hysterical and stressful at the same time.

My sunshine is SEVEN.

I'm not going to say the time has just flown by and I can't believe she's so big, because it has definitely felt like 7 years.  That's not a bad thing - it has been 7 of the most challenging and wonderful years a human ever lived.  It's just... whoa.  Yesterday were her parent teacher conferences and I'd been concerned because the Dude (who is 4) did her reading homework a few weeks ago.  I was all prepared to get all up in that because even though my 4 year old can read, that's still pretty sad, right?  But the school's gifted and talent coach and psychologist met us there and.. well, you guessed it.

Everyone (aside from those guys) says skipping a grade is too traumatic for a kid and I'm not in the habit of traumatizing her (well, maybe a little). The transition wouldn't actually be too tough since she already goes to 2nd grade for math and already has a desk in there. Aside from all the test scores, she's just my little girl.  She's not a statistic. Is it the right thing to do?  Do I tell her to spin her wheels for a few years and at some point she'll start learning something she doesn't already know?  We actually met about this last year but everyone was too worried about her social/emotional development if she skipped and now that they've met her they're concerned about it if she doesn't.  I've only been a mother for 7 years, how on earth am I qualified to make decisions that make any kind of lasting impact on another human??

And you can guess how I'm doing.  It's 5am now and I'm trying not to panic.  Maybe this is all my fault and if I'd just put her ahead at the beginning of the year everything would be smooth sailing right now.  I've ruined her.  I'VE RUINED A HUMAN.

 

WHAT IF WHEN SHE IS A CRACK-ADDICT-BANK-ROBBING 18 YEAR OLD SHE BLAMES THIS DEFINING MOMENT AS THE ONE THAT RUINED HER LIFE?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a raging party to throw.

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.  

one week

One more week.  It's started getting dark by the time the kids go to sleep and the Dude keeps asking when he gets to go to school.  He's riiight on the cut-off date so I could easily keep him out this year, but for now he's just chomping at the bit to get in there and get going.  How rude, right?

I haven't been posting very much because I've hated taking too much time off for myself - even for blogging.  I will have time next week.  Which angers me, but once I do have a few free moments to do exotic stuff like vacuum I'll be okay.  I have loved every single day of this summer and watching my kids grow together.  This year I had two actual kids - not a kid and a toddler - so we could do actual things.  Really awesome fun things with water and glue and swimsuits.  It only took me 7 years to get to this point.

Seriously, all I want to do is wax poetic and moan and groan about how school is going to steal my precious children and they are growing up too fast and somehow blame everything on the Skull and Bones society.

Instead, can I just take a moment and expound on how awesome it is to be a Mormon?  It's fabulous to live life with the knowledge of WHY I'm here and where I'm going.  I look up into the sky and think about all the planets and galaxies and massive stars out there and how we are these simple people on one small planet who have evolved to care about important things like who got cast as the new Batman.

I can't look at what we are here, and what is out there and think we are the product of some random chemical reaction.  If we were, I would be even MORE ashamed of the fact that reality TV exists.  I mean, if we were the only people to ever be in this great universe, and we used this amazing gift to focus on what Real Housewife did to the other one... well, it would crush me.  Instead, I know we are part of this amazing, huge plan and have been given the free agency to do nutty things like professional eating and killing each other over ideological differences.  Which is not as depressing with the knowledge that this isn't all there is.  Life is just one stop on our journey.

That's what keeps me going and gives me hope.  I love knowing.

cut . it . out .

I was seriously sick of my super long hair that was just the right length for Thing 3 to yank. Hard. But if I go to get my hairs cut, I want to do something new and fun, and for now I have no ideas. So I asked the husband to trim the scraggly ends. Which means something entirely different to the two of us. Anyway, this happened:

crazy train

I'm not a year and a half into this take-a-picture-every-day thing and though I've learned more about my camera, I'm still totally in the dark about editing.  I thought I'd share a bit of the trainwreck process with you.

 "Okay, this picture looks good.  I'll edit that one."

 "Maybe I'll crop it in closer and brighten up our faces."

 "Maybe I'll use some retro filter."

 "Or sepia.  Everything looks cooler in sepia."

 "Hrm... back to the original and I'll up the saturation.  More color I say!"

 "Or no color at all.  Wait, where did my nose go?"

"Aw, screw it."

black

Am I the only one who has trouble picking out an outfit to wear to a funeral? I don't know if all black is just cliché or so cliché that it's inappropriate, especially if I'm not related to the deceased. So this was my compromise this morning.

It wasn't one of those funerals where they lived a long healthy life and had a pile of grandchildren and it feels like a lovely culmination of a journey. I sat next to the deceased's 6 year old daughter and heard her baby sister behind me and prayed for strength the entire time. For all of us, for the rest of our earthly journeys.

This life thing is not for amateurs.