They don’t say how hard it will be.

The days are long, but the years are short.

How often do new moms, or mom of young kids hear that?

What you don’t hear is sometimes just how hard it is.

Today was a hard day. And the mom guilt is real. Today is a day I wished away. I counted down the minutes until bedtime because today was just too much. Too hard.

My oldest, just over 3.5 is in that questions about everything phase. The why phase. And each question is asked about 10 times. I love that he learns through repetition and examples but I can only answer the same thing so many times.

My 2 year old is sweet, and into everything. Mischievous. And in that stage where a simple no, you may not have 17 snacks you need to eat dinner, equals a meltdown.

Then my sweet little newborn. He needs me for everything. And he has two older brothers who need me too. I can’t spend an hour to get him settled down for each nap, or let him nap in my arms all day everyday. They need me too. He’s constantly needing something. He needs to eat. He needs to sleep. He didn’t get enough sleep so he’s overtired and screaming. He seems to have a dairy intolerance. He is just hard right now. This stage is hard.

It seems like each one, in their own way, needs me, and all of me. And yet I’m only to give just under 1/3 of myself to them.

I spend most of my day saying, wait, I can’t hold you now, I’m holding your brother.

Your brother is crying now, you’ll have to wait.

I’m sorry, I can’t do that while I do this.

All day. Everyday.

I know today was just one day and tomorrow is a new day. A new chance for me to be more for them. The confusion and guilt between wishing time would freeze, and fast-forward a few years is immense.

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Just another manic Monday…

I know it’s not Monday, but this is how my Monday went this week.

Ever have just one of those days?

We started off great. Breakfast happened with minimal whining. Awesome. We cleaned. He didn’t break anything. Went down for a nap easily. We ran some errands.

All was well in Whoville.

And then the afternoon hit.

First I changed a diaper, didn’t wrap it up properly and dropped poop on my floor. Great. Just what I wanted to clean up.

Then the little terror destroyed everything we had cleaned up in the morning.

Next he found my wallet and hid some very important cards from me for a few hours.

And he tried to jump off the couch, causing me to dive to save him, laying on the bump – not very comfortable.

Oh, and he wanted dinner an hour earlier than I anticipated, so hot dogs for everyone instead!

Finally it was bath time which meant bedtime would be soon, because I was one tired mama.

Bath time went semi-smoothly. Mostly he threw toys out of the tub and hit me with them (while they were full of water). He squatted to grab another toy, chucked it at me. And it was a funny toy. One I hadn’t seen before. In the half second it took me to process that, wonder where the toy came from, I realized it wasn’t a toy. It was poop.

Yep I had a feces throwing monkey in the bath tub, not my sweet adorable son.

Stupid me was suddenly surprised, yelled OH SHIT (no pun intended at the moment) and scooped said monkey out of the tub to prevent any more throwing of the feces, or further contamination of this now clean little person.

Of course my yelling and scooping scared him so he sat in the corner crying while I scooped poop out of the tub.

Finally I get the poop out, take him to put on jammies and find out…he wasn’t done. Now there’s poop all over his lower half and the towel I had wrapped him in.

At this point I’d prefer to give up…but eventually get him cleaned up, dry and calm.

All without any wine to assist me, might I add.

So if you think you had a shitty day….remember this story. (yes yes I went for the cheese factor there).

It’s nearly St. Patrick’s Day….

And I’ve done nothing!

Usually I’d make a desert, try a new recipe or something, but I’m totally unprepared this year.

Having a kid has mad me pretty useless but L and I survive each day mostly unscathed so I feel like that’s a win.

What are your favorite kid projects, or kid crafts St. Patty’s day related? I want to do something cute with the little guy!

That Time I couldn’t make scrambled eggs

Because I hadn’t slept for more than 2.5 hours straight in weeks.

Seriously, how do you mess up scrambled eggs? I can see if they were burnt. But they weren’t! They were just….wrong.

And yesterday I put a box of cereal in the fridge.

I don’t know what this kid’s end game is…but it’s working.

Happy Thursday everyone!

He’s like the Energizer Bunny….

 

Someone explain to me how this kid has so much energy! He wakes up every 2-3 hours all night for an average of 9-10 hours a night. He sleeps 3-4 hours total a day.

Yet when he is awake, he never. stops. moving.

There is no downtime. If I have the TV it’s not like he stops to watch. I don’t even think if I turned on a kid show or cartoons he would watch, he wasn’t interested the one time I tried it.

If he could walk or bounce, I think he would bouncing off the walls. I lost him in my house today he crawled off so quickly.

No joke. I changed him, took his diaper to the diaper pail as he followed me. I stepped into his room to leave the diaper, turned around and BAM! Gone.

And silence.

He had doubled back, gone into another room and was wreaking havoc in there. And man is he fast.

And here I am, dragging myself out of bed, propping my eyelids open until my coffee kicks in, and the jonesing for more caffeine at 1 p.m. And 2 p.m.  OK all day.

And here is like a crazy person, like a kid given too much sugar at a carnival. And I think to myself, he’s got to be exhausted….so he’ll sleep tonight, right? Tonight’s the night. Only to be very clearly informed by the yelling and the rocking on all 4’s just two hours later that no. Tonight will in fact, not be the night.

Now excuse me while I chase down my tiny child and find some sugar to keep me awake.