snap and pops under the toilet seat.

i scribbled this out last night because i just needed to heave it off my chest. it helped a little. if you need to read something cheerier, try mary ellen's or joel's writing. genetically, joel got all the sunshine and i got all the vinegar. 

yep, that happened. tim has actually done it to me before and was successful in scaring me, but this time, i think it was ben. tonight max spotted some leftover snap and pops and after a long day, i said, sure, let's go outside and be distracted for a while. ben really wanted to scare tim when he got home, so he was devising all sorts of methods, one including a catapult. (that boy is like his godfather in so many ways, it's a little frightening.) he settled for the under the door mat suggestion that i offered, but unfortunately, max kept forgetting about them. he went in and out of the house three times, setting them off. his reaction was great each time- not scared but frustrated, but just funny frustrated and not melt down frustrated, which is a small miracle. when tim did come home, they failed to go off, even after several times of me getting him to walk in and out of the house. because i grew up with brothers, not much of life with all guys phases me. but this was definitely one of those moments were i had to roll my eyes.

that little snippet was my way of blowing off steam because life has really been kicking my butt. like, i've tried to put it in words, but the words are worrisome to read and the kind of hard that's impossible to capture in words. life has no good reason to be this hard right now. no one is dying. we have a home, food, safety. but it is. and no matter how much i tell myself it shouldn't be, it is. the level of stress that makes my chest tight and makes me feel like i need to throw up and you joke about so you don't cry, but then sometimes you cry too. i'm an obnoxious over-analyzer. i want to get stuff done, but i feel like i'm trapped in a sloth's body. i'm constantly overwhelmed by my boys. i want time for me, me, me, but know that i need more sleep, but then get lost online until late. or when i do go to bed early, i get woken up by my weirdo kids. this morning at 3:30, it was ben, in our bed (what?! when did he come in) telling me that his fingers felt weird like they were becoming too skinny. because he had been sick with a bad headache and fever, i spent the next 30 minutes worried that he had meningitis. i think it was just his fever breaking. then max came in at 4:30 and ben again at 6. we moved john paul into his own room last week, so although he has been sleeping great, i keep waking up at 5 am- his darling wake up hour when he was in our room, and worrying that he must be dead because he didn't wake up all night, or that he woke up and screamed and screamed and i didn't wake up even though i have a baby monitor right next to me but maybe the frequency got switched and now our bond of trust and protection is forever ruined and and and the crazy rolls on.

i'm beating myself up because we should have moved him a loooonnnnnnnnnnggggggg time ago because he is sleeping GREAT and i could have been sleeping too. i'm beating myself up because ben is sick. beating myself up because the boys have been eating too much toxic gluten. because i'm pretty sure ben is really behind on his math facts and will obviously be a failure at life and i should have made him do flash cards this summer. and he's having a really hard time concentrating, again, i'm sure gluten/food dye/something else that he wants to put in his mouth and i don't want him to and why can't we just live off of air?!

school has been really hard. i spend the hours from wake up until getting john paul down for a nap chasing him, lifting him off the table, taking away markers max left out, all the while fantasizing about a nap. then i get him down and realize that i NEED to catch up on the house. sometimes i do, but just as often i check fb for just one thing and then loose an hour into the black hole of the internet. then i scramble to pick up, or feeling totally frustrated with the mess AND exhausted, crawl into bed for a nap only to have him wake up. repeat chasing. pick up boys from school and feel the crushing exhaustion and the crushing stress of homework, dinner, john paul shrieking because he doesn't want another nap but needs one.

max and ben are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo SOOOOOOOOOOOO different. max wants to get his homeword done. gets it done quickly. is annoyed with me for getting distracted by the shrieking and not reading the next problem to him right away. ben is sooooooooooooo distracted and i have to battle to keep him on track. can't we just not eat. or not do homework. or not have the shrieking. ben's solution one day: "i'll just not do my simple solutions (workbooks) and walk my recesses every day. i'm fine with that." sometimes i thank God that he is so laid back to absorb all the things i screw up on as my oldest (math facts!!!!!!!!) and sometimes i just need him to care a little more. and max, thank goodness he is the funny little old man that he is who wears his pants up too high and reminds me that he only has one clean uniform shirt left and is soooo diligent about making sure i sign his behavior sheet right away, but give me a break a little bit. ben went months without wearing a belt in kindergarten because he realized his sweatshirt covered it and no one noticed. max asks me if his shirt needs to be tucked in and if he has to wear a belt with his BLUE jeans. "they have to be blue. not any other color of pants for spirit day." i hope that max's rule following will come in handy in high school and beyond to keep ben out of jail, but right now, i am just so overwhelmed.

i'm thankful for tim's hard work and am so thankful that he has a job that he likes, but i just soo wish he could be home for dinner because ben eats like a fasting tortoise and john paul prefers to eat standing in his high chair and even though he's the scrawniest little guy, he hardly wants to eat either and charmingly uses his "all done" sign long before he should be all done.

i make myself crazy because i say, "no more babies because they make me crazy and i can't handle these guys" but then i have a quite moment with one of them, just the two of us, and i think, "how could we not have more of these wonderful creatures". i try to pray through my days, and i know that my prayers and offerings MUST do some good, but our world just seems like such a bad and broken place in so many ways and i worry about what the future holds. this is all pretty much exactly how i was feeling last september and then i was a very hard winter. because winter: little sunshine, cold, wind, cold, little sunshine.

and then there's our house. oh the house. have i maybe fantasized about my own tiny house where only i get to live? yes.

i feel like we need housekeeper/nanny/cook or maybe just another adult in our household to keep things afloat. sister wife, maybe? there's just too much to research,

the boys and i have been reading a wonderful book about pope pius X. one of the last chapters talks about how he predicted WWI and about how he died of a broken heart, knowing all the suffering that would take place. and talks about the prophesies of malachi. then i read this yesterday,
 "”We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American Society , or the wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies with the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously … We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayers, it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from the shedding of blood? This time, too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared and trust in Christ and in his Holy Mother and be very, very assiduous in praying the holy rosary.” -St. John Paul II (+ 2005)  

i just feel like ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  i really just feel like i'm going crazy more days than i feel like i'm on top of things. the other night, i knew it had been a long day when i found not one, but two rosaries stuffed in my pockets. i think i kept thinking that if i at least had these sacramentals on me, it had to help. i need to start saying a morning offering every morning. i have one taped on our napkin box that sits on the table, but it's covered in worksheets destined for the recycle bin. oh the worksheets.so, maybe say a prayer for me? and for those darn math facts and that ben gets to feeling better? but mostly, let's pray for our world.

Mary, Queen of Peace, Pray for us.

edited: last night a friend sent me this link. i didn't read it before my rant. maybe i should of. or maybe it was good to get it all out, but now i can keep reminding myself, "begin again". 

potato salad and blogging

tonight, in preparation for our big family 4th party tomorrow, i made a huge potato salad. i've never made one before-it seemed intimidating. so many different kinds/styles to choose from. and they always seemed like a lot of work. as i made it, i felt that, "well now i'm definitely a grown up" feeling that i feel sometimes about the oddest things. i think maybe i've talked about that before. well, it was a lot of work, although it also made a LOT of food, which is good for our big family.

as i worked in the kitchen with some great music going, i thought of several things i wanted to write about. and then it hit me- it has been so long since i've written, i've almost completely stopped writing blog posts in my head or developing ideas as i go about my days. the few that i have, i usually joke about with a friend, and i suppose that is enough of a release to let the idea go. i used to think of ideas all the time, scribbling them on scraps of paper or on the chalkboard wall. when i cleaned off my "desk" several months ago, i found a whole pile of ideas. i think i even started using a notebook one time. i read several really great short stories that a friend had written, and was really motivated to write, but then i think johnny got a tooth/stopped sleeping or some other life happens thing. writing is a lot of work and i am slow at it. i have also thought about pulling drafts out of the archives and just posting them as is with maybe a little back story or quick summation. i don't know.

but tonight, i wanted to write. the potato salad tucked in the fridge, i turned off the music, split a cheap, watery, delicious beer with tim and sat down. the bugs and the pops out the window on this unusually cool july night are too good not to enjoy just a little bit. instead of checking facebook first like i always do, and getting distracted and never making it over here, i ignored those 6 notifications and messages. i just came hear and typed, without thinking too much about it. then i went and stole the other half of the beer from tim.

all together now

because of timmy's work schedule, we rarely get to eat dinner together, except for his days off. man i miss him at dinner. i always took that major luxury for granted because growing up, we always ate dinner together as a family, and with tim's first couple jobs, or at least by the time we'd had ben, he was always home for dinner. and my boys eat sooooooooo dang slooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. like, i can nurse the baby, feed the baby non milk food, eat my own dinner, and clean up the kitchen, and they're still not done eating. there is a lot of coaching/reminding to eat your dinner. i usually try to stay at the table with them, because if i get up, they get up.

but tonight we were all together. john paul was in a good mood in his high chair, happily gobbling bites of avocado and smiling at the silliness of his family. i mostly sat back and watched it all.

the boys were telling jokes. oh, the joke telling. i think this a normal stage of kid development, but they're very much in the phase of telling jokes that rarely make sense and then laughing hysterically at each other (or themselves), only reinforcing their poor joke telling.

tim has this amusing-because-it's-so-bad habit of making up jokes that he formulates out loud, making the punchline either really obvious because you've heard the whole thought process or totally mind boggling that that's the punchline after all the puzzling and confusion. tonight it was, as i said, after much formulation, "what do you call a sleepy man who has eaten a spicy steak?....... a flamin' yawn." but to get to that punchline.... oh how i love that man. he also has a real gem about a "meanderin' orange".

this "joke" set max off on a whole series of joke/riddles. "what do you call a clock that doesn't tick?" ben figured him out from the start, " a tickless clock". "a barkless dog". "a bounceless ball". to which each time, max marveled, "man ben, you are so smart." with tim present to exchange amused looks, what would normally be kind of annoying after the 5th "joke" is endearing and cute.

tim then offered, "what do you call a girl turtle?........... shelly. " ben countered, "what do you call a female triceratops?................ HORNY!" tim and i both laughed heartily. then he said, "or hornTy if you want."

laughing at kids jokes is a dangerous thing. i often genuinely laugh at the completely nonsensical ones because they catch me off guard, but then that makes them think they make sense and they follow the same miscalculated joke equation over and over again, wondering why they are no longer garnering laughs.

i love my guys. i love them all so much easier when we are all together.

yah, i know this is pretty choppy, but you get what you get and.... i'm tryin'.