Working Mama and Back to School = Insanity

I am really thinking that I have reached my peak of insanity today. But I'm still smiling!! I have to; otherwise I'd probably have a nervous breakdown. So to keep my children safe, I have (kind of) locked myself in my computer room to take a break from the chaos in the rest of the house today. I say kind of because there isn't actually a lock on my bedroom door (computer room is located off of my bedroom), there's actually no door handle whatsoever on my door...it's held shut by the humidity in the house right now and seems to be just enough to keep nosy kids out, for now.

I expected chaos when I decided to go back to work. All though it's only part time and only a few days a week, I knew there would be back lash from my ever loving children reacting to my being gone from the house. Gasp, what? Mom won't be home to clean up and make dinner?? Whatever shall we do?? <fall over in fainting mode while sobbing hysterically> I must say, they handled it fairly well, at first. And they actually handle me being gone a few hours in the evening fairly well, it's once I'm home again that all hell breaks loose. They can't get far enough up my rear end when I'm home and it is driving me to the point of madness! Until next week, I'm home all day Monday thru Wednesday, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Once school is back in full swing next week, I'll be working more, but it will be during the day while they are attending their institutions of higher education. I will still be working evenings Thursday - Sunday. Things are going to only get worse once school starts tomorrow.

Ahhhh, school, such a lovely subject to discuss. Most kids spend the entire school year counting down the days to their next summer vacation. I count the days of summer vacation back to the first day of school! For most of the summer the kids stay busy with sports, summer school, swimming, and time spent with friends. Then comes August....it seems to be the month when my children have run out of things to do and suddenly come down with "bored" syndrome. I usually have a quick cure to bored syndrome (bs, lol) in the form of some good old fashioned cleaning chores. The fun ones like dishes, laundry, scrubbing toilets, pulling weeds in the flower bed, etc. This works for a couple of weeks. Then suddenly it's about two weeks until school starts. It's once again the time to start getting back into a schedule. Ahhhhhh, scheduled sleep and awake times? School orientations? No more endless days of sleepovers and late night movies? Whatever shall we do now? I'll tell you what my kids do....drive me to the brink of choosing: do I leave my computer and the safety of this quiet room or should I just go strap on a straight jacket and save myself some trouble.

Today is the day before the first day of school. It's what I have decided is the worst day of the entire year. Utter chaos, rowdy and excessively loud, can't settle down and get anything done kind of day. The time to make daily time tables so everything needed to get done daily gets done daily. I started the day out with a normal summer bs chore list. Dishes, floors, laundry, and getting the house spic n span so once they leave for school tomorrow, I can fix it all and it will be clean for at least a few hours a day! But because they are anticipating the first day of school, trying to get them to focus on anything for more than a few minutes is nearly impossible. My boys have been washing the same 15 dishes for over an hour....I hope they're really sparkling. Nothing has been checked off as completed on the bs list of chores. They are at each others throats one minute and in the next bouncing off the walls unable to completely dry a single dish. It is enough to drive me absolutely CRAZY! So instead of the straight jacket today, I chose the semi quiet solitude - until someone needs something, has to tattle on someone or I can no longer stand the bickering!

Happy beginning of the school year...until the insanity of the next summer begins again.

Is It Bedtime Yet?!

I have had one hell of a day today. And to top it all off, I have 2 children that do not currently feel the need to go to bed at bedtime. I long for an early bedtime and am super happy when I hit the hay by 10 at night, why don't kids understand that?

My day started at 5:30 AM, up and at em' to get Tony off to work for his newest road trip. (Don't ask where, I can't keep track, lol) Anywho...out of the house by 6 AM, stop for a cup of the good stuff - super extreme extra caffeinated coffee, with a splash of french vanilla creamer. Then we're on our way for a 40 minute drive, one way, to drop off Tony and his bag of clothes at work. Then, turn right around and head back home. On the way home, I call Brooke and wake her up and she in turn gets all the kids up so they can at least get breakfast in before I get home.

I arrive home at 7:20 AM, making sure teeth are brushed, and back packs are located along with their shoes. Now it's Wednesday, so it's a walking school bus morning. (This is a program run by the school and human services department. The goal is to get kids, not on the bus route, up and moving. It promotes a healthy lifestyles and a safe environment.) The police and fire departments ride along all the walking routes to make sure everyone stays safe) I volunteer (because y kids walk everyday anyway) and we're the furthest house on the 'walking school bus'. We make 3 stops to pick up other children along the way before we meet up with another 'walking school bus' of kids and parents and we then finish up our walk to school.

So out the door of the house we go by 7:35 AM so we pick up our other stops on time. We arrive at school by 7:55 AM, I kiss the kids good-bye and Brandon, Nicole and I head on back home. Now today was appointment filled so my most awesome sister came to babysit this morning, relieving me of some of my headache. We get back home by 8:10 AM and off I go to the doctor for my physical therapy on my back (p.s. - bestest person EVER! is my physical therapist, at least on Wednesday mornings at 8:30 AM he is!). Finish up and head back home by 9:30 AM. Get home, grab the papers that I will need for the rest of the day and back out the door I go to my next doctor’s appointment. Stop back at the gas station for a refill of my extremely caffeinated coffee and back on the road again. Doctor appointment at 10:45 AM, finish up by 11 AM, and head over to gram's to meet my mom and have a much needed cup of tea!

Leave there at noon, meet up with my sister and the 2 kids, run her on her errands and finish up by 1:30 PM. On to the next one! Drive to Nicole's appointment for 2 PM until 3 PM, leave there, head straight home so I can get there before all the kids get home from school and destroy what's left of my clean house! Home by 3:30 PM, kids every where (dang it, they beat me home!), food every where and utter chaos. Get the mess cleaned up, shoo the kids outside to get their chores done, and get everything together for dinner. Damn!!! Missing items for taco night....ugh!

Leave the house at 4:40 PM, run to the grocery store for 3 items. Stop at the ball diamond and pick Brooke up from softball practice at 5 PM. Head back home and start making dinner. At this point, it's fairly quiet. Some kids are outside doing yard work, others are upstairs playing school and 1 is driving me insane with his negative attitude. Soooo, now inside play time is over and I send ALL the kids outside for yard clean up until dinner is done...which means the neighbor girl has to go home.

Wait for it............yup, here it comes, super meltdown mode by my Gift from God #2. Full blown meltdown. Someday I'll video tape one, when I remember to. Crying, tears, screaming bloody murder for the whole town to hear, stomping, hitting, more screaming, more crying....and me snapping. I tell her to get in the house, make a sandwich with some crackers and head to bed. More screaming because she "didn't even do anything wrong"....more stomping...all together about a 15 minute tirade. Then silence....Nana is here!! YAY, save my sanity one more time! Two kids headed out the door at 6 PM, 1 kid calmed down after talking to her Nana, and 4 others just waiting for the floods to recede and know that it's safe to come in again.

6:15 PM dinner is ready. By 6:45 everyone is finished eating and it's clean up time. Boys in the shower, girls on dish duty and the little man jabbering away to whomever will listen to him. The 2 boys take turns reading to Brandon while waiting for the other in the shower and Brandon is loving every minute of having every book he can grab, read to him, twice!

We do staggered bedtimes here. It is way too hard to get 5 kids to bed at the same time. All three boys have an 8 o'clock bedtime. Teeth brushed, showered and pj'd up, it's bed time. Books are read, backs are rubbed, kisses and hugs are given - over and over, good nights are said, love yous too....time for lights out by 8:10 PM.

Wait for it.....feet pounding down the steps...<sigh> "Moooooooommmmmmmm" so and so has done this or said this or won't do this, potty breaks are needed, more people are doing this and that. Tyler and Nathan don't even sleep in the same room!!! They're not even on the same side of the house!! AHHHHH!!!! Not getting to bed at bedtime = early bedtime the next night. The problem...they never learn!!

Is this just a boy thing? The girls go to bed fairly easy and I'm pretty sure they always have, unless I've blocked out something in my memory. Now don't get me wrong....Nicole very rarely sleeps. BUT, she stays in her room (or more often than not, on her sisters floor), she reads, and in the middle of the night she wanders. In the same breath, Nicole's reasons for not sleeping are a completely different subject and reasoning behind it. It's not that she doesn't want to sleep; she just can't most of the time. But she doesn't go around the house waking everyone up, tattling for no reason (and tattling at bedtime does no good, because then you're out of bed and in trouble too). The boys have yet to figure any of this out. Brooke gets in bed, reads and goes to sleep....why can't my boys?!

So here it is 8:47 PM, it's now been about 15 minutes since one of the boys has come down for any reason. The girls are upstairs playing together and have bedtime in 13 minutes. At that point, I will probably crawl into bed and just crash. Is it bedtime yet??

Guess What? Chicken Butt!!

In today's post I have to tell a story of a conversation Nicole and I had the other day. I have a hard time getting Nicole's true emotion in writing, but I'll try. This one's just too funny not to share!

So last week I decided to make homemade chicken noodle soup. Nicole was at the kitchen table doing her school work and I was standing at the sink rinsing off a whole chicken, removing the giblets and all that fun stuff. Nicole looks up at me and asks, "Are you sticking your hand in a chicken's butt?"

Now this comment was not made by her to be funny, she was very serious. So I looked up at her and told her, "Yes, I have to take out the giblets and rinse the chicken off before I cook it. What's the big deal, its dead?” (This is me trying to be funny with her, but she was not amused).

Nicole looks at me dead serious and says, "That is disgusting! (With an emphasis on DIS) If you have to stick your hand up a chickens butt to cook, then when I get older my husband is doing all the cooking. I am NOT putting my hands inside a chicken." Now as she’s telling me all of this, her hand is on one hip and she’s staring at me with a look of revulsion.

So now I tell her, "They've all ready removed all the guts and the actual chicken's butt. It’s just the bones, meat and skin." She replies, "That's even more disgusting and I’m not eating the chicken soup anymore.”

At this point I'm completely amused by this conversation and her very serious face. It’s taking all I have not to bust up laughing because she is so appalled by this situation. So I respond, "What do you think hot dogs are made of?" I can’t contain myself anymore and burst out laughing.

While still giggling, I tell her hot dogs are made out of all the leftovers of different animals...the lips and assholes. Now she really freaks out and is not amused at all but outright disgusted. She then proceeds to tell me that she is “never eating another hot dog ever again, she's not eating the chicken soup and she can not believe how disgusting this all is”. (I'm really starting to think that she is soon going to be a vegetarian...)

Now this is the end of our conversation, but the story doesn't end here. For dinner that night it was either chicken soup or cook your own dinner. Nathan decides to have hot dogs and chips instead of soup. He heats up his hot dogs and sits down at the kitchen table. Nicole looks at him, dead serious and says, "If you knew what was in those, you wouldn't be eating them right now."

Now Nathan freaks out, not because of how hot dogs are made, but because he now thinks that Nicole has put something into his hot dogs. He comes running into the other room where I am, and he’s crying and telling me what Nicole said to him. I ask him if he knows what hot dogs are made with. He says yeah, the leftovers, and I tell him that's what Nicole was talking about. So now Nathan looks at me, completely irritated and says, "Great, now I threw my hot dogs away for nothing because I thought Nicole put something in them. Now I have to cook new ones."

I love these kids for making me laugh daily!!

I'm sure this story doesn't come out quite as good as it would have if I were able to tell you in person with facial expressions and all...actually when I told my mom the story, I was laughing so hard half way through it that I could barely finish. Nicole, true to her word, hasn't touched a hot dog since and she did not eat the chicken soup either...

The Silence is Deafening

Everyday I long for peace and quiet...with 5 very active children, my days are never dull. During the day I home school Nicole and have the 2 year old terror climbing the walls. After school there is choir practice, sports practices and games to attend, and a multitude of other extra curricular activities and appointments. With Tony on the road a lot, I don't get many chances to have a minute to myself. I mean this literally, as even with the bathroom door closed and locked there is someone crying, calling my name or talking to me through the door. By the time kids bedtimes roll around I'm so tired I go to bed right after they do. I do try and get up in the morning before I have to wake up the kids but most of the time the snooze button wins or one of them is all ready awake and waiting for breakfast.

This weekend was a little different. Brooke, Nicole and Nathan are all at their Dad's house for the weekend and won't be home until 6 tonight. Tyler spent the night with his Grandpa, so it was just little man and I for most of the day. Yesterday it rained, snowed and sleeted outside which doesn't help with my ambition to get things accomplished, especially on a weekend. So Brandon and I lounged around most of the day reading books, watching The Wiggles and other cartoons and had a Mommy/Brandon bonding day and went to bed pretty early. This morning I woke up to sunshine and a renewed energy. We started out the day with laundry and sweeping and all that fun stuff. Brandon is a big helper, or he tries to be anyway. He's very independent and wants to do everything by himself...too bad this stage doesn't last long. When they’re finally old enough to do their chores without help, no one wants to do them. But anyway, now he's napping and I'm cleaning away and the silence is deafening! Can it really be too quiet in your house? As much as I complain about the constant chaos and noise, times like this make me realize that I love it all! I feed off of their energy in order to keep mine going and all of this silence today, makes me want to wait until the little guy wakes up to finish cleaning.

But I'm also not crazy....I will not wake a sleeping toddler! Most of the time it takes most of my energy to get him calmed down enough to take a nap. But today he fell asleep all on his own. He must be wiped out from cleaning all day! So for now, I will crank up the radio and continue on my way and wait for all of the noise to once again surround me later this evening.

Someone should have warned me...

I finally have a few minutes to myself to write for a bit. The little man is down for a nap and Nicole has finished up with her school work for the day and is outside playing on the swing set. Ahhhhh, the sweet sound of silence! (For now) Now I probably should be cleaning, but cleaning has to do with what I'm writing about today, so at least I'm thinking about it.

Someone should have warned me...about how gross kids are. The scenario playing out in my house for the past 24 hours has to do with missing cleaning equipment. First and foremost is the fact that the plunger is missing. Now let me explain how I found this out. The toilet in the kid’s bathroom isn't the greatest and backs up occasionally, hence the need for a plunger. Late yesterday morning it had backed up again. Nicole came casually strolling into the basement where I was doing laundry and said “Mom, the toilet is going over.” That was it. She then walked back upstairs and into the living room to turn on the TV while I rushed frantically into the bathroom to check out how bad it was. I grabbed some towels and threw them onto the floor around the toilet and reached around the side to grab the plunger and only found air. Ummmm, ok. “Where’s the plunger?” I asked. Nicole says “I don’t know because I don’t use it.” I asked Brandon the same thing and got “Inanooooo” as he raises his hands up and shrugs his shoulders innocently. (Translated toddler talk is: I don’t know)

So now I'm left with a clogged toilet and can not find the plunger. I begin to search frantically through the house to figure out where exactly a plunger would go. It is now 24 hours later and I still have not found the plunger and am giving in to the fact that it somehow walked off the job and left the house. I also have not figured out why anyone felt the need to remove the plunger from its home in the bathroom. So off to the store I shall go to purchase a new one.

The children in my house must think that if the cleaning supplies are gone, they will not have to clean. In the last year I have had to purchase 3 new cleaning buckets (2 of which were in the last month). Along with the missing cleaning buckets, the window cleaner, mop, scrubby pads, air freshener, etc. all disappear randomly. Now these items did not disappear due to being empty, over used or broken. These items all went missing within a week or two of being purchased. The kids all have age appropriate chores and not a huge amount of chores either as I’m home all day to try and keep some sense of order in the house. They are supposed to keep their rooms and the playroom cleaned up and organized. The boys have outside chores ranging from snow shoveling, brush clean up, taking out the garbage, etc. The girls have to do dishes nightly. No, we're not lucky enough to own a dishwasher as I have precious little cupboard space. On Saturday's we do all the dusting, vacuuming, mopping, bathrooms, etc. And when I say we, I really mean me. Most of the time I send the kids outside and put them in charge of the little man so I can get down and get the house clean. When I'm finished I can actually sit in the cleanliness for a precious few moments before the kids come in and destroy it all over again.

Kids are gross and someone should have warned me. I'm almost positive that they would be perfectly happy living in filth as long as it didn't require them to lift a finger near a cleaning product. With that said, I'm off to the store to purchase a new plunger and restock the cleaning supplies, again. Then I'll be back home to use my brand new bucket and cleaning items, until the next time they all go on strike and disappear.

Welcome to Smiling Through the Madness

So I've been told many times that I should write a book about my life. I had all the intentions of starting a blog awhile back but just never found the motivation to get it going, or the time for that matter. But I've been newly inspired. First by my cousin who had the most excellent idea of starting a blog of letters from herself and her mother to her recently turned 1 daughter. I also recently helped my sister start a blog for her freshly started business and I've recently started one for our up and coming business. So I decided since I was all ready starting a bunch of them, why not finally sit myself down and get one going. So here I am.

I'll start with a quick background. My husband and I married last October and we have a blended family with 5 beautiful children. Brooke, the oldest, is now 13 and my little social butterfly. All though I wish she'd do a little less socializing and a little more studying, I love her spit fire attitude (most of the time). Nicole recentlyl turned 11 and is in most ways my inspiration for this blog (all though they all are), she is the one who can make me laugh, push me to my boiling point, frustrate me to all ends and then again make me laugh all in a day. Tyler is now 10 and Nathan is 9 and these two are as close to having twin terrors as it comes (without actual twins). They love to hate each other and hate to love each other. Being as close in age as they are, they are polar opposites when it comes to personalities, which is where a lot of their clashes become a factor. They definitely keep me on my toes. And last, but not least, there is Brandon. He is a 2 year old terror who I swear is going to give me a heart attack. He fears nothing except maybe detaching from me. He is a curtain climber with a contagious laugh and I think he gets his attitude from his oldest sister. I love them all to death (all though there are times when I have to repeat this to myself over and over when I'm upset), they are what keeps me going through the day (because if I stopped all hell would break loose) and as much as they drive me crazy, like most kids, they love me back almost as much as I love them. I do hope they'll read all of this someday and laugh right along with me.

So I don't really have a specific topic to talk about other than how I keep laughing regardless of the chaos. Stay tuned for more :) And have a great day!