My own trials of late

I love my children. I really really really do love my children. They are smart, beautiful, funny, and can turn me to mush with their hugs and kisses and funny antics. I am so fortunate to be able to be at home with them and play with them and teach them and spend so much time with them. They are normal kids and have good times and bad times. The scale is usually balanced between the good and the bad, but lately I've felt the balance tipping more on the bad side and I'm sure that increases my own feeling of being out of balance emotionally myself.

Last week the kids were sick all week and I was able to pull out the emotional reserves and give the love and compassion and sympathy and cuddling and physical and emotional support to them that they needed. This week I've found myself "dried up" with my emotional bucket more.

Angela has not been sleeping well since she was sick, and she has not been napping well at all since we moved her from her crib to a toddler bed. She won't lay down and sleep on it like she would her crib, and I can't get her to take naps until late in the day when it's really too late for her to take a good nap- or else she will be up till midnight or later.

Yesterday I broke down and put her in her room and let her close the door after trying to rock her to sleep for over an hour. She was overtired and over stimulated and I was quite frankly at the end of my rope with her that day. She wouldn't let me rock her to sleep, walk around and soothe her to sleep, or lay down with her to get her to sleep. She had also been up the night before for 2+ hours and we had slept upstairs on the couch after she fell asleep at 4am- so I was running on a short amount of sleep too. She of course cried herself to sleep, but within 10 minutes verses the hour of crying that we had already had while I was trying to soothe her to sleep. She only slept about 15 minutes and then woke up and then I held her and she fell fast asleep on my lap and I sat and held her for an hour while she slept. She woke up the moment I tried to stand up and put her down.

so... when the kids came home from school I was already tired... Alex and Ashley came home and were fighting and bickering, I let them turn on an x-box game hoping that would get them interested and stop fighting, but they still kept fighting. Alyssa walked in front of Ashley and Ashley was screaming at her to get out of the way, so I went to take her controller and give her a time out... which resulted in her kicking Alyssa and screaming more. Alex started screaming, so I turned the x-box off. Then he threw himself on the floor and was seriously throwing a tantrum that is usually a two year old's tantrum... kicking feet and pounding hands. So then I told them that I was fed up with the behaviour and they had lost all electronics- (tv; x-box; gameboy; movies; computer) for the rest of the week. It ended in my pulling out all the plugs and wires from the tv/stereo/xbox/satellite/dvd power strip and tossing the power strip up in my bedroom closet.

We might let them watch a movie with the babysitter Saturday night, but that's it. Monday at FHE we'll reevaluate things and decide on what basis they get some of it back.

So we had that great big blow-up at about 5:30 last night. Lucky for me I had a fridge full of leftovers so I just pulled those and warmed them up while I listened to the kids telling me that they were going to "tell Daddy" on me lol!! I don't know why they were surprised when Rich got home and they told him what happened that he told them he wasn't going to change anything.

Then we actually had a fairly relaxing evening... of course it didn't go completely bump free, but there were no major incidents and the kids went to bed at a decent time. I also went to bed early after the kids were all asleep and I had a little time to unwind.

Angela slept from 8:30 pm till 6:30 this morning... wooo hooo!!! She woke up in a bad mood though... whiney and cranky and clingy. I lost it again this morning when Alex poured a huge bowl of cereal, then tons of milk in it and then drank all the milk out of the bowl and left the cereal in the bowl. We really try to limit his milk because he would only drink milk and not eat anything else if we let him. He has enough problems with congestion and breathing with his allergies and asthma- and the milk makes it worse, so he usually just gets the milk with his cereal each day and occasionally a small glass of milk with dessert or something. So I was upset at him for basically circumventing the rules to get a big glass of milk, and wasting about two bowls worth of cereal to do that- along with Angela screaming and crying and climbing up my arm... Alyssa was whining and upset that the tv was "not working" and was whining and wanting to be held also, and while I was trying to get lunch made for the kids to take to school... and Rich came out of our room from getting himself ready for work and asked what the big deal was... I told him I was tired of fighting Alex on everything, and trying to do things one handed while kids were screaming to be held... and then went to our room.

Rich wisely made the kids lunches and I came out and had let the steam blow off and we got the kids onto the school bus. Of course Angela was still velcro'ed to me and I couldn't put her down. I hooked up the tv for Alyssa and Angela and now it's only taken me an hour to type this up in between getting things for the girls and sitting and watching Charlie and Lola with Angela... ::sigh:: I'll unhook the tv before the big kids get home, but it really was a loss of privileges for the big kids and not Alyssa, so I'm letting her spend some time watching it this morning to just get myself a break...