Mistakes in Motherhood

It has been nearly a week since I left my house. Saturday the older kids and I took down the Christmas tree while the little three napped. Let me tell you, pine water does NOT clean like pine-sol. We tossed the tree over the back deck and the plan was to take it to the dump the next day. I ended up not going because I had someone coming to buy some furniture from Craig’s List. When Liam woke up from his nap, the moment he saw the tree was gone, he burst into tears, poor little sweetie was so sad his tree was gone. That night we got some snow, not a lot, but enough that I didn’t want to leave the house, as I need new tires.

By Monday it was a huge mess, we kept getting more and more snow. They canceled school on Tuesday, and the kids were so happy to have a four day weekend. Wednesday we got a huge storm and had over a foot of snow. For this area, that is a lot. I had the boys shovel the walk, in case it iced over, and it did. Thursday morning I heard my sleep number bed clicking, which told me we had lost power. And indeed we did. I knew we were running low on staples, and the only gas in my home is a gas fireplace that we did not have the gas key too, and that has never worked. We had enough cereal for that day, and we had stuff for sandwiches, but none of my meat was thawed, so I BBQed some potatoes in foil and we topped them with cheese, sour cream, and bacon chunks. The sun had set, so we were enjoying dinner by candle light, with plans of all the kids and I sleeping close in proximity, when the lights came on.

Now, we were excited, but not convinced they would STAY on, because they had been flickering on and off all day. One time Austin said “I hope we have lights by bedtime” and I said “I hope we have lights right. now.” raising my hands to my ceiling… and just then the lights turned on! But were off almost immediately. As soon as it was clear the lights were on to stay, we sprang into action. One kid heated up leftover meatloaf and green beans to go with our dinner. Another kid plugged in all portable electronics, cell phones and the space heater. I turned up the furnace and made sure the pilot was on. We did not have high hopes it would last. 200,000 people in this area were without power, and could be for up to a week, so I did not think we would be one of the lucky ones to get lights within 12 hours. The new housing development behind us was not as lucky. A full 24 hours later, their windows are still dark.

In the night we lost most of our tree branches on our shade tree in the front yard, all barely missing my car. My neighbor was also fortunate that her large tree, that lost its largest branches, also missed her cars. Our enormous tree in the back yard was leaning, and it was clear it would probably come down. There were concerns it would take the fence with it, but my neighbor and I watched as it tipped, and then broke off, landing a few inches from the fences. Until the ice melts and we can move the branches, I will be stuck in my driveway. The kids have had a full week without school. Power flickered off again this afternoon, and I let out a string of profanity, but thankfully it came on before I could add a 6th word to my diatribe.

I also got a nice long nap this afternoon which was MUCH needed as I have been sick since earlier this week with a cold that has now settled deeply into my lungs. Christopher and Matthew have also been sick. Between the three of us, I think I have lost half a bottle of Tylenol, and most of a box of Kleenex.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: Domestic Diva, Family, Health, House Stuff, Insanity, Lame-o. | #

With the oldest 3 kids in school I have been struggling a bit trying to keep the princess from being bored without her entertainment. She did not care for my ideas; coloring turned her into a sobbing puddle of goo, reading to her just annoyed her, and car rides to do stuff just ended in us both being frustrated. About the only thing she enjoyed doing was taking out every toy she owned, and digging through her dresser and discarding clean clothes onto the floor mixed with dirty clothes. Flustered, I had had enough. I reached out to my friends on Facebook who recommended toy rotation. And so the planning process started. I made a difficult decision to finally allow the 6 year old and 3 year old share a room, they had been asking for a year, but when I let them sleep in the room with the bunk beds, sleepovers were always cut short because of climbing accidents.

So instead of moving the kids into the room with the bunk beds, I left the loft portion of the bed in the playroom and removed the latter, and put the bottom bed into Sophie’s room. We got two large bags of clothes out of dressers to go to Goodwill, and packed up NINE totes of toys, each tote holding 11 gallons, which will be stored in our storage room until we rotate them in, and move other toys out. It was hard to let go of a lot of the clothes. In the process I also donated the last of my scrub sets. It was a hard decision, I always thought about going back to nursing school, or working as a nurse aide again, but it just does not make sense to store them any longer, especially when I can easily get more at places like http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/ so easily.

I am tickled at how well the two rooms look, and it will be very easy to move Liam’s crib into the play room once he is ready to leave our room. Bedtime has not been as seamless, 6 days later we are still struggling with them falling asleep in a timely matter. We are still dealing with fighting and tattling, but either in time I will grow immune, or they will chill it out. Another perk, I now have a “guest room”, so as long as you don’t mind literally climbing into bed, or sleeping in a room filled with toys.

Next on the agenda, is going to be going through my kitchen to get rid of dishes, and appliances I no longer need. Taking a trip to the dump, and getting my storage room back in control.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: Domestic Diva, House Stuff, Insanity, Liam, Matthew, Parenting, Sophia, Sponsored. | #

Today has been the first real “bad mommy day” since the colossal mind melt earlier this month. Okay, so it is 12:30 am, and technically now May, so all that was last month, but we will go with my husband’s rule…. “time does not change until after I go to sleep”. So in my mind, it is still the last day of April.

So earlier today (or call it yesterday if you want to keep it real) my little three decided that if they all behaved equally naughty, mom would allow it with retribution, because of safety in numbers, right? *insert melting brain here*

It felt like a country western song. Mom wanted to sleep, the phone was ringing, the baby was whining for breast milk, the 6 year old was wanting to tattle, and the 2 year old wanted a “poopy prize”. I thought everything was settled back into place, and I was going to try to get a few more minutes of sleep, when the baby boy decided he was fat, full, and flippin’ jubilant! There goes my lazy Saturday.

I should have known it was going to be one of those days, everyone was crying and fighting. It took me a full hour to get a sip of my then cold coffee. By lunchtime I was DONE. I put the sleeping baby, and the 2 year old down for naps. The 6 year old was soon sent to nap too after he demonstrated his own fatigue. However, no one napped! All three were exhausted, but no one napped. By around 3pm, I was in tears.

Of course, as soon as I had sufficiently filled my bladder with iced coffee, and was about ready to start dinner, not only did the baby, but also the 2 year old fell asleep. Thankfully the 14 year old walked in from playing to get a drink, and I asked him to hold the (now crying) baby so I could make Fra Diavolo Sauce With Farfalle Pasta, and broccoli. I changed it up a bit, I used fresh tomatoes and added some white wine. I also used only shrimp (doubled), cooked it longer, and served over farfalle (bow tie pasta) instead of linguini. I thought it might be too spicy, so I made some Cabernet Marinara with Herbs for the little ones, but offered them both. I think they favored the spicy shrimp sauce. I had to giggle a bit because they started fighting over who could have the last of the broccoli, they all decided they had not had enough, and Austin rushed in to make sure everyone got two more pieces.

We made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, and at them hot, with cold glasses of milk. We were all sleepy, and I decided after everyone was in bed, that I would slip into a hot bath and then go to bed early myself….. but first let me just fix this spam problem real quick. Real quick. Famous last words.

At 10:19 PM, my darling husband gets on Skype. I tell him “Don’t laugh, but I have such a headache. And it is all from reading confusing stuff.” He reassures me he is not laughing. “Owie, hurty head. .htaccess is so confusing.” He tells me he doesn’t know what .htaccess is (I didn’t either until today. I explain what it is, what it does, and what I am using it for. I will not quote what I said because it consists of several F bombs, and other colorful expletives… and I would like to remain classy.

I tell him “Half my face is limp. I must have stroked out somewhere between .htaccess ssh and ftp”. My darling husband says “I want to see”, and starts a video conference. *sigh* At 10:44, about the time I told him my brain was made of pudding, and drool was dripping out of my half-limp stroked out face, the butt tells me “I have worse problems btw. I can not find my hair brush.”

While his hair WAS quite poofy, by this time I was ready to hang myself by my shoe laces. I had no less than 15 tutorials open, terminal, my ftp, a glass of wine and my sanity was long gone. Four minutes later, he proclaims all is right in the world, he has found his hair brush. Well lah dee freakin’ dah! He then asked me if that was my soul he saw leaking out of my eyes. Well yes it is.

At 11:36, he tells me he has to go to work. And I tell him I have to bash my skull in with a baseball bat. A little after 12:10am, I figure out the problem. The file I was looking for could EASILY be created by opening a simple word processor, uploading it to my ftp (server), renaming it, and then editing it with the script I wanted, and voila, spammer would be 404ed. I have no idea if my 2-3 hours worked, but I guess I will find out soon enough when my spam folders keep filling up. AHHHH, what a nightmare!

So now that it is 2am, I can finally climb into bed, and in 4 hours I can start this all over again. Sleep deprived and crabby. As soon as I finish knitting this last row real quick.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: Austin, Babysitting, Domestic Diva, Family, Humor, Insanity, Matthew, Me, Parenting, Photography, Ramblings, Ranting, Sleep Deprivation, Sophia. | #

Life has been hectic lately, to say the least. A couple weeks ago, my hardworking husband, Bobby, accepted a new assignment. Once again, he will be spending time in the middle east, this time in Afghanistan. Since the end of December, he’s either been home on holiday time, paid time off, or paternity leave, save for a two week time where he was working 12 hour shifts without a day off. We don’t know yet how soon he is leaving for sure, or if it will be 6 or 12 months, but we do know it is going to be a large adjustment for the both of us. Last time he went overseas we had 2 kids in school full time, one in pre-school 3 days a week, and a 6 month old. This time I will have 2 in school full time, one in school part time, and two home, a 2 1/2 year old and a 2 month old. I am confident we will be fine, but I am thinking of starting the youngest in preschool in the fall when she’s 3. At that point I will have three in school full time, and one part time.

Honestly, I am most worried about the first 4 months, once the kids are out of school for the summer and we are on a more relaxed schedule I think time will start moving faster.

No Comments | In: People, Places & Things, This is how I roll | tags: Bobby, Insanity, Lame-o. | #

Where does the time go?? It was four weeks ago today that I was in labor with my sweet baby baby boy thinking he was going to be born on his due date. Ha! He fooled me!

Even though he won’t be four weeks old until tomorrow, I wanted to go ahead and update while I had a moment… easier said than done when you have five kids (only the little three are home right now, and the littlest one is napping).

He’s a pretty mellow little guy, but he is also pretty needy, especially at night. He will sleep a couple hours at a time as long as he is in my arms. I am getting more accustom to sleeping with him in my arms, which is something I just do not enjoy.

[Interruption #1, Sophia climbed up on her dresser and dumped all the water from her wipe warmer all over her dresser and floor trying to plug it in. It was unplugged because it is broken.]

His brothers and sister adore him, but his sister is not too sure she likes sharing her spotlight. I know she loves him, but I also think she’s a little resentful that he’s always in arms. I am trying my hardest to make sure she gets extra attention and I am including her in his care by asking her to be my helper.

[Interruption #2, 3 & 4. Sophie is trying to dress herself and is bringing me clothes, shoes, and a diaper. Then she broke the latch off her dress-up chest and wanted me to come fix it.]

Matthew is constantly asking to hold Liam, and usually his timing is bad. I will have just latched him onto the breast and Matt appears out of nowhere and says “Can I hold Liam?”

[Interruption #5, 6, 7, Sophia found a shirt she liked and asked me to button it up, asked me to put a diaper on her that was wet from the wipe warmer water, and when I sent her away for a dry one she brought a pocket that didn't have an insert]

Christopher really does not ask or attempt to hold him anymore.

[Interruption #8, had to empty the potty chair]

Austin loves holding him though and is always asking to hold him, or stealing him out of his swing. I am so impressed with him, he is going to make such a good husband and daddy someday. He does his own laundry, loves to cook, adores babies and is very thoughtful. I figure when he’s 30 I am going to auction him off to the highest bidder.

[Interruption #9, 10 & 11, emptied the potty seat again, broke up a fight between Sophie & Matt over a balloon, and got a hug from Matthew for finding a lost villain for his superhero toys.]

Sophie has to be reminded not to put her feet on Liam’s head, I am not sure WHY she insists on doing this, but it is annoying.

[Interruption #12, drama over panties. Sophie claims she has some, Matthew tells her she doesn't, shouting match ensues.]

[Interruption #13-16, Liam wakes up, on the way to get him I have to rescue Sophie from herself, she has somehow climbed in the back of her diaper storage tower and is stuck. Get the baby up, change his diaper and his clothes. Sophie throws a fit because she insists she needs a wipe. Then throws another fit because I closed my door, not her.]

Liam is a pretty content little guy, he loves to cuddle and watch your face. He’s starting to smile a bit and engage a bit more.

[Interruption #17, baby needs to nurse.]

[Interruption #18 through ??.... had to make lunch one handed for Sophie & Matt, pick up my kitchen, all while holding a fussy boy who wants to nurse again.]

#!&% it, I give up. Yup, I see exactly why the last 4 weeks have flown by.

FYI: this took me 90 minutes to write.

2 Comments | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: Domestic Diva, Family, Humor, Insanity, Liam, Matthew, Photography, Ramblings, Silliness, Sleep Deprivation, Sophia, Updates. | #

I taught myself to knit about three years ago, but follow through has not been a strong point of mine. Neither has been following a pattern.

My husband teases me for my ADD, I still have a cross stitch I made for my son who is 5 now that just needs cleaned and framed, I started it when I was pregnant with him. A blanket I started knitting for my daughter who is 2 1/2 now is only about half done. I just threw out a baby sweater I started when I was pregnant with her and never finished.

So to be this close to completion is HUGE. My husband asked me point blank today “will this be the first project you finished?” and I sheepishly had to reply that it was. Thankfully while I was cleaning out my craft tote filled with half-finished projects, I found the yarn needles I need, so I have no excuse not to finish today. Hopefully in a couple hours I can post a picture of a completed project!

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Confessions, Domestic Diva, Insanity, Lame-o, Me, Pregnancy. | #

I feel like I should be afraid of anything that plugs in today, I really do feel paranoid and that it is out to get me. What next? Is my ice-maker going to start pelting cubes at me? Do I have the anti-midas touch or something? Karmic debt from frying a motherboard 10 years ago?

This morning I wake up to the smoke detectors going off, all 8 of them, out of sync. The 12 yr old decided to turn his bagel into a piece of charcoal. So I get up, life goes on, right? Call the bank for an issue, 24 minutes on hold I give up, decide the issue is not worth it. Hubby and I make a wonderful breakfast, go to watch some shows on the DVR, and the Medium I have been wanting to see stopped recording 20 minutes into it.

Ok, well then I will just hook up my Wii and play my new game, Wii Active. Find the new cord I ordered (red/blue/green, new TV only has one input for red/white/yellow). I get the cord plugged in and Wii working (unsuccessfully at first, no sound) to find that we already had the cord I just ordered and waiting a week for an overpaid on shipping for, it must have come with one of the aftermarket accessory packs. Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk. Put Wii Active in and my console tells me I need to update! ARG! I have a temper tantrum and get over it. I go to plug in my aftermarket Wiichargable (sorry, couldn’t help it) battery pack for my WiiFit board- no dice, the light won’t come on. The 13 yr old brings me batteries, no dice. I get new batteries and finally it works.

So I set up the game, strap on the leg holster for the nunchuck and immediately it finds the ONLY workout I hate, running in place. As I am running, the leg holster starts slipping off, I tighten it, and I can feel a shooting pain down my leg as it constricts my blood flow and I feel like I have a bad case of sciatica. I finish my “run” just to have the very next exercise require the same torture device. Oh well, I will just play another game, I have 3 or 4 of them.

I put in WiiFit plus, load my profile, and I get the message “To start, please step off me and press A”… ok, I am not stepping on you, but ok… press A it recalculates and says the same message again. Turn the board on and off and same message. So I find a forum talking about how to fix it, make it through all the steps just to have the controller die. Get a new controller, it too is dead, in fact all five of them are dead. I guess the universe wants me to give up and be slovenly; I will try again in a few hours of them on the charger.

With facebook not working right, I really should be using this time more productively… I mean I do have a house to pre-pack, and hundreds of pounds of stuff I don’t plan on moving gone through and tossed or donated. I have boxes to fill up to save money on packing. I have beef stew to start, a fridge and freezer to clean, not to mention an entire house to clean. I would really like to be out of here in a week, but is that realistic?

Alright, I need to wrap this up to get back to stressing, err working. This will be behind us soon, we will be settled and happy and it will all be a distant memory. We have moved before, and we survived, and we will move again, there is no doubt.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Family, Insanity, Lame-o, Moving, Ramblings, Stress. | #

It’s been about 18 days since Bobby got home and it is unbelievable to me that it wasn’t just yesterday. These last few weeks have been a blur of activity, and I feel like I have not even had time to exhale, yet alone process. He’s spending a lot of time working at home, and my routine of taking kids to and from school, cleaning, and going to appointments has resumed. But the craziest thing of this is that we are *still* in limbo. We still do not have authorization to move! Yes, here we are at 16 days past the day I planned to be gone, and we don’t even know when and where we are going.

I cope by knitting another row onto an afghan I have been working on for two years. I listen to Bob Marley and remind myself that “every little thing, gonna be alright”, I drink tea and sometimes wine, and take walks and watch documentaries on Netflix. But no matter how much I distract myself, I am still frustrated that we still don’t have the information we thought we would have at the end of December; and every other Wednesday I am thankful that he still has a paycheck, and insurance, and a job, even if he is at home driving me nuts.

I used to romanticize the idea of working from home, but if anything, the last couple weeks has taught me that working from home is the equivalent at working in prison, with between one to five noisy cellmates hanging off of you like a bunch of baby orangutans. I sometimes wonder if he volunteers to go to the store in the evenings just to get away from it all, and even then he usually has to drag along a few primates with him. I really respect that he hasn’t gone all “Here’s Johnny!” on us and redrum-ed the kids and I.

So whenever I complain to myself that I am tired, frustrated, or frazzled (the trifecta of mommy-hood) I just remind myself that not only is he dealing with the same triple-punch, but on top of that has deadlines and reports and real-actual-get-paid-for-work that he has to complete without a nice, quiet space to run off to. Sometimes the silver lining is obvious, sometimes you have to dig deep to find it, but know that it is always there.

1 Comment | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, Domestic Diva, House Stuff, Insanity, Lame-o, Moving, Updates. | #

Today Bobby asked his boss if he is confident enough with sending us to Ft. Lewis that he would sign a lease if it were him and he got an email back that just said “call me”. Oh man, the proverbial “we have to talk”; that is never good news.

To sum it up, seems like the entire department is going to be going through an overhaul soon and they are not sure how this will change things, so they are trying not to move anyone until they have all the kinks worked out. So now we don’t know if Ft. Lewis is still on the table, and when we would need to be there. We were planning on being there in early February, but now it is impossible. On a positive note, while they are sorting things out he stays here & works from home, which means he can help me with pre-move purging.

Speaking of pre-move purging, we had a walk-through with Mayflower and we have about 3,000 pounds of stuff to get rid of to get our cost below what the company allows.

I refuse to lose hope, no one says this has to change the statement that we will be needed in Washington state. Purging will be good for us, we have a ton of stuff that has outgrown its usefulness that I just have not had a chance to remove, large bulky things I cannot move on my own. This is positive, really it is, I have to believe it, we just don’t know what it means yet.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Bobby, House Stuff, Insanity, Moving. | #

Yesterday evening I had writing out a whiny, negative status about the lack of housing I was finding with my pets, and I decided, if I wanted to attract positive, I needed to think positive, so I deleted my whine, and wrote a very positive message Tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow will give us more positive leads on pet friendly homes. We WILL find the perfect home soon. And the government will give us an definite answer soon. The Washington State move is going to go GREAT! Let this become my new affirmation. This all came from a series of phone calls from a large rental agency in Olympia with about 10 homes in our price range, with the numbers of bedrooms we need, who claimed to be “pet friendly” who told us that with our two dogs, and three cats, that they have absolutely no rentals that would allow my number of pets, and told me they imagine no one would.

My mood after this phone call was so low that all I wanted to do was whine and vent and cry, but when I chose to be positive about it and post the positive message, my mood became more positive and immediately I was contacted by a home owner who was willing to consider us, despite our number of pets. Even though he has yet to give me an answer (same with the government, they have yet to give us a 100%), I remain more positive, because if someone is willing to say maybe, someone WILL say yes. This is the far cry from the “no one” I was told, and allowed me to get down in the dumps.

Today, I was emailed by another company, and they gave me a choice of 6 houses, but when I told them about my pets, they told me of a house that was the same price as the other ones, but nearly 1,000 square feet larger where it would be fine for me to have my animals. So now I have one for sure I can look at, and now four houses that are maybes. I am confident that in less than a week we will have our definite answer from his company, as well as have housing secured.

Next time you start feeling down in the dumps, just remember the power of the positive and see how much you can make a difficult situation turn around!

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: Fur Babies/Pets, House Stuff, Insanity, Me, Moving. | #