Girlymama

Must work for free. Kids are cute though.

My kids have recently turned into little monsters. Little Sister is truly two. She wants everything her way, everything belongs to her and everything is a big deal. She is an ‘all-or-nothing’ kind of kid, either giggly and happy or screaming and crying. Big Sister is three. Fighting me for control at every turn. She’s trying to control when she sleeps (never) and what she eats and what she wears. We had 2 huge fits this morning before school. One over breakfast (She wanted cupcakes for. I said “No, eat your english muffin & yogurt.” Then, meltdown.) Another over her clothes. (First she wanted to wear her pajamas to school. I said no. Then she wanted to wear only pants. Again I said no. Apparently I am mean.)

Anywho, our family is rivaling the OC for most drama queens per square mile. Fun stuff. I am praying for patience, wisdom, patience, consistency & patience.

On the fun side, I started sewing this weekend for our new company. We’re starting with bags – tote bags, diaper bags, fun stuff. I made this:

I got several compliments on it at church from people who hadn’t realized I made it. That made me feel good! If I could just find the time to sew more. I have so many ideas I want to try out before I forget them…..

Try caring for four kids all day who are under four years old. (age 3.5, 3, 2 & 5 months.)

yawn.

And why the heck did Britney name her baby Sutton Pierce? Um… what?!?!

I’ve been wanting to run out to this store for a week now. (It is not kid-friendly. It is actually kid-repelling, as in my kids fuh-reak out as soon as we go near it.) And I have not been able to go. I’m really frustrated by this. I just want one hour to run to this store and buy what I need to start working for my start-up business. I was looking forward to starting things this week. And I haven’t been able to. I’m actually considering saying, “Screw it” and taking the girls with me. I fully realize that I will probably regret this, but I’m seriously getting desperate. I’m feeling very trapped by my kids right now, although I’m sure that Husband being across the country this week isn’t helping this. He’s normally very happy to let me escape for an evening. Plus my mom was here last week, so I had the luxury of being able to run out during naptime.  I guess I was just spoiled.

If I’m smart, I’ll wait and go on Saturday while Husband watched the girlies. If I’m impatient and dumb, I will try to go tonight. We’ll see how the afternoon goes….

A woman who I used to babysit for was murdered by her step-son on Sunday.  She was a very nice person, who I always enjoyed, despite the fact that her step-daughter who I babysat was highly annoying. 

You know, I never watch all those horrible stories on the local news about murders, crime, and whatnot. (“Blah Blah murders, blah blah drug raid in West Philly, blah blah blah”.)  This is a reminder that these stories are happening to actual people. Its easy to file bad things in life under ‘someone else’ or ‘not in my neighborhood.’ Unfortunately, we’re all someone else to someone else.

Just makes me sad that such a nice person had to die like that. It makes me resolve to pray harder for my cousin stationed in Iraq, since that’s another thing I have comfortably filed under the ‘someone else’ category. (Sure, people die in war, but certainly not my cousin.) It makes my heart break for a friend who is currently watching her mother quickly die of a rare form of cancer. (Anyone in my family would surely be a survivor.) It makes me remember 9/11, one of the first times in my life I felt uncertain about my safety and was reminded how the whole world can change in an instant.

It makes me remember that life is not fair. Life is not easy. I cling to God and the belief that He is good. And He is in complete and total control.  There are no accidents.  But that does not mean that my life as a Christian is immune to tragedy.  My whole life could change instantly. I could die today. But God is good and He enables me to handle what life chooses to throw my way. I trust Him with my life and with my family. Even when I feel broken, this truth is fundamental to my life: that God is good, He is at work in my life and I am not alone.

Man, I’m tired. I need to get to bed. You can read the article on her death here.

Seriously.

Last night, Big Sis woke me up at 12:30am saying she wet the bed. I went in and the bed was totally dry. Um, okay… She was upset and convinced she had wet her bed (she was also crying for daddy, who is on a business trip, to throw in some extra guilt). So we changed her panties for good measure, I tucked her into bed and laid down with her for a few minutes. WHen she was calm, I came upstairs and fell back to sleep.

At 1:30am, she woke me up again saying she had wet her bed. And she had. I was, well, ticked off to be honest. She had just gone to the bathroom. We had just gone through this. She had had a rough night the night before, making up excuses for Husband to come into her room, but this? I honestly think she may have wet her bed on purpose, to get me in there. Do you think that’s possible?  Or was I just overreacting because it was 1:30am, when the only reason you should be awake is that you haven’t gone to bed yet?

My husband just left for a business trip – Oregon via South Carolina. After watching all the 9/11 specials and stuff, I am honestly really nervous about his flying today. I have a very over-active imagination. Its good for some things (entertaining children) but bad for other things (like sleeping at night).

I was hugging him extra-tight and telling him why I was nervous, he says, “You watched too much tv this week, babe. Don’t worry about it, okay?” Then, in his little snarky way, he gives me  an extra big hug and says, “I’m really nervous. I’m about to drive to the airport and my chances of being killed on the way there are one million times more likely than my chances of dying in a plane crash.”

I gave him a goodbye punch in the gut.

Big Sister was a little excited this morning, as you can see from the picture.  Every picture we took, she was jumping up and down yelling: “I’m going to school!!! Yay!!!!”  We found her cubby and hung up her bag and her sweater and she ran into her classroom and gave her teacher a big hug. (Teacher Lisa had to remind her to go say goodbye to Mommy! SInce she did not look back!) I only teared up a little bit when I was pulling out of the parking lot, leaving my baby behind.

She had a fantastic time – her teacher said she did great! Followed directions and even answered questions when asked (which Big Sis does not always do).

Ride home:

Me: “Sweetie did you like your teachers?”
Big Sister: “Mama, I love teacher Lisa.”
Me: “Did you like the kids in your class?”
Big Sister: “I do not like the boys. The girls I like, though.”

Today was productive. I’ve discovered that:

1) We must put ceramic tile in the family room/mudroom. It is the only ‘waterproof’ flooring and we are not positive we have solved the water issues yet.

2) While the tiles are not overly pricey, professional installation of ceramic tile costs eleventy bajillion dollars extra, so it looks like we’ll be doing the work ourselves.

Husband and I have never done any home improvement project more complicated than painting together (and, frankly, that didn’t go too well) so we’ll see how this goes. Maybe the money that we save by installing it ourselves, we can put towards therapy?

update: after ripping up, like, half the carpet, we realized that it was not as bad as we thought. We maybe, maybe, can just replace the carpet pad after some serious de-molding. We’re hoping that’s the case!!  Husband will deal with it, since I am going away tomorrow night on a ‘business trip’ to a quilt show, where we will be buying our first supplies for our new business! Hee-hee!

Last night we discovered two interesting things about our house:

1) We do not have a dirt crawl space as we originally thought. It is actually a cement crawl space covered in 2-3 inches of dirt. Hum.

2) Our carpet in the family room is molded all underneath. We need to pull it up asap, de-mold the ground floor and put in new flooring and moldings. This was not in the game plan.

So, now our next few weeks free time has been decided. I’m off today to price flooring (tile? laminate? dirt?) and get some advise from flooring people. Tonight we are moving the family room/playroom furniture into the living room, ripping up all of our carpet and this weekend, Husband is digging up the crawl space. I’ll post pictures so we can document our first major home renovation. I have quickly discovered that I am wayyyy to hyper to handle having my house torn up.

Now we just have to figure out how we are going to pay for all of this.

Today is my birthday. I’m 27. Dang. 28.  I really thought I was turning 27 all morning until my dear mother pointed out that I was actually 28. Then, to add insult to serious injury, my daughter adds, “Boy, Mama, you’re old!” Sigh.

How to celebrate? My mom is visiting and she is making one of my favorite comfort meals from childhood. Yesterday we went shopping and I picked out some ‘surprise’ presents from my kids, since my husband never thinks of things like that. Today I did one of my favorite rainy-day activities: I went by myself to Barnes & Noble for a hot cup of Starbucks and some magazine reading, so now I am caught up on all the latest celebrity gossip. (Jessica Simpson and John Mayer? What the heck? Does that sound strange to anyone else?)

Still I’m excited to see what this next year will bring. Big Sister is starting school, I’m starting a new ministry as a CBS leader, I’m starting a business… Hummm… this may be a busy one 😉