Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The craziness that is our life these days

No sooner than I had posted my last blog entry about how things were falling in to place, everything seemingly fell apart. Valerie, in particular, has been testing our limits to places I didn't think she would go for awhile. The lying has started, the tantrums at bed time, harrassing the cat (like tying ribbon "leashes" to the poor cat's collar and putting her in a box!!) .. just total defiance and it's had my nerves on end. Poor Derrick has been bringing work home after a very stressful couple weeks at work with a lot of changes and basically comes home, eats dinner, and passes out after doing his homework on the couch. Madeline has no sleeping schedule at all yet, as I don't expect her to, so she generally wakes me twice a night to feed. She usually goes back down easily but once and awhile is wide awake for some reason which makes for a long night.
Last night, I was lying next to her feeding when she blew out her diaper. There was lovely newborn breastfeeding poo all over her, me, and our sheets. I had to totally change her, and wiping her with cold wipes in the middle of the night (stupid lindsay) completely woke her up. She was crying and crying. Meanwhile I am changing my own pj's, putting a towel down to lay on.. and Derrick is sleeping through all of this less than two feet away. I would really like to know what men are on that they have the ability to sleep through something like that.. and can I get some of that?? Oh wait, I have to be the mommy so that would never happen. He wakes up and kisses my forehead before leaving for work asking, "did you get a lot of sleep last night?" and I just rolled over with a 'hrmph.' MEN!

Ellie walked into my room about 4o minutes later (it does seem that they have a radar to know exactly which mornings would be *awesome* to wake Mommy up an hour earlier than normal). I told her that I just could not get up yet and I needed her to watch tv or play in the play room. I heard her wake Valerie up, "Valwee Gwace Powellllllll the sun is AWAKE" and then they both came into my room, fighting over a toy. I told them not to wake the baby and to go in the other room. I turned on the news and hoped to snooze for 10 mins before crawling out of bed to the coffee pot. Apparently I fell asleep because I woke up an hour later. whoops. I wasn't *too* worried since they honestly have been so well behaved up until very recently and in general, I can trust them to sit and watch their beloved Dora in the morning or play dress up in the play room. oy.

I walked out of my room and realized that it would be one of those days. The toy room was a total disaster. Blocks everywhere, dress up clothes everywhere, parts to every single board game.. everywhere. They were downstairs making pink lemonade in the living room. I don't allow drinks in the living room, it's light colored carpet. They had the huge Sams Club sized can of pink lemonade mix in the living room, water in it and made this sort of pink paste that was all over the rug, carpet, their chairs, and my coffee table. They had dumped an entire box of wheat thins and a bag of goldfish crackers into random bowls for a feast. Again, *awesome* day to pick to do this, girls. They had taken the movies and cd's out of the tv cabinet (a big no-no) and as soon as they saw me on the stairs they ran away. They KNEW they were naughty!!! We spent the morning with me standing over them while they cleaned it all up. It took over two hours and I had to take away some priviledges and Valerie's brand new princess night gown. Ugh. I hate having to be the bad cop sometimes.

Days like this I just want to run away and get a job because it'd be so much easier than being a stay at home mom. After some quiet time on all of our parts, I'm feeling pretty calm and humorous (finally) about the situation.. but just anted to let you all know what life has been like lately. If you haven't gotten a returned phone call, email, have been expecting a package for 2 months, or have been told we don't want visitors yet, this is why my friends.

I know it will get easier, it will just take some time. .. so bear with us!!
On a very unrelated, but more positive note.. we did take the kids downtown on Saturday to get out of here and do something fun. We rode the train downtown and for $10 round trip all 5 of us rode! That is a deal considering we'd have paid $30 easily for parking, not including gas, traffic,etc. We ate some deep dish pizza, saw an orchestra concert in Grant Park, and went to Venetian night on the lake front. It was way too crowded for my taste, or to even visibly see the boats, but we greatly enjoyed the fireworks afterwords and a nice walk around the city at night!! Here are the only pics we took. We had D's little camera, which apparently needs to be replaced. lol Half the pics were blurry.. I'm not sure why! These pics are in reverse order of being taken (below obviously at sunset), it's not letting me switch them around again. Is anyone else having this problem? I'm about to switch to a different blogging company!!!


4 comments:

The Monahans said...

I LOVE it! Thanks for being real! :) (Like always...which is what I love about you!) So fun to see little Madeline, since she looks so different from baby Ellie!

emegren said...

Thank you for sharing. I wish I could hug you! I really do know how you feel. We had red gatorade powder covering our kitchen one day! I still find it! Your trip to downtown sounds fun though, I can't wait to do stuff like that.

Andrea Clayton said...

A big hug to you! I too feel like running away sometimes (ok, alot, especially now) This too shall pass. I couldn't help but to laugh (with sympathy) though as I imagined what it must have been like to be a fly on your wall and witness this. Hang in there!

P.S. I've had problems from the start with getting my pics in order, proper spacing with text, with blogger from the start which is why my plog always looks like poo.

Sarah Lough said...

I feel like I live at your house. Or my house has become your house. Or, o yeah, we BOTH just had babies and have a . . . well, you almost have a 4 yr old and we both have 2 yr olds, too. Gee, I wonder why we make such great friends? I love that we've had our babies at the same time and I can call to vent and hear you vent the same frustrations!
((Hugs!))