More than a handful

Sitting here with a messy bun drinking coffee that may or may not, but probably does, have some Baileys mixed in. I am tired. Exhausted. Can’t remember when I have slept through the whole night. I have 5 kids, so I should be used to the no sleep thing, but sleep is so very important to me, I have made it my mission to get my kids to bed early and have them sleep through the night. Sure they still wake up at 6am, but there is a very firm don’t wake up your mother until 7am rule.

 It has been one of those days. I let the 1-year-old him feed himself, stupid teaching self-sufficiency. He ended up covered head to toe in oatmeal. The floor and the table did not escape this debauchery. He seemed to be in rare form. Pulling out all the things under the sink, and if these things happened to be in boxes he pulled out whatever was in these boxes. He went to the game/puzzle cabinet and pulled out all the puzzles and each individual piece was piled high surrounding him. When he had enough of this he found our cat, and began to pull the cat’s tail. I would move him, say no, tell him to be soft, but then he just looked at me, grabbed the cat’s tail, and yanked hard, never breaking eye contact.

I picked my pre-schooler up from school, and seriously the fight we had in the car was the most ridiculous thing I have ever been a part of, I just imagined someone listening in laughing. He was showing me his folder when this stink just overwhelmed my senses. I asked him if he needed to go home and poop. Well, I somehow offended him to his core. He did not need to poop, he would not sit on the potty, he would never poop again, he would also never go to school again, and he hated pooping and school. I just sat in the car arguing with a 4-year-old about how he could just sit on the toilet and try, even if he ended up just tooting into the toilet a whole bunch and no poops came out. What is this life I am living?

When asking the eldest of the bunch how school went he said it went really well, but he did end up on red. He got red for no reason at all, the teacher just gave him red. Yes, sure, I believe that. Plus, it was bring a stuffed animal to school day and his got taken away, but it wasn’t his fault. Just like it probably wasn’t his fault when he hopped the fence to run around the pond with his friends without evening stopping for two seconds to ask permission. I was the lovely mother walking around the pond, holding her 2-year-old, and going to drag his butt back home. The kids saw me and said things like: ‘Oh, Jack is here. I didn’t know Jack was here.’  The school psychologist is one of the advisors for running club, and she was like, ‘Hi Mrs.Weigel,’ as she ran on by. That child of mine has no clue. I didn’t yell, and as a huge yeller, this must have thrown him off. The ever so silent-‘We will talk about this at home,’ was met with very little resistance. I dread to think about the teenage years.

I think that once upon a time I was a normal human. My arguments did not involve poop, homework, goldfish going in a bowl vs. the floor, or why you have to brush your teeth-seriously just brush your damn teeth twice a day every day. I really don’t remember these days, but surely they existed. I need a vacation. Who do I see about a few paid days off?