My dear sweet husband....

Dear Husband,
       Here we are at the end of the week and the house looks like shit. Actually, I don't look so hot myself. You may think that I've spent all week doing absolutely nothing, watching TV and eating chocolate all day. Though if you've looked in the fridge lately you'll remember that we don't have any good chocolate and haven't in awhile. So here's how my week from Monday to Wednesday went, or at least what I remember of it. Riley. Coughing. Crying. Whining. Not napping. Hardly eating. Not sleeping at night. Not staying in her bed at night. "Sleeping" on top of me. Squishing me in between you two. Add to that the other four children (plus the one extra that I watched yesterday) whining, crying and not listening. Now put this on a constant repeat. I swear they've all been bathed and fed this week. I've cleaned the living room probably two dozen times. I've managed one shower for myself and I've managed to not give in to the constant urge to cry because of frustration and lack of sleep.

This takes us to Thursday. Riley actually slept last night! OMG I was so excited when I woke up today! I was still tired but I didn't feel like having a nervous breakdown. Holly and Riley were reasonably well behaved in the morning. I cleaned up the toys in the living room, again. Swept the floor. It didn't look too bad. I even managed to get a little work done on my blog! Since then, Riley has dumped her bowl of nummies on the couch, then onto the floor I don't know how many times. And scattered toys all over the room yet again. Her and Holly even finally took naps today. That's where Riley's good mood ended. Since waking up she's been whiny, demanding, clingy and in general just a pain in my ass. It's barely 2:30 in the afternoon and it will only get worse when the other demon spawns get home from school in a little bit.

So, I love you. I missed you. And I hope you had a wonderful day at work. If I'm less than sweet and lovable when you get home tonight, I'm truly sorry. But Riley started it.

To Blog or Not to Blog....

Sometimes blogging sucks! There I said it. Trying to figure out which backgrounds work the best. What kind of social media sites you need to be connected to. If anybody actually reads or cares about what you have to say or if you are just randomly babbling to yourself. Trying to not offend or generally piss off any guilty parties who read your blog when you really need to vent about them or hire a hit man. And starting over with a new blog when you put so much time and effort into your first one. There, did I cover all the sucky aspects of having a blog?

But it's also wonderful to have a blog. Somewhere that you can just babble to yourself without worrying that people think you're strange as hell. Yeah, they can comment, but you don't have to post their comment. It's a liberating feeling. There's been many times where blogging has saved my sanity after a day of dealing with these little demanding people who call me Mommy. It's honestly a perfect time out for me. I get out whatever they have done to drive me bat shit crazy, they get to live, and I don't have to take a xanax. It's a win win situation.

But the absolute best part of having a blog, is the community. It's reading what others have to say and finding out that as crazy as your life may be, you're not alone. And sometimes finding out that you're not nearly as crazy as some others! lol. So as overwhelmed as I may get with my blog sometimes, I think I'll stick with it. Besides, it's way cheaper than therapy!

Must. Get. Sleep...

I'm sitting here wondering just how much bungee cord it would take to keep Riley in her bed at night. I happened to blurt this out loud to my husband. His response? "Duct tape would work better." When I expressed my concern over it being too sticky he suggested electrical tape. Damn I love him! lol. Now before you get too concerned, rest assured we would never actually do any of these things. If so, they would have been tested on one of her many older siblings! But seriously, somethings gotta give! This Mama is getting practically no sleep. Riley is two years old and as precious and loved as she is, I'm definitely at the end of my rope. She will not stay in her bed at night. She goes to sleep, on a good night, after about an hour. Usually she sleeps in her four year old sister's bed. Holly doesn't mind Riley sleeping with her. And at first it helped. Riley would sleep through the night. It didn't last long though. I can spend hours taking her back to her bed. As soon as I doze off, she's back, crawling in my bed. Eventually I'm so tired that I just scoot over for her. That doesn't really work either. We sleep on a full size futon. Once you put Josh, me and Riley in it, it's overly crowded. I end up squished and roasting in between them. And it's not just enough to lay next to me. Oh no, she wants to be as close to me as humanly possible! And she tosses and turns and fusses ALL NIGHT LONG. Come morning I'm too damn tired to think. Now you'd think I could use her nap time to rest a bit, but nope, Miss Riley has different plans. No matter how tired she is, she's been refusing to sleep at nap time lately. By the time poor Josh gets home at night, I'm tired and extremely grumpy. Now add to that the fact that Riley is sick at least once a month for a week or more. Between her asthma and allergies this week consists of cough medicine, her twice daily preventative inhaler, her rescue inhaler when the coughing gets too bad, breathing treatments and lots of Vick's. So her sleeping on top of me next to me, also involves being coughed on constantly. By the time bed time comes around each night I just want to run away. I hate feeling this way. I'm glad that Riley seems to love me more than anybody else on the planet, but occasionally I wish she'd torment her Dad for a few minutes and give Mommy a break.

Revelations

Josh and I have been together as adults for three years now and of course we both have our pasts. We went for a late walk together the other night and i found out something that kind of surprised me. He only stopped worrying that I'd leave him to go back to my ex husband about six months ago. That really shocked me. Not that he worried about it, but that he has worried about it for such a long time. My ex and I have been completely separated for three years now and divorced for two. I understand why Josh worried. Partly because his first wife left him for her ex after just a few months of being married. Also, because my ex and I have been on and off again for so many years. I just don't get why he worried for so long. And I'm really curious what it was that finally made him stop worrying about it. I honestly can't think of anything that changed recently. Well besides us getting married but that was only a month ago. We were discussing so many things that night plus I was kind of shocked, that it didn't even occur to me to ask him. I guess that's a conversation and a post for another day....

I Do

Well we finally did it. Josh and I got married a few weeks ago. He's only been waiting for nineteen years! lol. We put the entire wedding together in ten days! We had been engaged for three years but I just wasn't ready. Every time I even considered getting married before I ended up with an anxiety attack. It was nothing personal towards Josh, I was just freaked out after already having one bad marriage. I really don't know what changed things for me, something just kind of clicked I guess. We had some problems with taxes last year and the lady from the IRS told us things would be easier if we got married. That alone was not a good enough reason in my mind. We discussed it randomly for a couple months and I tossed the idea around in my head for a while. Then one day, I literally told him, screw it, let's just do it! And amazingly, it felt ok. No anxiety attack. But it needed to be done before the end of the year. Hence planning a wedding in ten days!

Originally we were just going to go down to the courthouse to do it but I knew how much having an actual wedding meant to him. I couldn't manage a church wedding so we went for the next best thing. Pot Luck style at our favorite park. Sounds strange I know but it was totally fitting with our personalities. Every day through all the planning I took a minute to stop and asses, see if I was still ok. If the anxiety was creeping back in. It never did. Yeah, I was stressed with the planning but not with the idea of marrying Josh. Our wedding was simple but nice. Our friends did a wonderful job pitching in and helping with all the preparations. A really good friend of ours, Dizzy, actually got ordained and performed the ceremony for us. She mixed the perfect amount of sweet with witty sarcasm. The only things that came close to "going wrong" were actually pretty amusing afterwards. It was supossed to be a nice warm 64 degrees out that day. It ended up being more like 46 degrees and really windy. The planned fifteen minute ceremony turned out to be more like 5 minutes! And our wonderful friend/minister got nervous and had us all sign the marriage license in the wrong spots and put the wrong date. We spent the day after the wedding going to the courthouse to get a new license and tracking down the groom, best man, maid of honor and minister to resign the new license! Being the sweet blushing bride that I am, I told Dizzy to bring me my favorite icee and all would be forgiven. lol.

Nothing has physically changed since we got married. But there are definitely differences. He's happier now and I feel a greater sense of commitment. It makes both of us act a lot nicer and lovable towards each other. There are still days where he drives me bat shit crazy and I'd love to hit him over the head with a frying pan. But I don't. And when I feel overwhelmed by life instead of giving in to the intense anger that that usually makes me feel, I take a time out and then tell Josh that I love him and we'll get through it. Things haven't magically become perfect since we said I Do, but I do feel like I really have a partner in all this craziness for the first time ever.

The case of the missing phone

I'd really like to title this "You're an asshole, but I love you' but since I'm writing about my two year old, I guess that would put me in the bad mommy category. Though she really has been being an ass lately. I've got tons of examples but I'll try to stick to just one. Riley is obsessed with my phone. Nobody else's just mine. I've woken up many times in the early morning hours to find her either unplugging it or sitting on the end of my bed trying to play on it. This is exactly why I keep a lock code on it. I've gotten into the habit of waking up at some point and shoving it under my pillow. Evidently she's catching on to that trick. I don't know how many times I was up with her last night, taking her back to her bed. I think her goal was to wear me out. She succeeded. I woke up at five something this morning when my fiance, Josh, was getting a work shirt out of my nightstand drawer. I instinctively reached for my phone. It was missing, I knew I hadn't put it under my pillow yet but I checked there anyways. Wasn't there. My first instinct was Riley but we checked everywhere else first. Couldn't find it. So we went to look in her bed. She wasn't there. She had crawled into bed with her sister Holly. It was kinda  cute but I was sleepy and irritated. Looked around a bit and still couldn't find my phone. I finally had Josh call it. It was under her ass.

I keep threatening to make this song Josh's ringtone. I guess I should have already. It would have been totally appropriate this morning! LOL

Bath Time Woes

Wow, I've really been neglecting my writing this last year. Longer than that actually if you consider that I have more than one blog. It sucks too cause when I was writing on a daily basis I had so much less stress. With our crazy household I should have plenty to write about. The trouble is formulating the words. I didn't use to have this problem. I just spewed out whatever bit of randomness I was thinking at the moment. Kinda like I'm doing now I guess. LOL. So here's today's random.

Today, I made a huge mistake. I decided to give both 4 year old Holly and 2 year old Riley a bath, at the same time, when I was the only one home. Now I know this may not sound like much of a mistake but Riley has a been sick the past few days with a double ear infection. This makes her normal sassiness about twenty times worse than usual. Usually when it comes to bath time, either me, the teen Lexi, or their Aunt Dani bathe them one at a time. When one child is finished, we pass them off to the next person who then dries, diapers, lotions, dresses, and brushes the kid's hair. All depending on which child is it of course. While the first person goes back to bathe the remaining kid. This is a proven system that works. So WTH was I thinking to under take this myself?!

After Riley repeatedly tried to drink the dirty soapy water, climb out, stand on Holly's butt and drown herself, I had had enough! She of course didn't agree. I chased her all over the tub trying to get her washed as she yells at me "NO Mama! I wanna play!" So I finally get her washed and wrapped in a towel. I pull the plug in the tub, turn the shower head on and tell Holly to get her hair washed that I'd be right back. In the time it took me to dry off, diaper, and clothe Riley, plus put her in the bedroom with a movie on and the baby gate across the door, I go back into the bathroom to find the tub about half an inch from overflowing. Holly had plugged the tub back up because she wanted to measure the water! It's safe to say that after all of this, mommy badly needed a time out!