i wish i didn't hate may

I shouldn't hate May, I mean, May marks Finn's arrival into our lives, but I growl inside every time another May appointment - game - concert - event - anything must be put into the schedule.  My calendar software chuckles at me (literally, with reminders beeping about something new every 15 minutes) as I try to find spots for necessities, as if it holds the secret to making it all fit, but refuses to share it.  I feel like the frog in that archaic video game, Frogger, do you remember it?



I begin the day at 5 AM, staring at a full lineup of overlapping meetings and responsibilities and I hop here and there, backtracking and side-winding, just trying to get where I need be (asleep) at 10 PM.  I'm not dodging cars and trucks, I'm dodging teacher requests, celebrations of any type and new season start-up meetings.  And I don't get three lives like Frogger.  I only get one.

It's honestly laughable to imagine Mother's Day plopped in the middle of this mix - what a joke!  Although I fully intend to enjoy a full day of garden-dirty hands, and get my floral and vegetable fix, I can't imagine where the time or energy (or money) will come from.  If I write one more check for an end of year t-shirt, appreciation item or unexpected activity expense, I think I might just throw in the towel.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - MAY IS WORSE THAN DECEMBER!

Worn out from the "what-if's"

My kids are into this "what if" thing. It's like, "What if an adult ate holding their spoon like this?" or "What if someone did a cartwheel like this?" or even "What if there was poop on my spoon right now?" There are so many what-if's that they all blend together. I try to pay attention to the absurd combinations they come up with or scenarios they create, but the fact is that I'm just too tired to care about goofy cartwheels or poop on spoons most of the time.

I'm not sure what they're getting out of it or why it's so fun for them, but they are definitely having a helluva time. This goes on all day and all night and I can't even escape bedtime without being asked something like, "What if my face looked like this all the time?" Use your imagination on the goofball faces displayed.

The exhausted and running behind Mom that I am just wants to scream "What if NOTHING? What if I didn't answer you? What if I don't really care if you had a waffle as big as the house or if Whoa Whoa learned to ride a scooter?" But, of course, I don't say those things. I pretend I've heard every word and answer as if my responses are well-thought out. I'm the Mom. It's my job.

What if I didn't? Happy belated Mother's Day to all the wonderful Moms out there!

Where art thou patience?

I came home from vacation with an enlightened outlook and fresh feel for the rest of the summer. But the truth is, these kids have worn me down. Some days, I can’t stop wishing that I would have had them at 20 instead of 30 (not really) because I’d have more stamina for the whole enchilada that is their lives.

There’s no specific problem here, kids will be kids and if you ask them they’ll tell you that they are having the best summer of their lives, hands down. Unfortunately from my standpoint, I can’t agree and it’s bumming me out. They play all day and into the night, they go to the pool and parks and have picnics and took an amazing vacation and at the end of it all, when they come in to take baths and go to bed, I get the worst of them. They are appalled by my suggestions to eat meals (children should live on popsicles alone), are shocked that I expect them to brush their teeth and hair (they will soon be shaved) or bathe, but literally pant with excitement and enthusiasm when the doorbell begins to ring around 8:30 am.

Don’t get the wrong idea and think that I am in here filling my days with me-time; wonderful organizational projects, cleaning my already spotless house or finally getting photos in an album – I’m not. First of all, there’s Finn and second of all, I’m one of only a few stay-at-home mom’s on the block. The kids are (all 18-20 of them) banging down my door for snacks and drinks and sprinklers and toys to be brought outside, every second of the day. They come to me for every dispute and owie in the 19 house radius. I can’t complete a thought, much less a project. When the older ones are making requests, Finn is howling about going outside. Big ogre that I am, I have no desire to follow my two year old around outside when it’s 95 degrees!

I have started researching our days the night before, trying to plan anything to get us out and about and away from the wild pack of kids. They are good kids and I am grateful for all of them and the fact that we live here, but I am tired of handling most of their days on my own. (Most other families have uninvolved parents or moms that work and dads that “watch” them working from home.) No one is really doing anything wrong; it’s just that kids will go where the most attention flows. I have never been so tired at the end of the day. I have never been asked so many battering questions in my life before. They want something from me every single minute and as much as I hate to admit it, I can’t wait for school to start and I wish Finn was going, too.

So I am a terrible person. But maybe not. I am, like I predicted in “See Ya Later May!” yearning for the structure and routine of the school year, itching for a few hours a week to expand this little career of mine and dying for a few minutes of peace where I am not closing doors after people, chasing out flies, cleaning up messes, handing out popsicles and enduring the most summer-tired and unreasonable hours of my children’s days.

Finn is due to be “evaluated for maturity” at a local church’s parents day out program for the fall. Mike laughs. That scares me. I feel a few hours separate – me and all my children – will do us all some good this fall. Lord, grant me patience and forgive me for the hours I’ve spent without it this summer. I need some in a bad way. School starts August 27th.

Dinner 911

I wonder if the “bewitching hour” means the same thing to every family. Is that hour between 4 and 5 pm really this crazy at other people’s homes?

If you were to zoom in on our little world right around dinner time, this is what you might see: Mike and I running around the kitchen, trying to keep Finn from breaking things as we manage the various pieces and parts of what we’ll eat, and finally, forcefully buckling him into his chair so that we can get the last few things together. Even though I don’t like to do it, I inevitably put some form of food in front of him before anyone else sits down and an imaginary clock somewhere begins ticking down the 3-5 minutes that he will sit at the table. Every night I race to get it all ready so that we have those same glorious 3-5 minutes to sit and relax and God forbid – talk, but each night I sabotage my plans and give in.

Meanwhile, for some reason I will never understand, my girls shift to hyper performance mode. They are impatiently dancing around the kitchen, bumping into us repeatedly, asking for our attention to hear the latest Hannah Montana number performed. We continually shoo them out of our way, focused on the task at hand - dinner. When I am as close as possible to having everything dished up and ready to go, I ask them to sit. They do, and we field at least 5 more change requests while trying to serve ourselves and get seated.

The second – I mean the very second – that I put the first forkful in my mouth; Finn will endure no more of this dining nonsense and wants out. He takes everything off his tray and teeters bowls and cups on the edge of the table – sometimes they stay, sometimes they fall (much to the dog’s happiness!) He then pulls his tray off and throws it to the floor. Next, he removes the back of his toddler chair and ditches that as well. The entire short while he is doing this, he is emitting his "all done" sounds. I can’t begin to imitate them, but they're not actually pleasing to the ears. And he knows how to say “all done”; he just refuses to do so at dinner time.

Throughout all this, Logan and Riley are still trying to sing and dance, right from their seats. They refuse to sit on their actual butts, barely balancing, squatted on their toes and rocking all over the place. They repeatedly drop things, bump into each other and argue about it, all because they just plain refuse to sit down. We attempt to manage this situation and teach good manners, but the same issues arrise each day. We are getting ready to remove their chairs from the table.

Mike and I ridiculously make small attempts to talk during this circus, but give up quickly and shove our food down our throats fast, knowing that one of us will have to clean up the potted plant Finn just dumped or get him away from the toilet or the latest attraction, the computer. The vegetable-milk battle begins yet again with Logan and Riley and they leave the table “too full” only to return to our sides within 30 minutes telling us how hungry they are.

Last night my mom was over and bought us Portillo’s for dinner. I didn’t want it, I’ve really been trying hard to eat healthy, but after a day of struggle-filled doctor visits with Riley (ugh – foreign body in her eye - scratched cornea), I had a raging headache and welcomed the comfort food. I was so thankful for the extra hand getting everyone settled in for their 3-5 minutes, that I devoured (with a capital “D”) my beef sandwich and fries. Nice. As my mom sat there amid this regular weeknight chaos that she hasn’t had the joy of witnessing lately, she leaned over and whispered, “Do you and Mike ever talk?”

“Nope.” I responded. Not these days!

The plan… some form of date night this weekend…. No matter what.

Mad Mom

I’m ticked. I will be spending my afternoon (and probably at least one more) correcting a situation that never needed to happen. Not to mention, this situation directly affects one of my kids, so I am fuming about it!

A couple of months ago, Logan had a dentist appointment and I’m sorry to say, after her first set of x-rays, they found FOUR cavities. (UGH.) In the midst of my debilitating guilt, I managed to make the call to our new dentist to schedule her appointments. The place was impressive; totally state-of-the-art and they seemed great, planning on doing it over two appointments so that the experience was a good as it could be for her. We went for appointment number one and, after a mix up on the paperwork about which teeth should be filled was corrected (because I noticed the price they were charging me was not what they had quoted me on the phone) she did great. Afterward, the dentist came out and said he ran short on time and only got one filling done (thankfully without Novocain) and four sealants. She’d need to return in a few weeks to get three more fillings. It would take an hour.

So, three weeks later, we trekked back to the dentist on a crisp Saturday morning. Logan, a total trooper about the whole thing, said she was nervous, but went willingly. They got her right in and much to my surprise, the dentist came out twenty minutes later and announced she had to have Novocain this time, but she was all done. I said, “So you did all three then?” He said, “No, she only had one.” I reminded him of our discussion weeks prior and he said he needed to check the chart. As I listened, he and his assistant counted six cavities while looking at the x-rays.

I was becoming more and more agitated by the second and in lieu of causing a scene, I quickly developed my red blotchy read-me-like-a-book rash on my neck and face. I was trying to be cool and not scare Logan, but I needed an explanation. After several other clarifications and confirmations, the dentist now declared that Logan had five cavities and one that he would watch. I was exhausted from the back and forth of it all, and since she was numb, I allowed them to fill two others that were in the same area. They said they needed twenty minutes and after another hour they brought her out. I was furious. All said and done she was in the chair for an hour and forty minutes at five years old. She was beat.

Of course they apologized about the SCHEDULING CONFLICT and nothing else. They almost didn’t let me leave without scheduling her next fillings. I have no idea how many cavities she had or has had filled and I feel totally taken advantage of. When I picked up her records to go for a second opinion from our former far away dentist, they not only gave me a hard time and tried to make me pay $25, but they handed me a print out that they use that clearly states how much benefit she has remaining for the year. I can’t help but fear that the office used that information when determining how many fillings she needed. I hope that she did not receive any that weren’t necessary!

And thanks to all their mix ups, intentional or not, I will spend the day waking up my baby from his nap to drag all three kids an hour away to sit quietly (yeah right) in our old dentist’s office. Worse, my poor five year old will have to spend more time in the chair. I am a totally unsatisfied customer and will never set foot in Wheatland Dental, state-of-the-art or not, ever again.

UPDATE: We did see our old dentist who unfortunately let us know that she only really needed one filling in his opinion. He said that the four she did receive were on baby teeth, thankfully. And in no uncertain terms he let us know that we should not go back. UGH!