I’m too tired to think of a creative or even non-creative title tonight. It’s been one of those days. Sometimes I feel like I am not cut out for this mom thing. The transition from no kids to one kid was difficult, but difficult in a what-on-earth-do-I-do-with-this-squawking-little-creature way. For me, the transition from 1-2 kids was a breeze. There were, of course, moments when I felt completely overwhelmed, but mostly I felt like it was a pretty seamless time in our lives. The transition from 2-3 kids, however, has thrown me for a loop. I knew it would be tough. I prepared myself for tough. I didn’t know it would last this long, though. I still don’t feel like we’ve competely settled in. The sleeping thing is killing me softly. I have three kids who all have completely different sleep patterns and only two rooms to put them in and it just doesn’t seem to be working. I am finally ready to try Tia and Sloan together. I have hesitated on this for a variety of reasons. First, they are sooooooooo different! Sloan wants the door open, Tia does better with it closed (an open door represents a lot more freedom than she can handle). Sloan wakes up screaming because his toe hurts, Tia vomits then goes right back to sleep in her vomit (not exaggerating). Sloan scares easily, Tia does not. Tia wakes up earlier than Sloan. Sloan goes to bed later than Tia. So, you can see that moving them in the same room has been hard for me to do. But, putting Landon in the room with Tia is just not working well. At least not right now. He won’t sleep through the night. We need to let him cry it out a little, but then he wakes her up. He wakes up at a different time every night. She wakes him up when she gets up in the morning. Blah, blah, blah… So, I just don’t know what to do. We tried putting Landon in a pack n play in our bathroom, but he doesn’t sleep great in that thing and who can blame him? I don’t sleep well on a board either! Plus, Lee has to get up and leave early a lot of mornings, so that makes things sticky. Anyway, these are my dilemmas, my stresses, these days. I’m really struggling with frustration and discouragement, a lot of which is compounded by my complete lack of sleep. But we will likely give Tia and Sloan a try together and see what happens. If it’s awful, then I don’t know what we do. Buy a bigger house? Hmmmm…tempting, but probably not wise. We’ll see.
On a brighter note, happy mother’s day a day late to all the mommies in my life. Since I never do anything on time, it seems fitting to post this now. Particularly to my own mother and mother-in-law. I love you both dearly and appreciate both of you so much. I’m one of those rare and blessed individuals who truly has a great relationship with both mom and MIL. Not many people can say that and I’m so grateful that I can.
Now it’s off to bed. My mom actually has the two older kids tonight, so I may get a decent night’s sleep!

In case you hadn’t noticed, I recently joined the St. Louis Bloggers Guild. You can click on the icon on my side bar and link to the bloggers guild site to read more about them if you’re interested. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I love writing and am always looking for contacts in the writing field. Second, I wanted to branch out and meet some new folks – something that is not always comfortable for me. I get very awkward and uncomfortable around people I don’t know, especially if Lee, my nevermetastranger husband isn’t with me. I needed to challenge myself and this seemed like a good opportunity. The good news is no one at the meeting today had two heads or breathed fire so it wasn’t as intimidating as I thought! Third, I just want to learn more about blogging. I had no idea what a powerful form of communication it is! We talked about some cool stuff today and I’m just so excited to learn more and get more involved with projects. There’s a really neat opportunity coming up that I would love to write about but don’t fully have a handle on how to explain it yet, so I’ll write about it later. Anyhoo, just wanted to share! Happy Saturday.

…which means my husband has been like a kid in a candy store since Sunday when we brought it home. Since that time I’ve heard these phrases uttered in our home: “D’Oh!” “Oh, I was robbed,” “Booyah,” “Oh, come on, Lee” (talking to himself, of course) and “Son of a BEEP.” In Lee’s defense, that last phrase was muttered jokingly because he could hear me giggling at him – he doesn’t usually sit around and cuss at the TV. What is it about video games that turn grown men into adolescents again? Don’t get me wrong – I love the Wii. It’s good fun and I can get into it too. But my attention span is limited when it comes to such activities, whereas Lee could do it for hours on end. The best is the WWII game he got where he gets to fly around and kill the Germans. That’s when his true colors come out. Kill and destroy! Hah! I can see the satisfactory gleam in his eye every time he takes out another bad guy – redeeming the world from the confines of his couch! What a guy…

My mom and dad took Sloan with them to their condo in Florida for the week so I’ve had an extremely leisurely two days. Two kids is a breeze man! Back when I just had two kids I remember thinking how hard it was. Now I realize that that was a walk in the park. In the last two days I’ve actually managed to get laundry done, get the house relatively clean, and almost potty train Tia! WaaHooo! We made our second attempt at potty training yesterday – it went alright, but today has been spectacular! We’re on our way. While I miss Sloan a lot, I know that he’s having a blast and I’m enjoying the 5 day “break.” Life is good.

Since Sloan is away, we have been trying to really pour into Tia this week. She doesn’t get our undivided attention very often so we’ve tried to really concentrate on loving on her. Because we’re potty training, it’s been hard to leave the house, so I decided to bring a “fun” activity to us. I bought finger paints. I’ve never bought finger paints before. In general, I prefer to leave messy crafts to the preschool teachers who are actually being paid to deal with the mess. So, and this makes me sound terrible, I rarely bring out crafts. Even markers are a pain because my kids can only keep them on paper for about 10 seconds, then I end up scrubbing marker off of everything else. But today, I decided to go for it. I put Tia in an old t-shirt and let her have at it and she pretty much had a ball. Here are a few shots – evidence of why I rarely allow them to do this!

I linked to this blog off another friend’s blog. I recently told you how much I love the group Selah. I am just always uplifted by their music and have followed them for many years. A month ago, lead singer Todd and his wife had a special little girl. Read this post to be uplifted, but have Kleenex handy!

I’ve posted about this before, but honest to God, my kids fight so terribly that it wears me out and breaks my heart. I so want them to love one another and deep down I know that they do. Despite the fact that at any given moment, one of them is hitting or kicking or pushing the other and someone is crying, they both constantly want the other around to play with. It’s a strange dynamic. This morning, however, was a horrible morning. Both of them were being horrible to one another. Tia was annoying Sloan (sometimes legitimately, sometimes just by her very presence) and Sloan, the king of overreaction, spent the morning yelling at her. After telling them 800 times to keep their hands to themselves and quit screaming, I lost it. I don’t like being mean mommy and I work really, really hard at patience because I know it’s not a virtue that would best describe me. So, it’s not for lack of trying. But, when they woke Landon up from his nap, that was the straw that broke this mommy’s back! I sat them both down and in my semi-calm voice (I was borderline yelling, trying hard to hold back) explained to them that they will be brother and sister for life and they needed to start being more kind and loving toward one another. I could see that that was not working at all, so I moved to plan B. I made them sit on the ottomans facing each other and smile at one another for ten minutes. They were not allowed to get up, touch one another, or talk unless they had a nice thing to say to one another. If they broke any of those rules, I added time to the clock. I think they ended up sitting there for 13 minutes due to their apparent unruly feet that kept “accidentally” kicking the other person. Here is what they looked like in their time out:

I made them each say five nice things about the other. Sloan told Tia she had cute hair, pretty eyes, a cute nose, cool clothes and nice fingers. Because Tia still hardly talks she just kept saying “dis-ee-dow” over and over, which can mean a whole host of things. When their time was up, I made them hug and saying I love you (or dis-ee-dow one more time).I wish I could say this helped. They were nicer to each other for a few minutes after that, but it didn’t last long. Although this afternoon, Sloan was very sweet to Tia when she fell and scraped her knee, telling her over and over how sorry he was that she got hurt. That warmed my heart briefly. If only it would last! If anyone has any suggestions on how to handle incessent sibling fighting, I’m all ears!

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last week. Actually, this is someone I don’t know that well, but we are on our way to developing a friendship. We were talking about motherhood and the joys, and annoyances, that come with it. The topic of our conversation is not one that is unfamiliar to me. I’ve probably had this same talk with a dozen other moms. It all centered around the fact that while we desperately love being mothers, there is still a part of us that screams for an identity outside our children. We long for purpose beyond poopy diapers and snotty noses. We want to make a difference in the world and fear that somehow we’re not living up to that desire.

This was a very big struggle for me after I had Sloan. Those first few months when the entire focus of my life shifted off of one path and slid down another were hard and confusing – actually, I think this lasted a couple of years. Once Sloan got a little older and I finally felt like I was impacting his life, rather than just sustaining it, it seemed I saw a little more purpose in my role as mommy. But there is still a longing to have an impact on the world, while also raising lovely, God-honoring children. I sometimes miss “me” time. Parenthood really is the largest act of unselfishness in the world (at least it should be anyway!). But so often, there is this stigma that surrounds motherhood. We are all so afraid of becoming soccer moms. At least I was. I still get a little panicky when I realize that I am driving, gulp, a minivan! Weird.

Of course, there is also no place I would rather be…most days anyway. I adore being a mom. I gave up a large part of myself because that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what all of us do as mother’s – whether we stay home or work, we all sacrifice in order to provide as much time, attention, love and grace for our children. And the truth is, our identity should not be wrapped up in our kids. That’s not good for them, or for us! As a child of God, I believe that my identity should be placed in Him, as His daughter, allowing Him to mold me and use me as He sees fit. I want to be available to do whatever He calls me to do. I also understand that I have been blessed with certain talents and gifts and I want to use those and not waste them. It’s a balance between pursuing those dreams and keeping my primary purpose as mother to three in focus. That sometimes feels like an overwhelming task!

I hit an all time low last night. I was so exhausted from the endless day (see previous post). In addition to the kid’s crazy antics, they also fought all. day. long. I was worn out by 8:00. So while Lee put Sloan to bed, I turned on the TV while folding about 15 loads of laundry. Guess what? There’s nothing on TV on Tuesday nights. So, going against my better judgement, I allowed myself to get sucked into an E! True Hollywood Story about the Kardashian family. And when that went off, I started watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians. There it is…my confession of the day. And, if I’m being honest, I should say that I was actually enjoying watching this show. Sorry to any of you who may enjoy. Don’t mean to dis (diss?), but honestly, what a ridiculous show!

Lee came in around 9:15 and saw me laying near comatose on the couch, my brain almost visibly turning to mush. “What are you watching?” he asked. Through my stupor, I could sense the laughter in his voice. I lifted the remote. “Please help me,” I said. Lee gladly took it out of my hand and changed the channel, saving me from further subjecting myself to that nonsence. I went to bed shortly after that, hoping and praying for a better day.

Today started off early yet again, with me in a crappy mood, yet again. By about 7:30 this morning, I realized that I needed to get over myself and move on. So my kids get up early – big deal. I realized that it actually makes the morning run much smoother. We are not rushed at all. We take our time getting ready and eating breakfast – and we’re still all dressed and ready to go by 8:00, which gives the kids some play time before school. This is a good thing. If I got my lazy butt in bed before 10:30 or 11:00 every night, the early mornings would probably be less painful. So that’s my new goal. Go to bed earlier and wake up happier. Oh, and I’m praying that the Lord would give me joy in my serving, because I’m not feeling joyful these days – I’m feeling annoyed. I’m tired and selfish and I just want to crawl into bed and be left alone. But, that’s not an option so I’m choosing to grow up, accept the strength of the Lord and quit relying on my own, be a little more disciplined in my life and enjoy serving my family. We’ll see how the next few days go since Lee is out of town until Friday night.

Our daughter has always been an awesome sleeper, and she still is – but she wakes up at the crack of dawn and she is very quiet. This morning, I thought I heard her open her door, but wasn’t sure since I hardly slept at all last night due to Landon…more on that later. Finally, around 6:30, I heard a bang and tears. I ran out into the living room and was horrified at what I saw. Apparently the little scavenger decided it would be a good idea to get into the formula and carry it through the house. There was a fine dusting of formula everywhere! And perfect little footprints walking through it. It was a mess. I’m not sure how she pulled it off exactly, but she managed to cover almost every floor we have with a perfect covering of formula. Oh yeah, and apparently the crash I heard was her dropping the can…on the dog. Sadie then tried to lick the formula off her coat. A little quiz for you: What happens to formula when it gets wet? Does it
A) dissolve
B) turn into a glue like paste
C) get slimy

The correct answer? B. If you saw Sadie now you’d notice that she has leaves and dirt stuck to her back because the formula has matted her fur down. And the spots on the floor where Sadie tried to lick up the powder required me to get on my hands and knees and scrape. Even after doing that, sweeping and mopping, parts of the floor are still sticky. So before 7:00 this morning I had vaccuumed, swept and mopped the entire house. And I was not in the most pleasant of moods. Yesterday at the doctor’s office, our ped. told us we needed to stop feeding Landon in the middle of the night. He should be sleeping all night by now. Because we knew this would be a rough transition, we put him in the pack and play in our bathroom. Well, after an hour of him screaming, we caved and gave him a bottle at 2:00. So, I was already sleep deprived and sweeping and mopping are not my favortie ways to wake up.

Then, as we’re getting ready this morning, I realize that I can’t find my wedding ring anywhere. I started to panic because I knew I left it in the kids bathroom last night when I got ready for bed. I was afraid it got knocked in the trash, so I dug out the trash bag, which was already at the curb, and brought it in and went through it piece by nasty piece. So gross. And no ring. I asked Tia if she knew where it was, but of course she had no idea what I was saying – I really wish she’d start talking more! When Sloan came home, I asked him if he had seen it and he nodded his head yes.

“Where is it?” I asked.
He calmly walked into the living room and lifted up the ottoman and pulled out my ring. “Why is my ring under there?” I asked, so relieved that it wasn’t lost forever.
“I was being a pirate and that was my buried treasure,” Sloan said.
It’s been one of those days…

We had our appointment today for Landon’s 4 month check up. First of all, I must say that my kids are not afraid to gain weight. He is 18 pounds(97%) and 26.5(95%) inches long! He’s a beast.

I was very nervous about bringing up the immunization chat with my doctor, but God is so good and my doctor was so supportive of our concerns and desires! Whew. She understood my concerns regarding the hepititus B shot and rotovirus (I didn’t go into chicken pox today…baby steps). She agreed that we could put those off or not get them at all as long as we understood the battle we would be facing regarding entering school. And she was extremely helpful in coming up with a more spaced out schedule for the rest of the shots! I wasn’t sure about Prevnar, but she suggested going ahead and getting that one and putting off polio since the likelihood of of him being exposed to polio is slim to none. I’m not even sure if we want to get that one anyway, so I was good with that. She agreed to do no more than two or three vaccinations at a time and even said that when it came time for MMR, she would attempt to order those vaccines seperately for us! That was a huge shock to me because I didn’t know if it was possible to do that. So, instead of getting the MMR, he would get measles first, some time later, mumps, and some time after that, rubella – depending on the availability of the supplies. She said those vaccines are offered seperately only in limited supplies, but when they had them in she would let me know. I may have Tia get those vaccines seperately, since she still needs to get that vaccine as well. And since poor Landon had an ear infection that we didn’t know about, she didn’t even give him a shot today. She said we could come back in 10 days and we could get one or two of the shots then.

I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I feel really good about this. I wasn’t against all the vaccines, just the way that they are administered. I’m so grateful to my doctor for listening to my concerns and not making me feel silly or foolish. God is so good because I have been praying about this so much! So the only vaccines Landon will likely be receiving before the age of two are DTaP, Hib and Prevnar. The rest we will either decline, separate or wait on. While I was waiting to go in, I did ask for a copy of Sloan and Tia’s records and was shocked to see that they both received the Hep B shot the day they were born! I don’t remember anyone even asking me if that was okay, though I’m sure they did (I hope they did). The first time I ever remember being asked about it in the hospital was with Landon, and we actually declined it. It just makes me sick now that I know what I do about vaccines. But, by God’s grace, Sloan and Tia appear to be fine and all we can do is pray that there are no future effects. But, I do feel empowered for actually sticking to my guns and doing what I felt was right for my child. Thanks for all your thoughts and support! For those of you who are also wrestling with this, approach your doctor and try to work out a plan that is best for you and your child. It’s so worth it!