For a while now.

Laurelyn has started waking up every night, in the same pattern. She doesn’t wake me up the way most babies do. It’s not the quiet fussing that gently wakes you and makes you aware that there is a baby in your house. I mean the kind of screaming that bolts you out of bed and you find yourself running to her bed, baseball bat at the ready so you can cream whoever is harming your baby. (That got a little too detailed for me, sorry) Point is, she’s not sleeping. She’s screaming at 1:30, 3:30, 4:30 and 5:30. At about 5:30, after a good nursing (Yes, I am still nursing, but that’s a different blog post) she falls asleep again, in my arms and I just start to feel the tension fall from my body when I hear David’s voice next to my bed.

“MOMMY! I WANT MINI WHEATS!”

This is the sign that my day is starting. Laurelyn is now awake because no human being can sleep through David’s screaming talking.

I am getting too old and tired to keep going through life with this much sleep deprivation. I don’t handle it as well as I did when I only had one. Oh, the days when I only had one child. Only one child to clean up after, make meals for, watch at the park, keep from scaling the bookshelves.

Those were the days.

Looking back, those days now seem like play acting at parenthood.

It sounds harsh and I’m sorry if you are a mother of one. You can hate me if you want but frankly, if I hear one more parent complain to me about how little time they have and how much they wish they could get some time for themselves, only to find out they have only one child I’ll puke.

Okay, that puking part is a bit of an exaggeration but remember that I’m sleep deprived.

Although I’m not so tired as I was yesterday. After another sleepless night this is the conversation I had with Chuck. Maybe you can spot how short my fuse has been lately.

Chuck: Did you get a good sleep, sweetheart?

Me: No. Terrible.

Chuck: You should have worn ear plugs to bed.

This is when I shot fire out of my nose which seared his bushy ear brows. I screamed nonsense and my matted and tangled hair become green, viscous snakes which curled around my head ready to pounce on anyone who got too close.

I think I may have been too harsh to my husband this morning but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone or do anything. All I could think about was closing my eyes. Luckily, Laurelyn had a nap while the other kids were building a Lego city in the basement. I was nervous that someone was going to come along asking for MINI WHEATS but I slept peacefully for 3 hours! The kids played fantastically. Chuck got oodles of work done and Laurelyn and I slept the morning away. It was heaven!

So, at this particular moment I have sleep tanks fueled and I am back to being a mom but it’s now dark outside and my children are in bed. I’m afraid to lay down. Will I get sleep tonight? Will I be turning into Medusa in the morning?

I hope Medusa will be nothing more than a silly dream I enjoy while I slumber the night away.

How funny is it that Momversation posted this this morning?

Flippin' Tired!

***Update***
My 18 month old must read my blog. She must have read this post, felt sorry for me and decided to give me a full nights sleep as an early Christmas present. She slept in until 8:00 this morning!

I love this amazing, wonderful, sweet, beautiful little girl!

I am now in the big kid stage. I’m still learning how to maneuver my way through but I can see that I can no longer get away with spelling things so the kids don’t know what I’m talking about. I can’t talk my way around a subject without the big kids picking up on what I’m doing. I have to be careful about what I say, who I say it to and I need to keep some of my personal opinions to myself. The big kids are repeating things that I say and it is taken out of context or it just doesn’t need repeating.

I miss the days of always being right. I miss the days of kissing boo-boos and tucking them in at night. They kiss their own boo-boos now and they carry themselves off to bed. I’m proud of how much they’re learning and the kids they’re growing into but it’s sad and scary. I need to learn how to be a mom to big kids at the same time that I’m suppose to be teaching them to BE big kids. This parenting things is rough!

I try to remind myself of a quote from a TV show that I refuse to admit that I watch. The quote is referring to parenting and says that if it isn’t impossible than you’re not doing it right. Well, I have days when I think this parenting thing is impossible and I need to remember that that’s a sign of accomplishment. I’m doing it right.

A girlfriend of mine was telling me about a scene she saw at the school. The bell had just rung and the kids were filing out of the school when a little boy walked by holding a little girls hand. He walked over to his van, kissed the girl on the cheek and said goodbye while he jumped into his seat. The moms that saw this exchange laughed and enjoyed this innocent first step into young love.

This story got me thinking about my own experience into young love and my first kiss and my worst kiss. I’m going to share my story with you.

I fell in love with almost every boy that accidentally caught my gaze. I would fall head over heels every day although there were a couple of significant crushes. My first love was in kindergarten. His name was Jason Chavira and I would chase him in the playground. I never caught him but I crushed on him all through grade school until he moved from baby face boy to bad boy.

I was eight when I finally caught my first kiss. He was the cousin of a neighborhood friend and he would come visit a lot during the summer. His name was Buba, or at least that’s what we called him. My neighborhood friend had a pile of hay in her garage, don’t ask me why, and we laid in the hay to exchange sloppy, wet kisses. This was the beginning of me learning to discreetly wiping my face dry after a special but wet kiss. Buba and I didn’t last long, surprisingly. I fell pretty hard for Buba’s brother Curtis and that ended my kissing sessions with Buba.

It was a sad loss. (That’s sarcasm.)

My worst kiss was with a guy that I dated after we moved out of Las Vegas and into Bellingham, Washington. He was going into the service and told me that I would be a great wife of a serviceman. I think that was meant as a compliment but I thought it was a weird conversation to have on a first date. Regardless of how awkward the dinner conversation, I was more than happy to see if this guy was a sloppy kisser. Turned out he had the widest, wettest kiss I had ever suffered through. Once again the kiss was a sign that I was not destined to be the wife of a serviceman. Instead I would be to wife of a computer geek. One more surprise.

Wait, I think my worst kiss was actually with a guy from work when I was 18. He was a waiter in the dining room of the retirement center I worked in. He was gorgeous and I had dreams of him for weeks before I mustered up the courage to actually talk to him. He was a tall guy with a great build. Not too big but not too small. He had dark, wavy hair that would fall in front of his eyes when he was busy. It was a tragedy to cover up his eyes because they were a gorgeous blue color. He was always well dressed and had a great smile that made me melt from the inside out. Now I know what the saying means, don’t read a book by the cover. He moved into the same apartment complex I lived in with a friend of mine. This guy, I can’t remember his name, came by one night to visit. Visiting turned into kissing and I found out real quick that this guy was a real smoker and his whole mouth tasted burnt and nasty. It was ruined fantasy. I was no longer going to assume that just because a guy was smoking hot meant that he was going to make me crazy with his kisses.

After that I met a computer geek who went about it all different. My first kiss from my husband was on the beach. A large group of us met up to eat crappy food and run around trying to get attention without looking like we were doing it on purpose. Chuck stayed close by and when the group thinned out he asked to talk to me. He was clear and forward. He was very interested and wanted to date. I told him that I was not at all excited about dating. I had my fill of guys and dating. Chuck was clear though that dating him would be different and then he announced that he was going to kiss me. He leaned in and I braced myself to be soaked in yet another yucky kiss but he just kissed my cheek and walked away. He didn’t try to stick his tongue down my throat. He didn’t try to rub on me or even to grab the goods.

I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do so I just sat there while he walked away. That was my first kiss with my future husband.

It was perfect and by not offering it all up front it made me want more.

I hope that my daughter’s can stay away from falling into young love. If Jocelyn has her first kiss at 8 then it’s only months away. Why was I so anxious to grow up. Adulthood comes whether you want it or not but you can never be a child again. This is the only time for hide and seek, jumping on the trampoline and pretending to be a super hero. How can we encourage our babies to stay babies and not rush to push into a false maturity?

What was your first kiss like? How old were you?

In case you need some pointers I thought I’d share this how-to video.

For anyone who’s here from Ann’s VGNO I thought I’d add some kissable music. Enjoy!

One of the Wine Sisters (neighbors that I have become friends with. They drink a lot of wine, hence the name.) came over today to visit. I had just gotten back from my morning exercise class and was helping the kids to get their math finished, which I started with them before I left. My friend saw me get home and came over for a cup of tea and some girlfriend time.

While she sat, drinking her tea, I was emptying and refilling my dishwasher, helping the kids with their math, getting Laurelyn a snack and reminding David that hitting and yelling is not a real form of communication. I wish he learned that lesson as easily as Jason and Jocelyn learned their addition and subtraction facts.

I visited with her as much as I could and I shared my new Truffle flavored herb tea, because I am an amazing friend but it reminded me of my most asked question when I tell people that I homeschool.

How do you have the time?

or

How do you get time for yourself with your kids around all the time?

I know very little about time management or on parenting children. If I did my house would be clean and organized every day and my children would behave properly and stop hitting each other, I’m referring to David in case you didn’t pick up on that. I would do things so much better if I knew how to manage my time and my children in the best way possible, but I don’t. I do know that I love my kids and I love having them close. I love being there when they learn something new and when they need me. I love being there especially when they don’t need me. I love being there when they find their independence and when they need me to give advice and then back off. I love that our schedule and routine are so intertwined that there is no difference between what Chuck or I or any of the kids are doing. It is only about what WE are doing and we figure it out together.

I go to fitness class three mornings a week. I work two nights a week and I take a French class one night a week and while I’m there I know exactly what my kids are doing and what to expect when I get home because I know their personalities, their behavior and their interests so well that I can sit in my garage and play out in my head what has happened the entire time I was gone.

There is nowhere on this Earth that I would rather be than with those kids who are spilling milk on my counter, Cheerios on my floor and smiling while they do it. I don’t have large blocks of time without my kids but I don’t wish for anything different. My house is loud and conversations are interrupted by word problems and adding fractions but this is my life and I am happy with how things are.

That is how I have the time.

I want to be a fierce mama so I browsed through the articles and blog posts on the Fierce Mamas blog. There’s some fantastic writing in there. I highly recommend it if you get the chance.