patience is NOT my strong suit

I should probably not be blogging at all in the days leading up to Blogtober (how clever is that! not really? whatever), but the house is overwhelmingly full of toys, uncleaned bathrooms, unmopped floors, unwiped counters, and 87 bags of groceries to put away, and I'm feeling very unmotivated. Usually I feel somewhat unmotivated to blog daily, but it's the activity that takes the least energy today.

Last night was a real bummer. The kids took until 4:30 to 7:00 to clean up the basement. It was supposed to be a way for me to get them to do it without being ogre mom (you know, yelling, stomping, smoking from the ears), but somehow it unravelled to that anyway.

My intentions are always so good. I love the kids, I love their goofiness, I love that they're such a big part of my life. I wouldn't trade them. That being said, they drive me nuts sometimes. I wish that I could always be calm and levelheaded, but sometimes it's just so hard. I justify my big mean reactions by saying that I'm tired, Steven works a lot, new baby, other stresses, etc. But you know, our situation has been the same for a long time now, so those excuses really don't get to fly.

I know, deep breaths, count to ten, remind myself that they're 3 and 5. They don't care about being on time for stuff, about not taking off their socks mere minutes before it's time to go to school and losing them in the house "somewhere". They don't care about pasta sauce on their shirts, about spilled milk (there's aways spilled milk around these parts), about all the lumber dragged out of the shed and distributed around the yard. They don't care about the four food groups, or water on the bathroom floor.

They care about hearts and rainbows and Spiderman. They love lava and princesses and their mommy and coloring pictures and where they stood in line when leaving their classroom. They care about their snack and their friends and singing silly songs. They worry about their favorite toys and whether their pillows are right side up because they want to see the SpongeBob side, not the slightly less cool Patrick.

I'd love to spend my time swooning over pink lace and matchbox cars, but the truth is that all those things they don't care about, I have to. I have to fight three little kids out the door and into the van in the morning. I have to clean up spilled milk and sloshed water and mountains of sand. I can't tell them that if they don't get their shoes on they're not going to school, because they have to go. I have to care about all the things they don't, and make them happen.

There are days I just don't have the energy or the patience to make all these things go smoothly. Mornings kind of suck. I figure that if I'm entirely organized the night before, that things will go better in the morning. Not so. I have jackets and shoes laid out the night before. I even put all the other shoes in the closet so that their three little pairs of shoes are obvious in the entrance. I get up early and give them breakfast early so that they shouldn't have to race through it.

Somehow, I can't get them to stop singing and eat. I can't get them to leave their socks on once my back is turned. I can't expect them to not be distracted by the dead bee at the bottom of the stairs. I can't hope that they won't fight in the morning - over a toy, a blanket, a bowl, a spot on the couch, who gets to sit beside Mitchie.

Patience is a virtue and all that, I get it. I get it, but I don't know where to actually "get" it some days.

When I was a kid we didn't have sticker charts and reward jars. We didn't have pancakes for breakfast and a mom who walked us to school everyday.

Is it possible that we were just the same, except that from a kid's point of view the story is entirely different? Nah.

I feel like I should pose some sort of advice-asking question here or something, but I'm not even sure what to ask.

Maybe I should drink more. And more.

Jeez not really.