I haven’t blogged in a while – it’s been a fairly busy couple of days. Friday morning, my mother called just as I was getting ready to rush Jess out the door. Marc and I have one car, and for the most part, he does the driving to and from school, but on Friday, he’d had an early meeting and had carpooled in, so I was in charge of the commute to school. She wanted to go shopping to buy Sam and Jess their Easter outfits, so I told her that I’d meet her down at her house. We spent the whole day shopping, bought the girl a beautiful black and white dress and Sam a new dress shirt and belt (he has reluctantly taken the belt off strictly for sleep and put it back on immediately upon waking up). Then we drove home and I started trying to clean. It didn’t go well. I’m so tired and sore and the kids were fighting and when Marc offered to take us all out to dinner, I jumped at it.
The weekend was crazy busy, as per usual. Saturday, I met Becky and Trish at the mall for a while, bought the sweetest little coming home outfit for the baby and a little sun hat for her. I started really contracting hard at the mall, actually considered whether or not I was going into early labor. But then I sat for a while, chugged some water and it seemed to calm down. I’ve been having contractions off and on ever since, whenever I’m up doing too much. Saturday night, we had Lilli and Sarah spend the night, and it was so cute, all four kids played together SO well. It was another late night – I don’t think either of my kids fell asleep before 10:00, and with Jess, you can so completely tell.
Jess just doesn’t function well on no sleep. She’s pretty impervious to most things that bug other kids, she can be hungry and still friendly and cheerful, she’s not bothered by being too hot or too cold, she doesn’t even complain if she has to pee and we can’t get to a potty right away – but lack of sleep morphs her into psycho daughter – she just gets brutal. And we’ve been dealing with a lot of that this weekend, the poor kid is in her bedroom crying herself to sleep after informing me that she’d so much rather Daddy was here than me because she likes him the best. I would have stayed in there and snuggled her to sleep, and would honestly rather be doing that than blogging, but nope – she had to take it that one extra step and get all mean.
Jessie’s complicated – there are always so many layers to whatever is going on with her. She’s so very smart and her mind is always making connections. I struggle with her sometimes, because it seems as though she goes out of her way to make her life more difficult than it has to be. I mean, I guess we all do that, right? But take tonight, for example. She had to go to bed, she’s exhausted, she knows it, I know it. She knows that I’m not going to let her get out of bed, why not just make it easier on both of us, snuggle up and let me sing you off to sleep? That makes so much more sense to me, but instead she went with fighting and getting mean, so that I told her that she could just go to bed by herself then, and shut the door and walked away. Now she’s in there crying (actually, I think she’s asleep now) and I’m out here feeling guilty and like a mean mother. Even though I know I did what was actually best for her, what she needs is sleep. It might not be what makes her happy, but it’s what’s best. Sigh…
In other news… went to a really crappy family party today, where I overheard comments of a derogatory nature directed at my son and my parenting skills, so I’m in a pretty lousy state of mind. Let me state officially and for the record that I’m one of “those” mothers. I pick my battles. I fight the fights that are worth fighting, not the ones that don’t matter. Sam has three older sisters. I have a lot of girl socks. He also likes to take his socks off and shove them deep inside the couch (why, I don’t know), but I’m frequently in the position of having a thousand socks for Jess and three for Sam. I keep all the socks in a box, and every now and again I match them. Today, we were getting dressed and I told him to go grab some socks. Sam’s big on independence, nothing makes him happier than doing it (whatever it seems to be) by himself. And he picked himself out two socks – one was polka dotted and one had little pink hearts on it, put them both on himself, and then put on his shoes. And I didn’t care. They weren’t boy socks, they didn’t match – but he was very proud of himself, and they covered his feet.
But when certain members of my family noticed his socks, there were comments made. It didn’t help matters in their eyes that he also had his fingers painted. This reflected badly, to them, not just on him but also on me. But (again) the kid’s got three older sisters. And it was spa night. And he wanted to play and they wanted to paint, and I don’t mind if they paint his nails. I’m not worried about his gender identity – if anything, this kid is overdosing on testosterone, he spends most of his leisure time fighting bad guys and wrestling with his Daddy. But it infuriated me that people would make fun of him – and I’m vowing never, never to go to another family function unless my sister or Marc is in attendence. I didn’t have any allies there, and it was a really, really crappy afternoon.
My house is in shambles, having four kids rocking and rolling here all weekend will do that, and finally both my kids are asleep. And if I was a good mother, I’d be vaulting into action, weilding my broom and my vacuum and picking up and straightening and making everything neat and pretty. But let’s be honest, I’m going to heat up my hidden stash of chinese food and watch Grey’s Anatomy, which I recorded three or four days ago and haven’t gotten around to watching š
Here’s hoping for a better tomorrow…
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