A Night in the Life of Mom

I know I've read blogs (and maybe even written one) about the daily happening of moms or families, so I thought I would do one on a night in my life. Last night pretty much just wrote itself.

7:45pm: Put the boys to bed after the usual bedtime routine. Clean up the kitchen from supper and make lunches for the boys (Garrett and Keith) for the next day.

8:00pm: Field 100 questions from Garrett ranging from school, to basketball, to the Tooth Fairy. Send him back to bed. Watch "Criminal Minds" while surfing the internet.

8:15pm: Attempt to pull Garrett's 2nd loose tooth because it's really bothering him and he just knows he's going to swallow it in his sleep and then how will he get rich off of his teeth? It's not quite ready. (But he did lose his first one on Monday! So that was exciting.)

8:30pm: Tell both of the boys to go to sleep. They have their own rooms and are each laying in bed talking to themselves, singing, playing, pretty much doing anything in their powers to keep themselves awake.

8:45pm: Give Garrett cough medicine and inhalers because he has this lingering cough from a cold that just won't let go.

9:00pm: Both boys are finally asleep. I get ready for bed and then start reading a book while Keith watches CSI. (Reading is impossible while the boys are still awake because I get interrupted so often.)

9:30pm: Head to bed to finish reading/watching CSI. Keith is also dealing with this cold and isn't feeling great. Within 10 minutes of going to bed, he's asleep, so I'm watching CSI and reading at the same time. I hate when I do that, but I can't stop one or the other once I'm involved.

9:45pm: Go to Garrett's room to prop him with more pillows and rub Vicks on his chest and the bottoms of his feet (an old wives tale. When they're almost vomiting from coughing so much, you will try pretty much anything.) Explain to him why I can't sleep with him in his bed. Answer a few more "need to know" questions. Go back to my bed.

10:00pm: Finally put my book down and focus on watching the news before trying to go to sleep.

10:15pm: Take Garrett a glass of water and rip all the hair out of my head because this kid can't sleep and the coughing won't let up. Give him a cough drop and explain to him how to hold it in his mouth so he won't choke on it.

10:30pm: Check on Garrett to make sure he's not choking on the cough drop.

10:45pm: Turn off the TV. Attempt to go to sleep.

11:00pm: Almost asleep. Cooper starts crying. Go check on him. Cover him up, give him kisses. Go back to bed.

4:00am: Sleep a whole 5 hours! Cooper is crying again. Go back to his room, cover him up again. Pat his back. Go back to bed.

5:30am: Garrett is coughing his head off again. Go to his room, prop him with pillows again. Do inhaler. Tell him he only has an hour until it's time to get up, so try and sleep a little longer. Go back to bed.

6:15am: Only 15 minutes away from the alarm going off and I haven't gone back to sleep yet. Cooper is awake in his room alternating between crying and yelling.

6:30am: Alarm goes off. Yes, I hadn't turned it off yet. While I would assume that I wouldn't have gone to sleep at this point, I wasn't going to take that chance and wake up at 8am having overslept somehow. Get out of bed.

Fortunately for me, many nights aren't quite this bad. However, Cooper has been cutting his 2 year molars for quite some time and has been a terrible sleeper because of it. It's not uncommon to get up 2 or 3 times with him crying. A typical night does not involve quite as much time spent with Garrett. He's usually my good sleeper. Had I known that my nights were going to be like this before ever having kids, I probably would have cried. And taken lots and lots of naps.

Mother's Day

This year, Mother's Day started on Friday. Keith brought home my Mother's Day gift, which was a surprise because I thought we were going furniture shopping as my Mother's Day gift. But instead, he gave me a Nook. (This is an e-book reader, where you can download books and read them rather than buying the actual book. It also has a web browser and the ability to listen to music.)

I've been on the fence about e-book readers for awhile now. I am a voracious book reader. I'm always in the middle of a book or two. I love to reread books multiple times, even going so far as pulling out books from my middle school and high school years and rereading them now, like Babysitter's Club and the Mandie series. I never thought I would want my books in electronic form, but I started researching the different e-book readers on the market and became intrigued by the concept. I mentioned to Keith one day last week that I was starting to come around about getting a Nook (he had wanted to get me one for my birthday last year but I told him no.) So he surprised me when he came home from work on Friday with the Nook.

Most of the books you can find are much cheaper in the e-versions than a hard copy and you can find many books for really cheap or even free. So far I've downloaded 2 books where I've paid full price for the e-version. I've also downloaded some classics like "Little Women" for free and "Wuthering Heights" for 99 cents. You never know what kind of deals you might find.

Anyway, back to my Mother's Day weekend. Saturday was spent mowing and weedeating our yard. I actually like this process and do a lot of the mowing myself. Since we have an acre and a half, it takes us over 3 hours to mow and weedeat the entire lot. Keith and I took turns working in the yard while the other one played with the boys. Then we moved our living room furniture around which I'm really loving. Our living room has limited arrangements for our furniture due to the way it's set up, but I feel like our new arrangement makes everything feel more open and homey. We also hung 5 pictures that have been waiting forever to be put in their proper spots. Then we went out for supper to "On the Border". It was a nice dinner and a fun day.

On Sunday morning, we went to church where we dedicated Cooper. (For those of you unfamiliar with what exactly that means, we just went forward as a family, with other families who have kids 1 year and under, and our pastor prayed for all the families and our kids and asked our church family to also pray for all of us that we would continue to raise our kids in a godly home and make church a priority. Then they gave each child a Bible and a Baby Dedication certificate. Our pastor also wrote a letter to each child and sealed it up with a note on the front that they are to open it on their 13th birthday. I'm intrigued as to what it may say.) After services, we picked up some fast food for lunch. I'm not a fan of eating out on "big" Sundays when everyone else goes out to eat. I don't like waiting forever for a table, especially with little kids who are hungry and cranky. So it was nice to eat a hamburger in our kitchen and then relax. When Cooper took a nap, Keith and I watched the movie "Brothers" while Garrett watched a movie on his portable DVD player in his room.

This was a very nice weekend and a great Mother's Day. I pray for all of you moms out there, that you were celebrated in a special way and that you feel refreshed and ready to jump back into Mommy world. I also pray for all of you who are longing and hoping and praying to be a mom. I will join you in praying for you on your journey towards that goal. I pray that by next Mother's Day, you will truly be able to celebrate your own induction into motherhood.

Signs that you're a mom...

You make no qualms about sniffing the diapered bottom of a baby in order to determine what "that smell" is.

You deliberately throw yourself into the path of vomit in order to avoid scrubbing it out of the carpet. It's much easier to clean vomit out of your clothes than to get on your hands and knees and attempt to get it off the floor.

You're thrilled when you find a sippy cup under the bed and discover it only had water in it. Nobody, I repeat, nobody wants to find one under the bed with milk in it.

You never lick anything off your hands anymore. Who knows if you would be licking cheese dip, baby squash, or baby poop, they all look the same.

You don't even blink when the baby eats a Cheerio off the floor (only in your own home of course. You go into hysterics if the baby eats anything off the floor anywhere else.)

In your purse you have: a wallet, lotion, makeup, receipts, a hot wheels car, a bag of cheerios, a sucker, and some baby wipes. You might even find a bagged, dirty diaper on a bad day.

You become MacGyver when it comes to attempting to baby proof other people's homes. Dining chairs turned on their side make excellent baby gates in a pinch.

You aren't surprised in the least when you get in bed and find a pacifier and GI Joe under your pillow.

You never automatically sit down on the toilet when you have little boys. You always check for 2 things 1. Is the seat down? 2. Do you see any pee on the seat?

You don't walk too closely to anything that the baby could grab when you're carrying said baby. He just might grab that crystal bowl that someone gave you as a wedding gift and pull it off the kitchen bar, smashing it into a thousand pieces. Hypothetically speaking of course.

You somehow manage to get by on 2-3 hours of sleep several nights in a row.

You love your kids heart and soul, but you get really excited when you get to go grocery shopping by yourself. Or take a shower knowing that someone else is watching the kids and you don't have to wash with shampoo suds in order to save time.

You think back on your pre-motherhood days fondly and with some regret that you didn't take advantage of that kid-free time more. But you also wouldn't give up your kids for anything. Except maybe a 10 day cruise to the Caribbean.

A make-it-or-break-it day for a mom

Let's face it. There are many, many make-it-or-break-it days for moms. The days when the spit-up and poopy diapers seem endless. The days when you've had a combined 2 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours. And the list goes on and on. This was just one of those days. Maybe not even as bad as one that I've listed, but a couple of situations I have yet to face in motherhood. Until now of course.

Garrett's bestest friend, Avery, came over for a few hours this morning, so that was actually pretty awesome. Once I (finally) got Cooper down for his morning nap, I was able to really clean my kitchen like it hasn't been cleaned in a while. It's amazing how much you can get done when your chatty 4 year old has someone else's ear to talk off. Before Avery came over, Cooper was being very fussy, which made my last minute clean-up before Avery's mom stopped by, a little more harried. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's cutting the hardest tooth to cut ever in the universe. (Or at least it feels that way. He's been teething for 6 months now. It's about time to start seeing the fruits of the fussy, drool-filled labor.)

After my kitchen cleaning was done, I went to check on the 2 buddies playing in Garrett's room. The first thing I see is Garrett pulling his pants up, then Avery telling me that Garrett peed on his Spiderman punching bag. Seriously?! He hasn't peed on the floor since potty training days. To say I was mad was really an understatement. And by the look on his face, he knew he had jumped way past the line of following the rules (an unspoken one would be, never pee in front of a friend. But apparently it needs to be a spoken rule. Especially when the peeing is NOT taking place in a bathroom.) So I "dealt" with the situation swiftly and immediately. On top of the "dealing" he was also banned from Wii for the day.

After Avery left, I was straightening things up around the house. I made a quick run through of Garrett's bathroom and got to looking at the shower curtain. It's normally never closed, but since the bathtub is in need of a good scrubbing, I pulled it closed this morning. And in my run through discovered that "someone" had used it as toilet paper. Seriously?! I basically hit the roof by this point.

I know that once Cooper is walking and really getting into things, days like today (few and far between as they hopefully are) will be multiplied by 2. I have really tried to encourage Garrett to do a lot of things independently, like going to the bathroom or playing with a friend in his bedroom. And while I don't plan on changing this course of independence, we apparently need to have a good talk about ground rules. And I should make no assumptions as to what I think he knows.

When you start thinking that maybe your child is figuring out this crazy, mixed up world, and doing a good job with it, days like today happen to remind you that they are, in fact, just 4 years old and still have LOTS to learn.

And a funny story about Garrett to balance out this post: A few days ago, he patted my stomach and said "Your belly is big! You're gonna have another baby." Just what a dieting mom always wants to hear. The next day he told me that he really wanted to have another baby and that we need to go to the doctor and get one. Yesterday morning rolls around. Garrett is sitting on the living room floor eating dry cereal out of a cup for breakfast (it's how we roll in our house). He sat the cup down for a second and Cooper took off. He crawled as fast as his little legs would move, grabbed the cup of cereal, dumped it on the floor and started chowing down. Garrett looked at me and said very emphatically "We don't need any more babies!!!!"