Girl Named Behind Schedule

Last week was an exhausting week! Claire started off the week throwing up on Monday. Then Tuesday everyone was fine. Tuesday night Becca's kids started throwing up so we had to keep the girls home Wednesday and Thursday. Then I got sick and laid in bed and slept all day Friday. My mom came and got the girls Friday morning and they kept them until Sunday morning. I didn't get any Christmas shopping done this weekend, or cleaning. Sunday everyone was fine, so we were looking forward to starting a normal week. Sunday night, Becca started throwing up so we had to keep the girls home again on today. HOPEFULLY everyone is better and tomorrow I can actually work a full day! This is what my living room looks like after a day at home with the kids...

Kylie decided last night to have a complete meltdown (I know that may completely surprise many of you! ;) ) and not eat her food at dinner. We were having cream cheese chicken croissants and potatoes au gratin, nothing that should be gross to a toddler. Well, we had a standoff similar to the peach incident of 2011. She wouldn't even take a bite, dad and I both argued with her, tried to reason with her, bribe her, anything we could do to get her to eat. Finally, after peeing her pants all over the living room, she took a screaming bath, and went to bed screaming at 6:30. Don't worry, we saved her potatoes for her to eat today, and she again, wouldn't take a bite at lunch. She must have eventually gotten hungry because she ate them, but they must have been the most disgusting old, hard, cold potatoes by that point. On the other hand, tonight at dinner she ate all of her ham and mashed sweet potatoes, so who knows what will please that kid. But, when going to bed tonight she got up every 15 minutes and came out with a different excuse ranging from "it's too cold" to "it's too hot" to "I just need a little bite of chocolate" to "I just have a show I want to watch". I continue thinking I am a horrible mom 90% of the time because I don't know how other moms do it. I only have 2 kids, but they absolutely wear me out! I am exhausted every night, and I get so short-tempered with them because they won't do anything I tell them to do. I'm sure every mom deals with the same stuff, I just think they do it with more grace than I can muster. But then they do things like this and I can't imagine my life without them.

Last night I did have time to go through the 10 trash bags full of clothes that Claire has outgrown in her 18 months of life. It was a ridiculous amount of clothes, and it took me 3 hours to sort, take pictures and get posted on Craigslist to sell. And, I may have cried a good portion of that time, every time I pulled out a miniature pair of pajamas or onesie that the girls wore, it seems like not very long ago. It was Pete's idea, because he got the wood floors put down in the basement this weekend (big step!) so we had to get rid of everything we can to get carpet put down and furniture moved in. We literally have a whole room of baby paraphernalia. It's much harder on the mom than on the dad I think, it reminds me of how small they used to be and how big they are now, and how I will never have another tiny baby of my own. It's very emotional!

Well, on to another day that will hopefully be "normal", and maybe I can get my Christmas shopping all done on Saturday? A girl can dream...