The past month or two has been rough around here. I think it’s just plain exhaustion — lack of sleep makes everything harder. It has nothing to do with the baby … she’s a great sleeper. It’s the older two who are wearing me out, just doing the normal rambunctious boy-type things that 5-year-olds and 2-year-olds do when they are housed under one roof.

Oh, like what?

Like the older one putting the little one on his shoulders and trying to go down the slide in the backyard. Or dumping an $85 bottle of prescription lotion on the floor. Or working in tandem to accomplish a task that is impossible to accomplish alone, like reaching the neighbor’s cat who is sitting on top of the 8-foot fence outside. Like fighting over things and breaking things and beating each other’s heads against the floor.

I know at least the early-morning and midnight wakings are just a phase, and luckily I have a love affair with strong coffee. But the lack of rest has made my patience wear thin and I’ve been forced to face the fact that I yell and act crazy a LOT. After spending days on end feeling like I was doing a crap job as a stay-at-home mom because shouldn’t I be loving every moment and crafting the hell out of something in preparation for Thanksgiving? I resolved to do better. Every night I tucked them in bed determined to do better because they deserved better even though they damn near set the house on fire today. Tomorrow, I wouldn’t get as frustrated. Tomorrow, I would have more patience.

And then tomorrow came and I HAD NO PATIENCE because I was awakened at 4:00 a.m. by Asher who insisted that me, him, his blanket, his kitty cat and his monkey needed to hang out. He drags that crap all over the house with him. All of this.

I was (am) too exhausted to know what to do to make anything better. If I can’t even get my kid to sleep until the sun comes up, how am I supposed to solve any other real-life problems?! That’s what I yelled at Husband when he asked me where his such-and-such was. I don’t know where it is. I cannot solve one more problem.

And so, one day last week after I got Maverick ready for bed, we knelt down to pray like we do every night because it’s the one thing I know I do right after a long day of things I’ve done wrong. We’d had a rough afternoon and I was just relieved that the day was almost over. He surprised me by saying the sweetest prayer, asking God to help him learn to listen so he could do a better job of obeying his Mommy and Daddy. When he was done, I also said a prayer and asked for help to be a good mother. He looked up at me and said “That was so silly, mommy! You’re already a good mommy! Oh my goodness, that is SO SILLY.” And he laughed like it was hilarious and gave me a big hug I will never forget. 

Sometimes I go through these cycles of struggle-struggle-struggle, feel like a failure-feel like a failure-feel like a failure, and then something happens and I am humbly reminded that my children are so full of grace. I don’t think the most important thing is me being the most fantastic mom that ever mothered. That’s not going to happen — let’s be honest. The most important thing is for them to know that they are worthy of an apology. I want my children to understand that everyone messes up. 

Including their very own mother.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I could be coping better, but I don’t really know how to cope any better than I already am, so I bought myself a book — Desperate: Hope For The Mom Who Needs To Breathe.

People kept talking about it so I figured it was worth a shot. I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but so far I think it’s just what I needed. 

Because I am a person of action, I immediately put some of the ideas into practice — adapting them to my life and personality, and to my kid’s personalities. This book affirmed what I already know to be true: being a mom of small kids is brutal and it eventually gets better, but in the meantime it’s up to ME to keep MY shit together. So whatever I need to do to make that happen … I just need to do it.

I’ve been proactively taking charge of my life and trying to make our situation work for us, and it’s helping a lot. Husband and I are struggling to find our footing as we adjust to having a family of five. I’ll have weeks when I feel like I can totally handle my three kids, and weeks when I am worn so thin I feel like I can’t possibly deal with being a mom for one more minute. An important piece of the puzzle for me is camaraderie and support from women in my life. I love my husband, but expecting him to be my every source of emotional support is unfair. He’s my best friend, but he’s not my girlfriend — and we like it that way. 

This week I was sinking into an emotional pit of despair where I felt like no one understands me or what I’m dealing with and all of this is just TOO HARD, OMG. It was a full-on pity party that I couldn’t put an end to. So in a desperate attempt to feel understood, I texted my girlfriend a long tirade of desolate thoughts.

And this is why I need my girlfriends, each one. I’m paraphrasing here, but basically she acknowledged that what I’m (we’re) doing is hard. She also told that I needed to pull myself out of my hole and buck up, because it’s warrior time. It won’t always be like this, but right now it is, so ARMOR UP. And I thought, yes. No one will ever fully understand what my days are like, and that is okay. I don’t think what I need most is to be completely understood. 

What I actually need most, as it turns out, is for someone to help me put my armor back on when it’s falling off.

You haven’t lived until you have hauled three small children to the Urologist’s office to drop off a “specimen” in a brown paper bag.

I’m just saying.

There are many, many ironic and hilarious pieces to this story, but I think my favorite is what happened after I dropped off the brown paper bag. I wheeled the double stroller past Maverick, who was holding open the door that led into the waiting room full of people – mostly men. Old men, young men, men who looked angry, and men who looked relieved. Maybe they were there to get vasectomies, maybe they were there to fix a problem with the pipes … who knows. 

What I do know is that the baby got hungry at that precise moment and started to scream, which was partially drowned out by her two older brothers who were holding out their arms yelling “I’M A ZOMBIE! I’M A ZOMBIE!” (Why. Seriously.) while laughing hysterically. I decided it would be better to feed her in the waiting room instead of in the hot car, despite the circumstances, and that is how everyone present ended up being subjected to 15 solid minutes of my children at their absolute worst.

I could not help but to notice the stares from everyone within earshot. And they weren’t the “Oh, look at the cute children!” kind. They were the “Shut those freaking kids up!” kind. And so, in an effort to quell my embarrassment over the entire ordeal, I told myself we were really doing all of the people there who were considering vasectomies a favor. I may as well have been wearing a big sign that read:

Today the following happened between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. 

Asher woke up from his nap really cranky. He’s been beating his head on the floor during tantrums, which is AWESOME! because clearly he doesn’t hurt himself enough as it is, right? Anyway, he got mad at Maverick for taking his toy and he proceeded to beat his head on the brick fireplace hearth. He not only has a huge bruise from it, but scrapes all over his head as well. Do other kids do this?! Because it’s graying me.

Later, I was feeding the baby on the couch while the boys played. I had just given her the bottle when Maverick scooted over next to the couch on his belly, peering under the side table. “What are you doing?” I asked. He had found a toy. Right then, here comes Asher, trying to see what his big brother is doing.

“ASHER HAS A BUG!”  

This is what I heard Maverick yell at the precise moment that Asher threw a gigantic, black, dead beetle in the air at us. I screamed at the top of my lungs, scaring the shit out of Pepper, who now HAD A DEAD BEETLE STUCK TO HER BELLY.

The baby was scared to death, for obvious reasons. It probably sucks when you’re trying to eat and people are running and screaming all around you and then the person feeding you screams … and so, she got back at all of us by having The Biggest Blowout Ever. When I realized that poo was soaking through my clothes I jumped up and rushed her to her bedroom, stripping us both.

That is when my next door neighbor stopped by. Of course she did. I couldn’t answer the door because I was too busy being half-dressed and rinsing poop off my daughter while my middle son stood in the bathroom pulling off his diaper and peeing on the floor as my eldest child yelled “MOMMY! MRS. DEBBIE IS HERE!” over and over and over and over and over again from the living room.

And that, my friends, is why they call it the witching hour. In case you didn’t know. I need a drink and my husband, in that order, as soon as possible.

Okay … here it comes. A rant. Somewhere, right this minute, Husband is reading this and breathing a sigh of relief that it isn’t directed at him.

I am in over my head with my current life situation. This is a fact. And the way I talk about it probably makes it seem worse than it is. Maybe. No. Probably not.

But when it comes down to it, I am living the life I’ve always wanted. I have three kids, I’m home with them, and when I wished for this life before it happened, I had no idea how hard it would be. Had I known what it would actually be like, I wouldn’t have had the guts to give it a shot. People talk about exhaustion and self-sacrifice and grace and hard decisions … they tell you about those things in parenting books and articles, in blogs and conversations. You nod your head like you understand, but really, you don’t get it until you’re in it.

Even when I just had one kid, I didn’t completely get it. It took two and then three for me to look up at the sky and say “YES! I get it now! Now PLEASE make it STOP!” But it’s not going to stop, because children are relentless. That’s another word I didn’t understand fully, but now I do. 

R-e-l-e-n-t-l-e-s-s.

Raising children is so incredibly hard, OMG. I don’t even know where to start trying to put it into words. Admitting this does not mean I am not good at child rearing (because if I knew what I was doing, it wouldn’t be so hard), I’m not coping well (people who cope well don’t admit out loud that they are sick of their children), I’m not religious enough (because if I was, God would cure me of my daily struggles), or I don’t love my family enough (people who love their families enjoy every minute of every day with them forever and ever, amen). 

Admitting that motherhood is hard certainly does not mean I need to take a pill. Believe me, if I really needed a pill, I’d take one. Those suckers work. But I feel like people constantly suggest this to me as a remedy for the hardships of mothering small children. They mean well, they really do. And honestly, if I weren’t me, and I were looking in on my situation I would suggest it as well. How does she deal with that shit?! That girl needs to take a PILL. A big one.

You know why so many moms are medicated? The demise of the village. We are isolated in an increasingly-complicated world, with rising expectations placed on everyone. It’s enough to make anyone crazy. I do not need a pill. I need help. I need support. I need to live in a village, where we can throw all of the children into a safe space and take turns watching them while the other women cook dinner.

Clearly, the only answer here is to become a polygamist.

Friday was a terrible day.

I wish there was an entertaining way to relay the story of how Asher dropped a huge bottle on the floor and then slipped and fell in the glass, but there’s not. It was horrible and awful and upsetting, I think I’m suffering from post traumatic stress disorder as a result.

He’s all stitched and bandaged up and acts like nothing ever happened. I, on the other hand, have felt nauseous ever since and want to cry every time I look at him. Just another example of how children are more resilient than their parents.  The only entertaining part of this story is what we’ve had to do to keep the kid out of the refrigerator.

That is a child proof appliance latch that we have screwed in with three metal screws, because the regular adhesive did not do the trick.

After the ambulance came and patched him up and Husband left to take him to the E.R., I went in my closet with the intent of changing my blood-stained clothes and had some kind of panic attack. I stood there and thought to myself, “The walls are closing in on me in here, but I know they aren’t REALLY.” And then I left the closet and went to sweep up more bits of glass.

I feel like I’m in this place where things are a little out of hand but I don’t really know what to do about it. Maverick has weekly allergy shots. I’m supposed to carry Benadryl and cortizone cream with me at all times. I’m supposed to give him allergy medicine every night and put special cream on his eczema.

Asher has stitches and bandages out the wazoo that I have to keep clean and dry. I’ve been emailing his dentist pictures for weeks showing the progress of his mouth injury which happened a few months back. Every day I’ve been cleaning his damaged gums with peroxide. In addition, he’s trying to potty train himself. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THAT. Crazy as it sounds … I don’t think I can handle one. more. thing. Just keep on pooping in your diaper, kid.

Pepper developed a terrible skin condition and last week I finally called the pediatrician because she smelled like a wet dog no matter what I did and I knew that wasn’t normal. As it turns it, it’s totally not. She has a milk allergy, is now on hypoallergenic formula, and I have a ridiculous daily regimen for her skin. Brush the cradle cap off her head. Wash her hair with dandruff shampoo. Wash her body with a special soap. Apply prescription lotion. Apply non-prescription lotion. Repeat at bedtime.

Today I had a follow-up visit with a dermatologist that our pediatrician sent us to. She was very sweet, but when she looked at me and said, “I need you to bathe her every day, and follow the regimen we discussed, and in addition you need to print out a blank calendar and mark the days that you use the prescription cream, and bring that in when you come back next month” …

I laughed in her face.

I didn’t mean to.

Later, I was driving on the interstate and completely missed my exit. Like, by a lot. I ended up in the next town.

I told my family this weekend that when I have a few moments of silence, when no one is asking me for anything or trying to seriously injure themselves, I totally check out. I honestly feel like I lose time. I go somewhere else, float far away, and only snap out of it when someone says “MOMMY!” I do not remember to carry Benadryl in my purse. I do not remember to apply cortizone when I’m supposed to. I did not bathe Pepper today at all, and there is no way I can change Asher’s bandages without another adult present to help me.

I think I’m in over my head but all I can do is keep trying to get above water. One day, I’ll catch my breath.
 

Summer camp is over and I officially have three children at home with me full-time until kindergarten starts on August 12. Which is 264 hours, 12 breakfasts and a multitude of catastrophes away.

My three-child self is a lot more laid back than my one-child self was. I wish my one-child self would have been more like this version, and I bet Maverick wishes so too because he would have gotten to eat a lot more high fructose corn syrup.

So here’s the deal: I’m completely outnumbered and my children know it. They are working their hardest to see how far they can push me in this new situation where there are three of them. 

Will she put the baby down to punish me if I throw blocks at my brother? 

Will she … CAN SHE? … chase me down whilst holding the baby? 

Do the rules still apply when she is changing a diaper? What if it’s a really nasty one?

The answer to all of these questions is HELL YES I CAN, AND I WILL.

The rules of parenting are ever-changing, evolving with the needs of your family. I will forever remain a structured, cleanly person, but I have finally accepted that in order for me to be happy and able to enjoy my life the following things need to happen:

1. I have to have time to myself. Right now that means getting up at 5:15 every single morning. I have coffee, I read email, I meet a friend and we go walking for an hour. Missing that extra sleep sucks. Bad. But you know what sucks worse? Being awakened from a deep sleep by screaming banshees and getting thrown into chaos without your coffee. I’ll take an alarm over that ANY DAY.

2. The boys have to spend at least 2 hours outside every day to keep them from destroying the house. I can’t let Asher go out there without me or he will wander off, but I’ve gotten used to the sauna-like heat of South Louisiana. I parent from a lounge chair, and it’s not that bad at all.

3. I made a rule: I am not allowed to do housework on the weekend. Running a few loads of laundry or dishes doesn’t count. I do not allow myself to mop/vacuum/clean anything for those two days and it is SO FREEING! I realized my “job” never has an end point and I was getting really burned out so I enforce a “weekend” for myself. 

4. Early bedtimes. Because I need it.

5. Coffee runs. When the kids are driving me up the wall, I throw them all in the van and turn on a movie for them to stare at and I stand in my silent kitchen for 5 minutes and just breathe. Then we drive to Starbucks for a drive-thru coffee. It’s my go-to when I have HAD IT, and we all need to press the reset button.

6. A glass of wine at night, a candy bar in the afternoon, three cups of coffee in the morning, whatever I have to do to get through the day … I give myself permission. And if the kids will shut up for a few minutes if their mouths are full of Popsicle, then by all means, YES! YOU CAN HAVE ONE OR THREE, JUST BE QUIET AND EAT IT.
 

Yesterday spit up went down my shirt and into my bra. The other day I couldn’t even locate the spit up that I kept walking through in my house. Maverick tried to glue his hands to my kitchen table with Elmer’s. I found pine cones in the boy’s closet that they somehow smuggled into the house without me knowing, and shredded to tiny bits that were quickly migrating into the rest of the house. It’s really never boring here, but as long as I have #1-6 … it’s all good.

Today … wow. Where to start. 

First of all, I made chili. I haven’t cooked anything from scratch for months and months, and even though I truly don’t have the time to cook now, I am just sick of eating frozen food. Someone should have been here to videotape the whole charade of me trying to juggle a fussy baby, chop an onion, brown some beef, put Asher down for his nap, and ignore my ringing phone. I assume I looked as ridiculous as I felt. 

I felt strung out, just like this stereotypical frazzled mom, but not nearly as put together. And I wasn’t smiling. This mom is smiling. She actually looks like she just took a Valium.

Thankfully, I suppose, those insanely ridiculous moments will never be captured on on video — because if there was another person in my house capable of operating a video camera then they would be helping me. I need a sister wife. Preferably one who looks like the lady up above: well put together, aproned, and possibly drugged.

It’s worth mentioning here (because I will likely block this out later down the road) that Asher had a very bad fall last night and busted his mouth so hard that we were certain he was going to lose some teeth. Thankfully his teeth seem okay, and a doctor checked him out and said there is no way to stitch the gash which is along his gum line. All we can do is wait for it to heal and give him lots of popsicles and Tylenol.

He bled a lot — like a scary amount. When Husband returned with him after seeing the doctor, his face was caked with dried blood and it totally looked like they had stopped somewhere so he could feast on dead deer. It was all very Twilight. However, by this morning the bleeding had stopped, and he seemed okay enough to go to the grocery store. 

Off we went, and he was totally fine for the entire grocery trip, until we got to the register to check out. He waited until the cashier started talking to him, telling him what a cutie pie he was, to start hemorrhaging from his mouth. He was oblivious to the blood, smiling and talking animatedly per usual as blood ran down his face and onto his shirt.

Check. Please.

There is really no good way to explain, apologize, or gracefully exit when your kid’s face starts bleeding profusely for no apparent reason in a public place. I mumbled something like, “He fell last night and busted his mouth,” and wished the floor would open up and swallow me or at the very least that I had the foresight to put medical gauze in the diaper bag. As we hurried out, he waved to all the people who were staring and yelled “BYE BYE!” as he sprayed my chest with blood. 

Really, at this point, the week can only improve.

Also, I just noticed the mom in the picture above has on wedge heels. I no longer want her to be my sister wife. I kind of hate her, actually, with her Valium and her oven baked turkey.

I found an accurate depiction of what things are like in my house right now and this is it:

 
One day I will find zen and wedge heels again. But right now, I have to go get the blood out of my shirt.

This is my thousandth post since I started this blog. I kept watching the number tick up, and thinking to myself, “Wow! When I reach post #1,000 I better think of something important to say.” I’ve noticed some bloggers make a fancy birthday cake with a candle to celebrate their blogging milestones and such. 

I looked forward to making a milestone with my little blog, although why I thought I would do something fancy is beyond me. I had such high, misguided hopes for myself — so silly. Real life does not allow me to bake right now. In fact, I fed Asher Eggo waffles for lunch today. And breakfast. Shhhh.

Now that I’ve reached post #1,000, I sheepishly report that I did not make a cake or even procure a store-bought cupcake. I have no candles. I just had to look down and make sure I am wearing a shirt. I am a mess, a sleep-deprived mess, and I can’t string thought processes together. Case in point: my conversation with Husband last night. 

Me: I just realized that there are THIRTY fingers and toes in this house, in addition to my own, that I am responsible for trimming.

Husband: That’s a lot of digits.

Me: Oh my GOD. It really is.

Husband: (a few minutes later) There are 100 digits in this house.

Me: WHAT?!

Husband: A hundred digits. In this house. Five people with 20 digits each.

Me:  (silent horror.) 

And then we both started laughing semi-uncontrollably and I said something like, “HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?!?!”

I know this sounds stupid (because it is), but seriously … how did that happen? So many fingers and toes. So many eyes staring at me. It’s almost like all these kids snuck up on us. I mean clearly they didn’t, but in my fog of exhaustion nothing adds up quite right.

Today was the first day since I became a mother of three children (ages 4 and under) that I felt like I really might have a nervous breakdown. 

So I went through a list of things in my head that would make me feel better: Can I drink? No. It’s only 1 p.m. 

Can I take a nap? No. Children are crying.

Can I take a bath? Can I lock myself in a room somewhere? No. And no.

So here’s what I did. I drank some tea. Yes, really. I’m not joking, it was tea. And then I took a few nice, calm pictures to look at after they were all in bed so I could think to myself, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.”

See, the picture thing totally worked. I’m already thinking to myself, “I didn’t have a bad day, really. It could have been worse.” Because honey … I know worse. Just take a gander at all of 2011’s blog entries.

I think that some mothers love the closeness of motherhood. The skin-to-skin contact, the drool, the smell of their kids, the experience of breastfeeding. It’s not that I necessarily dislike those things, but I can only handle so much of it before I need to step away. I think the term for it is “touched out.” I have three small children who are needy because they are so little, and my days are long and solitary. 

Thankfully, my trips to Crazytown after the births of my first and second children taught me some very valuable lessons. Because Husband works so much, we have an agreement that I am allowed to do pretty much whatever I need to do to stay sane. He’s very rarely on hand to help, which means I singlehandedly wrangle three kids day in and day out: meals, discipline, baths, bedtime, apologizing to the preschool for Maverick’s shenanigans … crying, tantrums, all of it. 

Therefore, he isn’t allowed to judge me or ask any questions other than “How much is that going to cost?” And after today, when I had to have my mother come over just so I could take a shower in peace, I decided it’s time to look into joining a gym. I was going to wait until Pepper was a little older, but apparently they will accept children 6 weeks and up SO WHAT AM I WAITING FOR?! I just have 4 more weeks to muddle through before I can enjoy a sweet hour of child-free yoga. 

Pepper’s already got her yoga pants on. She’s probably wondering, “When is she going to get her shiz together and get us to the gym?! Maybe if I scream a little more, she’ll get her ass in gear … “ 

My ass is in gear. Thank you daughter for helping me snap out of my fog — we have been in the house for entirely too many days in a row. Tomorrow we’ll go for a walk in the sun, and avoid traveling anyplace with “Crazy” in the name. Namaste!