Oh man.

The time is coming, and coming quickly, when we will put both of our boys into one shared room and hope that we don’t spend the remainder of this year and possibly next in a constant state of sleep deprivation. 

Husband and I are nervous. A 4.5-year-old and a 1.5-year-old in a room together … will they do well? Will it be a disaster? Will they sleep? Will they bloody each other and themselves when they should be sleeping? Will bedtime become a total and complete nightmare for me, especially doing this alone because Husband doesn’t come home until well after they are in bed?

I used to be excited about this, but now it makes my stomach kind of hurt. It’s anxiety. This weekend my parents generously purchased the sturdiest bunk beds we could find, along with a large chest of drawers, and I am slowly formulating The Plan. Of course my mind is focused on the decorating of this room, because that is fun and distracts me from the reality of what might actually happen once The Plan is implemented … but here is the fun stuff:

We won’t stack these into bunk beds until they are much older … I’m not ready for a trip to the E.R. just yet. They will be two identical twin-sized beds for now.

The chest is very tall and should hold all of their clothes really well.

I found this “mix and match” bedding at Target – it’s available online only – and it’s perfect. Affordable AND fun.

I was thinking of doing a little solar-system/space theme in their room so the stars work really well. Also, the colors go with all of the stuff they already have. Score!

The furniture is waiting in the warehouse for me to get it together and arrange for delivery. I told them 6 weeks, which would put this transition happening around the end of March. 

Dun, dun dun …

 

  
He’s extremely accident prone. He’s a climber, runner, leaper, somersaulter and terrify mommy-er. This week he fell in the tub and chipped a front tooth. 

I overreacted accordingly.
 

“Snake” rode to school with us this week because it was rainy. Snake is not ONE’s hand, he is Snake. Do not get this twisted.

Snake got into a lot of trouble for pushing buttons in our car, and I’m fairly certain he broke the backseat radio control buttons. I plan to address this with his handler.
 

TWO likes to hang out in his crib.

 

 ONE likes to dress up like a lawyer.

Big Bro has a drinking problem.

I am 18 weeks into the production of THREE and we’ll find out on Wednesday if it’s a boy or a girl! I’m super excited to find out. THREE has been thump-thumping around for awhile now, he/she is very active. Probably because of my Keurig …

Life is hard but we’re trying to make it as fun as possible. Big Bro is having the most fun of all. Cheers, you giant lump of stuffing.

I am so fascinated by the differences between boys and girls. My friends with little girls do things with them like bake and make crafts (what?!) and even color, because the little girls don’t break all of the crayons into a million pieces and then try to eat them.

Conversely, my boys like to eat garbage, take things apart to see how they work, wrestle, and dig in the dirt. Earlier today I walked outside and found the scene above. ONE used some branches to make a “construction site,” and even made a very small pile of tiny limbs on the far left. 

It made me smile. A lot of the time I feel like I’m herding cats channeling Hulk Hogan, but my little boys are just so darn charming. 

Love them.

Today I made a grave miscalculation and overestimated my abilities as a mother and as a person. 

I thought I could handle taking both kids to see Santa, by myself. “Oh yeah! I can totally handle it. I’ll just run them over there at 3 p.m. when Santa arrives, we’ll take a picture, and be home in time for dinner!”

Um, no.

If you are reading this, DO NOT DO WHAT I DID. It was horrible, we did not meet Santa Claus, my children were sad and cranky and I felt a little bit like a frantic frazzled failure of a mother. I was totally unprepared for the throngs of people, and I do mean masses, that apparently had the same idea I had. So our afternoon that started out like this …

My sweet little elves!

Ended up like this.

Pissed off.

Pissed off.

Extremely pissed off.

Thankfully, I have access to modern technology and while we were stuck in absolutely the Worst Traffic Ever I was able to order a pizza and pick it up on our way home. And since I have little boys who love to eat, their crankiness was quickly resolved.

WHEE!

 Admittedly, I hit a mothering low today during an epidose where a crazy nutjob zoomed around our car, cut us off and then had the audacity to flip me the bird. And I immediately without thinking flipped HER off and yelled “EFF YOU!!!” before snapping out of it and remembering there were children in my car and then I got very quiet for a really long time.

I blame it on the pregnancy hormones. And the stress. There was a screaming kid in the car. We were in gridlock. WE DIDN’T GET TO SEE SANTA. So I forgave myself, and now I’m just kind of hoping that everyone can forget and never, ever do “what Mommy did that one time in the Worst Traffic Ever.”

These little people, these tornadoes, seem to undo everything I accomplish in a day. I wash dishes and they dirty them. I sweep up crumbs and they reappear. I hang up hand towels and the next thing I know, they have toothpaste on them and are crumpled on the counter.

I put on shoes and socks, and they are immediately pulled off as soon as we get in the car. I wipe butts and they quickly need to be wiped again. I fix trucks and trains and before I know it someone is calling for me to put them together again.

I feed tummies and two hours later they‘re grumbling. I fill cups and they are emptied. I make beds and they are unmade. I wash hands and they are dirtied. This is part of the madness I was referring to when I named this blog. Doing the same things over and over again and somehow hoping they will be different. Thinking that just this once, the floors will STAY CLEAN.  

Typing all of that out makes me realize how crazy it is to become frustrated with the little people who are just being little. Their little hands drop things. Their little bellies get hungry quickly. Their little minds can’t understand why Mommy is frustrated that they dropped their cup on the floor AGAIN.

Their little world depends on me taking good care of them. That is what makes this madness worth it — because I am caring for little hearts and little minds that will one day be big hearts and minds. Hopefully one day they will remember to pick up after their big selves and thank whoever cooked them their big breakfast before going off to do big things.

Until then I soldier on, and take my reward in moments like these. 

Because even when I feel like I’m falling farther and farther behind, and cannot even fathom the idea of UNLOADING THE DISHWASHER ONE MORE TIME, I know I am still winning the war against hunger, filth, and nakedness in my house. We will tackle the war against hunger, filth, and nakedness in the rest of the world another day.

Yesterday was one of the most trying experiences I’ve had in awhile. I had to take both kids to their new pediatrician for overdue checkups and immunizations, and thank goodness my mother was there to help me. Otherwise … I don’t know. It would have been a hot mess. And it already kind of was.

ONE hasn’t had a round of shots since he was really small, and we have been dreading this day. He’s just … dramatic. He doesn’t handle pain well. I know he’s only 4, but any kind of discomfort is a P-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-O-N. 

He gets this from his daddy.  

I sincerely hope he grows out of this eventually because I don’t have the tolerance for it. I have horrible bedside manner. It’s something I need to work on. Thankfully TWO is more stoic, and he recovered quickly. I won’t bore you with the painful details, but we were at the doctor‘s office for 3 sucky hours total and we ended up leaving before we finished with the lab work because none of us could handle being there for one more minute.

We‘ve got ourselves some healthy boys. Here are the stats on both of them:

ONE (4 years old):
 Height – 3 feet, 5.5 inches – 69% percentile
Weight – 42 lbs – 86% percentile

TWO (14 months old):
 Height – 31 inches -88% percentile
Weight – 25 lbs – 61% percentile

MOMMY (32 years old):
Certifiable Insanity – Crazy – 99% percentile