blurbs, juxtaposed. Sort of

"NO YOU STOP"

'NO. YOU."

"NU UH, YOU STOP"

"NO YOU STOP OR I'LL TELL MOM"

***

I'm sitting right there, two feet away, and they're fighting over who gets to show Maddie something. As if I'm not in the room. Threatening to tell on each other, EVEN THOUGH I'M SITTING RIGHT THERE.

The determination to argue despite circumstance annoys the ever loving shit out of me sometimes. Often, nothing else exists except their innate need to be right.

At 7:30am it's a crime against nature.

***

I have an app on my phone called iTot flash cards, and Maddie loves it. She's taught herself all the words in the app. I had no idea she knew half of them, but yesterday I hear her sitting there, repeating everything.

A toddler who speaks, who communicates their needs, is amazing. It makes everything so much easier. When she wants water, she asks for water. When she wants bread, she asks for bread. If she wants a show, she asks for a show.

Being that Liv doesn't talk much at all, and when she does it's still a guessing game on my part, I don't take a single word Maddie says for granted. It's just a blessing.

***

I just watched Liv bogart Maddie's entire abandoned breakfast. She was fabulously sneaky about the whole thing, too. She saw the bacon hanging out on the plate, noticed that Maddie was playing instead of eating, and then surreptitiously snagged the bacon pieces one by one.

I can't blame the kid. I mean, it's bacon.

***

Before Chris and I had kids, we used to go white water rafting.

We've done most of the rivers in North and South Carolina, and were starting on the West VA rivers when I got pregnant with Cass.

Our last trip was the Gauley River, which is mostly class IV & V rapids, and it was the most amazing trip ever. We had a phenom river guide, a raft filled with dudes who just wanted to ride the rapids.

I freaking love rafting. I saw a commercial yesterday for a rafting center, and the feeling of complete and utter longing that came over me was sort of overwhelming. I miss that. I miss being able to take a weekend and do something amazing, something that's pure fun and adrenaline.

I want to plan a trip to raft this fall. Maybe take the big kids on the New River, give them a taste of the awesome.

Once in awhile I miss the ease of things before kids. The simplicity of doing things. I wouldn't trade any of my kids for all the ease in the world, and I love them with every part of my soul. But I get so tired, and it's so complicated to do even the simplest of things.

A weekend trip for us isn't a weekend trip. It's four days of packing and preparation, two days of staying in an unfamiliar location where neither baby sleeps, and then four days of unpacking and laundry and trying to get everyone back on schedule.

***

Maddie is sitting next to me as I type this, playing on my phone. Her latest favorite activity is to scroll through my photos.

She sees a pic of Gabe, and waves and says 'HI DABE', and then she sees one of Liv, and gets all excited and jumps up to go show Liv the photo of herself. She'll flip the camera so it's facing her, and take pictures of herself, and then giggle.

It's adorable personified.

freewrite, tired

At 5:30 I hear Maddie yelling, so I drag myself out of bed to go get her. Liv's been puking since yesterday morning, so I haven't slept much.

She's in her crib, naked. Completely. Diaper off, clothes off, standing up, bare-assed naked, yelling at me. She'd been like that for awhile, because her sheets were soaked.

I put her in the tub, washed her down, got her dressed, and changed her bedding.

By 7:15 I'd done two loads of laundry, made lunches, gotten everyone breakfast, washed dishes, bathed the wild child, and yelled at my older  children for fighting over the precise location of the xBox controller.

It's 7:47am and I'm tired.

By 6 tonight, when Chris gets home, my tired will go beyond that into utter exhaustion.

I end each day feeling as if I've been beaten up. Being a parent of four is exhausting in a way I can't really describe, and when you add to that the fact that one of those kids has some extra needs?  It makes for wanting to lay down and stare at the walls for a week.

I had a blog post planned for today, making fun of that new app where everyone's doodling all over their iPhone photos, but I'm not feeling up to the backlash of people's feelings getting hurt. I'm too tired, and it's quite possible that I'd respond badly to hurt feelings.

Getting feelings hurt because I make fun of the fact that I can no longer see anyone's faces in pics because they're covered in cartoon hearts and flowers and inspirational phrases is silly, and I'm not up to handling it.

Chris has a cold, so he's barely hanging on. It's me against the world this week, the last man standing against a sea of viral onslaught. I like being a mom, I adore my kids, but sometimes I feel like I've got all these things that I'm not handling well. I have no clue what I'm doing with raising of people, and as my kids get older, the problems get bigger and harder and more complicated. The emotional morass of daily life becomes something that wears down my capability for handling anything.

I met a potential friend recently. She was a lovely person, and we hung out a few times. And then I realized that she's got a ton of baggage, that she's needy as hell, and that she's one of those people who needs a lot in a friendship. I pulled back because I don't have the resources for that kind of friendship.

I already have needy people in my life. I gave birth to them all. I can't handle needy adults. The kind who suck out your energy and feed off your strength. They're emotional vampires. I just don't have it in me to deal.

I know I sound like a selfish asshole. I'm not, though. It's more that I know my limits, and out of respect for myself, and my family, my children, I take those limits into consideration.

***

I'm going to drink more coffee now.

flip flops and no sleep

It's May, and warm, and so I feel like we shouldn't have any colds in this house.

Yet both babies have colds, are miserable, and haven't slept in three days. Which means I haven't slept in three days. Mads smashed my brow bone last night with her forehead, and now it's bruised and sore.

I feel like a barbie doll that was taken apart and put back together with all the wrong parts. It's a physical sort of broken, the culmination of complete and utter exhaustion coupled with solo parenting for most of the week.

****

I was at Target yesterday, buying toilet paper because we ran out.

When everyone in the house is using tissues from the tiny, individual, purse-sized Kleenex packages, it's time to buy some toilet paper.

The babies are growing out of their shoes, so I went over to peruse the toddler shoe section. Which is, in my opinion, the absolute best section in the store.  Tiny versions of grown up shoes, in bright colors, often with flowers and sparkles and other fun things.

So I bought the babies each a pair of flip flops. And some sandals.

I thought Maddie would love them.

It was Liv, though, who thought they were the most amazing thing she'd ever seen in her life. Once we put them on, she wouldn't take them off. The rest of the day was spent in foam flip flips, occasionally turning her head so she could stare at her tiny toes in wonder.

I forget, sometimes, that she's 3. That she remembers things. That she's not stupid. I forget, that because she can't communicate, doesn't mean that she doesn't have something to say.

The day-to-day chaos takes over things, and I forget that she likes pretty shoes too.

Tiny toes in shiny sandals made my day yesterday.

blurbettios

I made this recipe the other day, because I was desperately craving something chocolate and really wanted to stay on Paleo.

I feel better when I stay Paleo. Last week I had a slice of pizza, and it made me super sick for two days.

So I made these. And then I made another batch cause Chris and I seriously overindulged on the first batch, and ate them all.

If you're eating Paleo, or clean, and want a absolutely decadent sweet treat that's filled with healthy fats and no fake stuff? These are freaking AMAZING.

***

My friend Kristen has a shiny new website that's really pretty. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. Cause I designed it. I mean, she did her own logo, cause that's what she does. She makes custom invites, prints, stationery, etc, and so the logo is all hers.

***

Liv had to stay home from school today cause she decided to get sick again. Snotty nose, misery, the works. She is the most pathetic sick child I've ever had.

***

Yesterday I was rearranging the house, and was telling Chris how much I hate our dining room table. It's 25 years old, kind of wobbly, and the chairs are mismatched. I want one of those really solid tables with the bench seats.

So I started talking to him about how we could totally repurpose our current table and make it sturdy and look different and more solid and blah blah, and about ten minutes into my waxing poetic about the value of pallets, I realized that I'm completely full of shit.

I'll NEVER repurpose a table. I can barely get my laundry folded. I make cook from scratch, and make my own yogurt, but redoing furniture or making my own curtains or pillows? Yeah. No. It's not going to happen.

Not only do I not really have time, or the space, but I have absolutely no desire to. I'd rather just design a gazilion blogs, and then save they money to buy a new table, and give the old one to someone who will probably turn it into a pinterest project.

Honesty of self is such a liberating thing.

bullied, girl style

This morning I cleaned out all the toys, and got them arranged into bins.

And then I moved the living room furniture around because I wanted to vacuum underneath. Then I decided I needed to completely rearrange our main floor, and spent three hours moving furniture and cleaning and throwing random shit away.

I did all that because I needed to push past all the ugly feelings rolling around inside because my oldest child is being emotionally bullied at school.

I wanted to write about how I'm feeling. To process through, to talk about what happened. But I can't really find the words, and to slap some verbiage on a post for the purpose of just putting it out there does the experience an injustice.

She deserves more. She deserves all my focus, all my attention, all my purpose pushed past how I feel and helping her deal.

I want to go kick the ever-loving shit out of that mom.

I want to storm into the school, Italian temper blazing, and rip everyone involved a new one.

I'm not going to, though. I'm going to handle it in a way that will show my daughter how to deal. How to cope. How to get a situation resolved in a manner that leaves her able to walk away, head held high.

I've documented, the last several weeks. I've been in touch with her teacher, several times, via email and telephone so that my concern is documented.

I've had Cassidy talk through it so that her perspective is clear.

The mom of the other girl, the bully, is very involved at the school. So I told Cass that if that mom, if that woman attempts to talk to her, that Cass is to walk away. That I give her my permission to not discuss anything with any adult other than her teacher, the guidance counselor, or the administrators.

I've told Cass I have her back. That she's not going to get in trouble for defending herself, for protecting herself.

The kid, the bully, is a manipulative shit. The deviousness with which she's conducted this entire smear campaign against my daughter has been rather brilliant. She's engaged emissaries, other little girls to carry her messages back and forth on the playground rather than directly talk to Cass, so she has plausible deniability.

She's nice to Cassidy's face, while in class, within the earshot of other adults.

She's managed to get every single girl in the entire third grade class to believe that Cassidy hates her. To constantly ask Cass 'why do you hate Jane?', and "why won't you just be nice to Jane?".

(no, Jane isn't her name)

Two months ago this little girl had surgery on her foot, and has since been unable to play on the playground. Cassidy, in her kindness and loyalty, spent a solid month sitting with Jane on the bench, talking and hanging out, rather than playing with the other kids, so Jane didn't have to be all alone.

Two weeks ago, I went to have lunch with my daughter. Jane wanted to sit next to Cass so she could play with Maddie, but I sat elsewhere.

I watched Jane fake-cry about it at the other end of the table. I watched as she waited for the other girls to ask her why she was upset, and I watched while she quietly told them that she was upset because of how rude Cass was.

I watched her set up the entire thing.

I physically saw her lay the groundwork for her attack against my kid. As a former elementary school teacher, I KNEW what was happening. I've seen it before, albeit never quite so perfectly executed.

Cass doesn't cry much. She does the pre-adolescent stomp off and fake cry, but she doesn't truly cry often. Yesterday, she was upset enough to cry. She came home, really worked up, because now there's only two girls left in the class who will talk to her.

When you have a baby, and they don't sleep at night, you're beyond exhausted because you never get to sleep, ever, at all. And then they turn into older kids and you're all excited cause you get to sleep again.

You don't, though. You don't sleep. You don't sleep because you're up all night, praying that God will hold her little heart in His hands. That he won't let her be broken by this. You don't sleep because she's at a sleepover and you're afraid of her being molested, even though you trust the parents completely and have taught her how to protect herself. How to have a voice.

You can't sleep anymore because you have to keep watch. You're terrified for something to happen to them, more so than when they were babies, because the awful is so much more, so much worse than when you could hold them in your arms.

You don't sleep because you've been bullied, and you remember.

It didn't break me. I'll be fucking damned if I don't do everything in my power to keep this from breaking her.

blurbs

It's 5:41am and I've been up for half an hour already.

I'd like to say it's because I went to workout, or I was feeling productive, but it's really just because my youngest child thinks sleep is a useless endeavor.

I attempted to get some work done but my brain doesn't work properly this early. So then I tried to lay on the couch while Maddie watched tv and snacked on some cereal, hoping that I could snooze for an hour. But apparently she has a deep-seated belief in mommy being upright at all times.

Statements like the above make my child sound like a brat, but she's not. She's actually a sweetheart, but it's early and she's tired so all her two-year-old-ness has come to the forefront.

***
I went for a run on Saturday, and I ran 2.2 miles in under 20 minutes. An 8:29 min/mile average pace.

I've NEVER run that fast. A few months ago I was lucky to do better than a 13 minute mile, but the last few months I've gotten a little faster. One part of that is cross-training, and being in better shape overall. The other part of it is minimalist shoes. It's not for everyone, but MAN has running like that improved my time.

I got finished, and almost fell over at my pace.

It's probably a fluke because I had to do a quick sprint at one point to get past the swarm of cicadas that decided to hang out in my path.

I don't want to talk about the cicadas. Red-eyed, big, creepy bastards.  They're EVERYWHERE. As I was running, I could see holes in the ground where's they'd come up from their 17-year hibernation.

(I'm sure there's a more proper word for a 17 year bug chill-out, but whatever. It's before dawn.)

1/2 inch holes, thousands of them, the cicadas who'd squirmed up chilling out on the sides of the path, molting. EW.  Bugs don't bother me, in general, but these grossed me out.

***

Mondays are stupid. Just sayin.

for my momma

I'm a good mom.

I may have moments when I question something I've done, or a fleeting thought of wondering if I"m screwing up my kids, but overall? I know I'm a good mom.

All the stuff I learned about being a mom, I learned from mine.

She loves with everything she has.

She taught my sister and I how to be women, and mothers, and how to live life in a way that we can always walk away from our choices with our heads held high.

She taught me to respect myself. To value the person I am, for no other reason than that I exist.

She taught me how to be intelligent, to be different, to be an individual, unapologetically.

I learned from her that life, and all it holds, has intrinsic value.  Not just because of the things we do right , but because of the things we learn from those we do wrong.

She's why I know how to be a good mom.

I'm pretty blessed to have her as mine.