It's Just too Much

Today begins a whirlwind weekend for us. 

1. Girls off school today
2. Pumpkin patch this morning.
3. Brother in law's wedding this weekend, which includes rehearsal, dinner, ceremony, reception, overnight at a hotel.
4. All of the fun and games associated with being in the wedding party - Husband's a groomsman, I'm a reader and Oldest is handing out programs.
5. My parents are coming to help with Youngest, so I have them to hostess a little bit.
6. We have a custom made table delivered to our house Sunday.  I haven't even started the process of selling our other table on Craig's List.
7. Puppy - her name is Lilly!  On Monday.
8. Just found out that Husband is out of town now Monday morning until Tuesday night. 

Not going to be much time to stop and breathe.  So I  got up early to do things like THIS and my little lovebug Youngest is up there yelling about coming out.  Plus she has a stuffy nose.  Plus there's something wrong with my google analytics.  And I'm not the I/T support around here!

Shit.  :)

Thank goodness I have Sunday's post all ready to go.  So that will go out no matter what.  Thank goodness I got my hair done last week - because good hair always helps with Positive Mental Attitude.  Thank goodness I have this wonderful family to stay totally busy with until Monday - some people aren't so blessed.  Thank goodness we're starting our morning right - at Bob Evan's.

I'm off to the races.  See you at the finish line.

Un-Happy Hour

Does anyone else have a terrible time with your kids between 4 and 6pm?  I know for infants this time is the witching hour, but I'm finding it's lasted past infancy and into the twos (and apparently, sevens) in our house. 

Here is the scene.  Oldest gets picked up at 3:30 from school.  She's tired, she needs to wind down, chill out, veg on the couch a little bit.  She needs to destress.  Conversely, Youngest has just woken up from her afternoon nap and she is ready to go, with a capital G-O.  The dichotomy between these two needs is, well, distressing for all of us.

But it's not just the "one's tired and one's not" issue, I'm beginning to suspect.  I'd planned pretty well to get around that.  Letting Oldest watch a show, while I take Youngest in the back yard to burn it off, things like that.  Here's what I think it is:

Oldest has been away from Mommy all day and needs me back.  She needs to feel like she is my focus, that I want to hear about her day.  And I want that too.  I've missed her.  I want to know what happened at school.  We also need to do piano practice, though I try not to do it right after school because it usually has disastrous consequences.  Like yesterday, which resulted in them both having two sets of time outs, EACH.  But I won't bore you with those details today.  I'm SO over it.

And Youngest should be fine with this need of Oldest, right?  She should understand that she has had Mommy all to herself for 5 whole hours (nap's in there for 2 hours) and now it's "Oldest time" - kinda like Miller time. 

Are you all laughing yet?  She's TWO, of COURSE she doesn't understand that!  The personalized time with Mommy means she wants more, and in her "it's all about me" stage of development (which, let's just be honest here - some people never "grow" past that stage), the more Mommy time she gets, the more she thinks she's entitled to have.   I SO want to put it's like a crack addiction, but I can't, JUST CAN'T, compare my two year old's need for Mommy to a crack addiction (unless I just did?). 

So they fight with each other.  LITERALLY, every time I leave the room, Oldest is screaming at Youngest and Youngest is either taking something from Oldest or hauling off and smacking her.  I'm all about siblings solving their own differences, but I can't tolerate the hitting and I can't tolerate the bellowing.  NO ONE (except Mommy, when she's had ENOUGH) is allowed to bellow in THIS house.

So now that I've deciphered the WHY, let's move on to the HOW TO FIX.  Because it's driving me crazy.  Tips, tricks, HELP out there?????  What do you do?  How do you help your kids not make you nutty during Un-Happy Hour? 

Maybe that IS why cocktail hour was invented.  It had nothing to do with work, it had everything to do with parenting.  ;)

Is it Love or are we C-R-A-Z-Y?

This little bundle of joy comes home with us next Monday.  After a wedding weekend.  During possibly the busiest fall I've ever had.  With no puppy experience (the last puppy I had came when I was 7).  I'm crazy, right? 

But, then again, just LOOK at her!  How can she be resisted?  Clearly, she cannot, as I only went to LOOK yesterday, then bought like the biggest impulse shopper on the planet.  The recession MUST be over!

Oldest, who wept with joy (which, of course, made me weep - it's really no wonder where weeping comes from with that one), has offered to donate FIFTY dollars of her own money toward puppy supplies.  Talk about warm and fuzzy feelings.  THAT makes it worth it right there - to hear her so willingly give up her own money to help support a family project.  Do I have a future philanthropist on my hands? 

And Youngest?  Will you just look at this?  She's getting more mischievious by the day!  Tonight is Gymnastics.  Can't wait to see (actually dreading because I SO want her to) if Oldest is able to make good choices per our talk last week.  I'll let you know. 

206 is a great number!

Since installing Google analytics one month ago, I have logged 206 visitors!  Hurray!  Maybe I'll go celebrate with some Halloween Candy, it being 7am.  :)  Have a great day.  My week is, AGAIN, going to be a doozy.  Maybe I just need to share the weeks that are going to be a non-doozy.  They are much more rare, and therefore newsworthy.  I did not try to rhyme that on purpose, I swear.  Just caught it on the edit.  It's a natural gift.  ;)

Here's Youngest, howling over her mother's humor.  She appreciates me!

Courageous Women to Admire

One of my favorite blogs, We Are THAT Family, wrote the most inspiring post today (she actually does a lot).  In it, she spoke about Stephanie Nielson and her blog about survival.  This woman, her story and her ability to overcome extreme adversity is utterly inspiring.  Check out her appearance at this Oprah clip. 

Thank you, "We are THAT Family," for teaching me about this amazing woman today.  Thank you nienie, for your courage.  I wish I was half the woman you are.

The Ebb and Flow of Oldest's Emotions

As with many gifted children, Oldest often cycles through being totally on top of her game or in the alternative, being at the bottom of the barrel.

I am planning an extensive Super Sunday Series on what I've learned about these cycles (coming this Fall to a Blog near you), but 1) must refresh myself on it and 2) must finish those very exciting overexcitabilities.  Week 3 is emotional overexcitability, which can strike fear in even the most hardy of parents.  Look for it Sunday.

But I digress.  Back to Oldest, and her current ebb.  She's struggling right now.  To get the proper visual, let's say the barrel's just been emptied of horse manure and she's stuck mucking it out.  Alone.  In cold weather.  Yes, that's right.  She's on scrubbing the bottom of the barrel this week. 

I am sad for her even while she is exasperating the hell out of me.  One of the things I find so hard about the school age years is that you (ok, me) never know what kind of trauma (drama?) is happening to your gifted child (or any child for that matter) while at school.  You don't know that she:

1. only got 3 things done on her work plan
2. lost recess time for "goofing off during the work cycle"
3. lost extra recess time for laughing at someone in circle time
4. got a cut that required (gasp and shock!) a bandaid
5. got jostled out of line by someone in gym class
6. was told by another friend that they are no longer friends after she tried to jostle her way back in.

Until she starts bawling, and I mean BAWLING over eating a lousy carrot.  Even after saying, "Oldest, this reaction seems a little extreme for not wanting to eat a carrot, is something else going on today?"  You only get the above information in little bits and pieces, one thing at a time, so that when you've asked her to get her legs back under the table for the 5th time in 15 minutes (rather than dangling them over the arm of the chair) and maybe you say it the last time a little more loudly than the first 4 times (ok, the neighbors could definitely hear it), you're even more suprised by the reaction of:

1. I am the worst person EVER!
2. No one calls me cute, only Youngest!  It's so NOT FAIR!

But then you pull your still cute Oldest onto your lap and she finally pours out all of the tears she's been holding inside all day.  After it's over, you tell her a little secret.  People don't call her cute anymore, they call her beautiful, smart, witty and kind.  But because she's 7, they don't say it to her, they say it to Mommy instead. 

And that the other secret is this - all of the things that people think are cutest in Youngest (like pulling down her pants at Panera to show a table of strangers her new Elmo underpants - really happened, could I make that up?), will become "no longer cute" in the not too distant future. 

And the final secret?  Cute's not what you want to be.  Neither is beautiful on the outside only.  It's the inside that counts.  I PRAY that she's learning that from us in this beauty and material driven society.  And I PRAY that I'm learning to let her fail enough to change the failures herself, and not blame others or want someone to fix it for her.  But it's soooooo hard.

And what the heck?  Didn't I just say yesterday that I have a super busy week?   That's always when this kind of thing goes on, isn't it?  I guess it's God's way of evening out our "practically perfect in every way" vacation week last week. 

Sigh.  We'll get through it.  We'll get through it.  We'll get through it.

It's Gonna Be a Week of It!

The rejuvenation from last week's vacation will be seriously tested this week.  Husband will be working practically 'round the clock, the girls have a lot of STUFF going on after school early in the week and I have a lot of STUFF going on after school late in the week.  4 hour retreat on Sunday.  For a strategic plan.

Plus my brother in law's getting married in two weeks and I want to be svelte for it!  Not bloated and zitty from stress.

PLUS, in between all of the fun above, where's my time going to be to:

• finish my book, South of Broad
• watch my (currently 12, but soon to be 20 by midweek) backlogged DVR shows
• entertain the masses (151 visits and counting, people!) here

Ugh.  Looks like some late nights coming. 

Signed,

It's so hard when it really CAN'T be "all about me"  :)