Blogging for Therapy

Instead of yelling, again, or crying, or throwing my own tantrum, again, I'm going to see if blogging can help me through.  Today has been one-of-those-days.  The kind where you find yourself wishing you drank, or swore, or locked your children outside, or had a way to beam yourself out of your own home.

I don't even want to go into the details of all that was wrong.  Anyone who has a 4 ft. or shorter human being co-existing in their house will know that it's not worth itemizing.  It's not only painful, but it may even start to sound funny, or less stressful than it feels, and sometimes I enjoy this pity pool I'm sitting in too much to ruin it.

Okay, I changed my mind.

Here's just a few of the things that have caused constant weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for the last three hours (in no particular order):

Being grounded made Spencer cry.
Having a diaper rash made Carson cry.
Not being able to find "Arr, Arr" (pronounced like a seal barking), her stuffed seal at bedtime made Sophie cry.
Getting applesauce on his pancakes made Carson cry.
Getting yelled at made Spencer cry.
Being pulled off the counter that he climbed up on made Carson cry.
Not being able to watch a show made Sophie cry.
Being told to get back in the house made all three cry.
Getting applesauce on his fork made Carson cry.
Not being fed 10 minutes after dinner was over made Sophie cry.
Not being able to brush his teeth made Carson cry.
Being told his punishment was being extended til tomorrow made Spencer cry.
Taking the fake, decor only carrots away from Carson made Carson cry.
Me answering the telephone and ignoring their yells while on it caused at least one of them, usually two of them, to start crying.
Giving Sophie a hug made Sophie cry.

Explanation for above mentioned incident:
I put all three of them to bed at 7:58, which caused more crying, of course.  Ten minutes after she had been in bed, Sophie came out wanting her seal.  After playing instead of looking for him, I told her she had to go back to bed.  Cue more crying.  After 20 minutes of her crying my name from her bedroom, I decided to go in there and offer her a hug.  I asked her if she wanted a hug and to be tucked back in and she sniffled and nodded.  I sat on her bed, hugged her and she started crying.  I told her no crying during a hug.  Then she started talking, I said no talking during hugs.  As I tucked her in she pleaded with me for one question.  I nodded and she said, "But mom, why are you so mean?"  I shushed her, brushed the hair off her forehead and left.  For the next 10 minutes she yelled/cried from her room, "BUT WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN?"  I called Jason and he could hear her (she was now standing in the hallway).  He told me to put her on the phone, he reprimanded her, and she of course started crying again.  As I'm typing this, she's yelling from her room that she needs someone to tuck her in and that her head hurts.  Now she's just yelling my name.  Afraid I'm not going to make the same 'mean' mistake I made earlier.  She can cry herself to sleep tonight, after all, I'm just a mean mom.

Fun Times

Friday morning, Sophie woke up with some pretty crazy hair from her pigtails the day before.  As the lioness sat down at the table to color some left over leprechauns, she casually said, "Hey mom, is there a spider in my hair?"  I turned to look at her and said, "Um, nope.  Why?" As she was slightly shaking her head and touching her hair she said,  "Cause I just feeled something on my head..."

 

 Um, yeah, that would be your mane.

We tamed it down for good measure.  Didn't want anything to start nesting in there for real.

This afternoon on the way to Rachael's she informed us that "Everyone is puppets."  When I questioned her she told us, "Yea, except the fairy turned us all into persons but we have puppet bones and puppet blood."  Hmmmm....I can usually trace back or guess on the origination of most of her random thoughts but I am totally lost on this one.  I'm thinking maybe Pinocchio, but she's only seen that once, like three months ago.


Carson, Sophie, and I walked around the neighborhood and then met Spencer at the bus stop.  They decided they needed their 'Grand ol' Flags' while they were cruising the neighborhood.  Made me anxious for the 4th of July and some warm weather.  On our way home, Spencer was excited to see a whole bunch of birds on a rooftop.  His yelling made them fly from one house to another and Carson was not okay with any of it.  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and started shouting as loud as he could, "Birds!  GET OFF THEM HOUSE!" Then he turned to me and excitedly told me, "Mom!  I dot them birdths off them house with my 'lag!"  ('lag = flag).  He was so proud of himself, and he was yelling soooo loud.

And did you catch it in there?  I walked.  I made myself leave my house and I used my legs the way they were intended to be used, other than standing in the kitchen making homemade calories that I consume almost entirely by myself.

Over the top, and we know it.

As Rachael and Lisa already mentioned, we were all visited by the leprechauns this year.  Each leprechaun left identical goodie bags for the kids but did something a little different at each house.  It amazes me how much they love to compare with each other and speculate on the reasons for the differences.

Spencer started talking about his plans for the trap a couple of weeks ago.  One afternoon he asked if I could take him to the store so he could look for a steel trap to use this year!  Things got busy, I was lazy, and at the last minute, like at 9:15 p.m. Wednesday night, Jason came up with this idea with the kids.  You can't see, but under this grass are little drops of glue, so he'd get stuck!  Spencer was pretty upset Thursday morning when he realized that the leprechaun stole his trap idea by knocking down the crayon and propping up the trap with that gold coin you see laying in the grass after his escape.  He was not happy about the design flaws of this years trap!

Though he got away, the leprechaun left the kids Rolo's and rainbow sour strips under some little hats, along with some glow wands, and a box of Lucky Charms.

I didn't find out until he got home that Spencer actually wore the little hat with it's elastic chin strap to school...Not my proudest moment but it made us all laugh super hard.  Good times.

The little fella played some tricks on us by turning our milk and our apples green.  He also left a trail from the trap, down the island, and out the back door.

 At about 3 o'clock that afternoon, I suddenly felt inspired by my balloon rainbow to whip up some rainbow cupcakes.

 And since a simple idea can never stay simple, I decided we should have everyone over for a dessert party.  It was actually an idea mentioned by Rachael as we shopped at 10 o'clock Wednesday night for everything we needed for our ideas on Thursday.  I'm not sure when we're going to learn that our last minute/late night conversations always lead to over the top events.

By 7 p.m. my kitchen was full of goodies.  Cookies made by Grandma, Irish mint brownies by Lisa, homemade caramel topping made by Rachael, and my rainbow cupcakes.

(I hate terrible lighting!)

The kids spent the evening running around outside trying to track down the leprechaun.  They were convinced that he was still around since they kept finding his "tracks" (confetti) in new places.  There's no genius's here since it never occurred to them that the tracks kept getting carried around on people's shoes/feet!  We also had our second jug of milk mysteriously turn green after dinner while I was doing the dishes, again confirming their suspicions of him being close by.  At 8:30, after everyone left, I had to tell Spencer to come in from the dark (in the backyard) because St. Patricks Day was over and that was the only day the leprechauns run around searching for gold!  Every year I wonder why in the world we started this tradition but it always seems worth it in the end.

After seeing Rachael's post I felt like a loser for not taking pictures of my kids wearing all their green.  Then I felt stupid for realizing that we do all this for them and I didn't take a single picture of them.  I decided to take pictures of them today enjoying their afterschool snack (rainbow vanilla pudding left over from yesterday).  The results from my attempt were worse than hers.