My heart aches today. I had big plans for completing my overdue list of household tasks…even fantasies of accomplishing a few additional ones that I have been too intimidated to add. Peytne was the first to wake up, oddly enough she wasnt hungry, just lonely. All she wanted was to lay on the pillow and coo at me. I love when my mornings start out this way. nothing beats the relaxing joy that comes from laying next to a happy baby while she smiles and talks to you about her dreams. Thirty minutes later I hear the -Thump-Thump- of Bailey’s tail. I don’t even have to look up to know that a child is trying to quietly sneak into my bed and moments later a little voice will say, “mommy….can you turn on the cartoons?”
This particular morning it was Haylee sneaking in, her hair as wild as Medusa’s….they seem to switch off who gets up before the other and I thank God they don’t usually try to wake the other one up first. Another thirty minutes later Kaelob comes in with a handful of dinosaurs and his pajama pants looking like a pair of capri’s; the poor kid I just cant seem to get new jammies fast enough.
We all snuggle up together for a few moments; feet in faces, heads on arms or legs, blankets twisted and barely covering everyone, cat bugging the dog, dog thumping tail and bugging kids. SO basically at this point…maybe you would think differently, but three kids, two dogs and a cat get to be too much for a California King sized bed and we shuffle down the stairs single file, dragging blankets and dinosaurs along.
Breakfast in my house is quite spontaneous. Sometimes its a bowl or two of cereal, maybe even Oatmeal if your lucky. Other times you could be treated with some frost bitten waffles or some oddly burned pancakes to hit the spot. Funny thing is, I am not a huge fan of big meat and potato kind of breakfast’s but they seem to be my specialty. This was a cereal kind of morning…of double proportions.
My morning passed fairly quickly and as noon approached the kid’s previous angelic attitudes were quickly crumbling to pieces. I could physically see in their faces each time a piece of their happiness fell away and they became grumpier and grumpier. When Kaelob gets to this point he laughs uncontrollably and thinks my anger and frustration is funny… I cant begin to tell you how unnerving this is to me. It takes every ounce of strength I have in me not to shake the nastiness right out of him. Haylee just doesn’t care about my reaction, she just cares whether or not shes said or done what she wants and how she wants. She will talk right through me if she has to. God has blessed me with these children….and I am reminded of that wonderful saying “God has a reason for everything” Oh yes, this I will ask him of one day. 🙂
Anyway, upon entering our house at around 1pm this afternoon it was blatently clear to me that a nap was in the cards for ALL of my children. Peytne was the last to lay down, but laid down none the less. I tried to ignore the dishes, the laundry, the trash-wait I did take out two loads of trash…but there seemed to still be trash everywhere and I just couldnt relax. Finally a little before three I dozed off only to wake up twenty minutes later to Kaelob asking very politely if I could help him transform his Bumblebee back into a car. Maybe I was just tired but in that moment a tear ran down my face and this was the unexpected start to my horrendous emotional downfall this afternoon.
Yes, I know, it does seem rather odd that a children’s toy could make me cry… but it wasnt that. It was the sound of Kaelob’s voice, the look in his eye… he knew the only person who really knows how to fix it for him is not here, but he was asking anyway. There was this sound of innocence and hope. I wanted to be able to fix it for him and make him happy. He handed me the car and sat down on the couch next to me, watching every move I made like he was mesmorizing the path to transform it, so next time he could do it himself. I hoped I was doing it right, I wished I knew what I was doing… but knew I couldnt do it. A little while later I stopped clicking the pieces around and he looked up at me. I could see his heart sink as his glimmer of hope was extinguished. He frowned, took the toy back from me and ‘quietly’ thumped up the stairs to his room.
With her magical timing Haylee then poked her head out of her room and asked if it was time to come downstairs, “but first I have to go potty.” she says. It occured to me that she really wasnt even waiting for an answer, she was telling me it was time to wake up, not asking. By this point I am getting frustrated that I was unable to obtain a decent nap myself, failed at accomplishing my early morning goals for the household chore list and was missing my husband immensely.
I tried to muster up the energy to do some of the work, so I started on laundry…BAD CHOICE. One of the first few things I pulled out was one of Eric’s t-shirts. I found it odd that hes been gone for almost a week and I am still finding articles of his clothing in my loads of laundry. late in the afternoon when I am tired and hungry my mind unfortunately begins to wander… therefore my thoughts on finding my husbands laundry, which wouldn’t normally have been an issue, trailed off a bit. My heart felt empty, like hes been gone for months. I was angry at myself for even thinking it, considering we have been seperated for months before and I feel like I dealt with it much better before. I hurt for my children, knowing they love their father and wish he could be here when they wake up and want to snuggle in the morning or when they go to bed at night and want to be tucked in and get a kiss goodnight. Talking to him on the phone or using Skype to video call him just is not the same. especially when he works 12 hour days seven days a week and by the time he is back at the hotel on his computer, the big kids are in bed. They miss him SO much and it hurts me, on this day it was killing me.
Almost so much so that I forget I am hurting too, let me explain… Next week will be 8 years of wonderfully hard, but joyous years of marriage to the Love of My Life. Most likely, he will spend that day working in 115 degree weather then going home to a bag of fastfood and an empty hotel room. People have commented how hard it must be to have him coming and going so often and having to stay so long….. I usually try to just shrug it off because the easier I pretend like it is, the easier it is to fool myself.
Not knowing when to expect him home, not having a date to count down till, not being able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but to just have Faith in it…. now that’s hard. I struggle with needing him for simple things like Kaelob did today. Maybe not a transformer toy but a broken sprinkler head, a Wii malfunction or carrying the vacuum up two flights of stairs….It is frustrating to have to wait here and watch while nothing is getting done bc I cant or just dont know how to do it by mself….
I am also very stubborn. I refuse to call someone who lives 30minutes away, ok I admit I refuse to call anyone even if they live 10 minutes away…. to come lift something heavy for me or replace a bathroom faucet. I will struggle and struggle and get it done on my own or just chuck it aside and add it to my horrendously long to-do list for when Eric comes home…poor guy. lol
So anyway, at this point in my day I feel myself shutting down. I feel the heat of frustration rising in my cheeks and my body tensing up with each noise, each whine, each obnoxious argument. The kitchen was still a mess and becuase my solution to this problem was avoiding that area altogether….cooking dinner was out of the question. The laundry still hadnt been finished so…. getting clean clothes on and going out to dinner was out of the question. Now here is where you get a true glimpse of my stubborness and tolerance level…. The thought of even picking up the phone to try and order pizza seemed impossible to me. I mustered up the energy to text my husband for support and to my suprise he had a solution! He used his wonderful magic phone and ordered us pizza from his jobsite. This is just one of the many reasons why I love my husband.
The kids ritually mauled the pizza guy, dogs even joined in this time. They chowed down an entire large three topping pizza in minutes. I was close to canceling my plans for the evening but again Eric encouraged me to stay on track….so I did. I promised the kids a movie so we flipped through the On Demand Movies and found a bunch of older ones. The kids picked a funny little anemated family movie called Doogal.
Let me just tell you, Doogal is a very interesting movie. It was written by the creators of “Fairly odd parents” an animated series on Nickelodeon…. so a lot of the jokes were funny and amusing only to me. However, the choice of characters were extremly odd; a red polka-dotted cow that sings, a buck tooth rabit who plays the banjo, a snail (whose secretly in love with the cow), a farting moose who spends most of the movie blue, a little girl named Florence and a dog (looks more like a fluffy rug) who eats so much candy he throws up. The ONLY good thing that came from watching this movie was that the very next day in the grocery store I offered to let Haylee pick out a piece of candy and she says to me, “No mommy, I dont like to eat candy any more. It will make me throw up” … SCORE!!!
I can not begin to tell you how relaxing it was to sit back and let dinner come to me then snuggle up on the couch and watch a very interestingly funny movie before bedtime. The kids didnt even fight me when it was time to go upstairs and brush their teeth and go to bed. These are the days, these are the moments … the kind of moments where I actually enjoy being a mom. I know it sounds funny coming from someone whose been a mom for a little over 6 years, but I have struggled a LOT along the way. Most days I just wanted to pull my hair out and run the other direction. Dont get me wrong, I love my kids, but it was a combination of feeling inadequate and needing to just take a break for my own sanity.
Lately I must say, despite adding a newborn into the mix I feel like things have gotten so much easier. I completely understand that that sounds rediculous, but it has. I find myself enjoying more moments than I do stress or worry. I have so much more patience with them and they seem to have more patience with me. Ive always felt like the oddball type of mom that doesnt quite fit into a specific category or personality type. This makes it hard for me to feel like I truly enjoy motherhood. Lately I dare to say that I’ve truly been enjoying motherhood. 🙂
In this newfound maternal happiness I have also found saddness as a lonely desperate wife. I want my husband to share these moments, feel the love and joy that our children bring us…. but alas work calls him. Today was a hard but unexpectedly wonderful day. My heart breaks that he has to be so far, for so long…. but it warms at the thought of him coming home and being able to embrace him again. I see it in my children and know there is nothing I can do to fix my children’s aching hearts, however I have decided that it is important to remember that I dont just hurt for my kids, I hurt for myself as well. I need to stop being so stubborn and proud. Its okay to admit that “yes today is going well, today is a good day” or “no im not doing so good today. I need help please.”
Thank you God for giving me such a WONDERFUL day, getting me through the stress and blowouts of the day in tact and with my sanity…I think. 🙂