It’s 9:07 p.m. on a Friday evening, and all I can hear is the sound of my fingers clattering away at the keyboard. Nothing else. Pumpkin isn’t crying. The Princess isn’t talking. Stepson isn’t rambling on. Hubby isn’t trying to yell over the noise of the kiddos. Just me and the keyboard – and it’s peace.
Ahhhhh.
It’s been a long day – Stepson has been here most of the week, as we get half of his holiday break from school. Because I work from home now, and because Hubby and his parents still haven’t spoken since he told them we weren’t bringing the girls over, I sorta got elected to “babysit” Stepson during the week. It’s been a long week. Among many other issues, Stepson has ADHD – and after he came back from a day with his mom yesterday, he didn’t have his medication with him. If you haven’t ever spent a full day with a child with ADHD who hasn’t had his (much needed) medication, you are lucky. The whole day, I felt like I was trying to herd cats (an expression shared with me by my friend Kellie, and I have shamelessly stolen it because it describes the day I had to a “t”).
I had to take all three kids to the grocery store to get the ingredients to bake monkey bread (our family tradition is to make it Christmas Eve day to eat on Christmas morning), as well as pick up a few things for dinner. I put Pumpkin’s carseat in the grocery cart, and she was fine – the least trouble of the three – Stepson and The Princess were walking sorta with me, playing some sort of game that involved Stepson talking into his watch like it was a walkie-talkie and there was something about rescuing animals too. The Princess was talking with her brother, and chattering as well – in fact, she was chattering so much, a woman who we had passed in several aisles started laughing at us when we saw her near the meat counter, and actually said to me, “She doesn’t stop talking, does she?” No ma’am, she doesn’t. Welcome to my world.
The rest of the day progressed much like that shopping trip – The Princess loves to play with Stepson, but they inevitably spend as much time fighting as they do playing peacefully. Factor in that he hadn’t had his meds and she hadn’t had a nap, and it was just a recipe for disaster. By the time Hubby came home (early, at 4 p.m.), the kids were wired, bouncing off walls and speaking at a superhuman volume… and Pumpkin had barely napped because her older sibs were being so rambunctious.
Unbelievable. You look at children and you think, “They’re small. How could they be that much work?” But man, oh man. They ARE. It is amazing, because after five months (nearly) at home with the two girls, I have really gotten into my mom-groove handling two kids. But you throw that third one in the mix, and I’m floundering. I’m such a creature of habit and very resistant to change, so it’s not been the greatest week for me.
Stepson goes home tomorrow, and Hubby has a three-day weekend. Here’s hoping that Santa puts some bubble bath and some ear plugs in my stocking.
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