The Day Just Didn't Start Off Right

Sickness is lurking in the house. Both the kids are stuffy and coughing and the bug has finally bitten me. I haven't been sleeping well since Adam left for Georgia on Saturday night, and I think my immune system has suffered. Anyway, I awoke, as usual, to the kids at 7 AM sharp begging for food. There is no food in the house. I have some cereal and milk, a half a loaf of bread, and a handful of past due clementines. I was feeling quite awful. I didn't fall asleep till around 3 AM, I had a splitting headache, my nose was stuffy, and my throat had a small fire in it. I gave the kids some cereal and headed back to bed.

I did not want to get out of bed. Synnove has had a ravenous appetite lately, and kept coming in to ask for more food. Usually, there is some granola bars or crackers or SOMEthing that the kids can get themselves to eat...but like I said before, the cupboards are empty. I allow her some fruit snacks. A bit later she comes in again begging for food. She eats what's left of the clementines. I'm tapped out. I need to make the trip to Longview to go to Winco, but the car is not sounding so good. I wish I had a better car...I'm really wishing that today. I'm wishing HARD. I'm wishing $10,000 will fall down from heaven. I wish I would have won that beautiful white Camry at the fair last year! *sigh*....I digress. By now it's 10:30 and I finally decide that I can no longer stay in my bed. I know...I'm a terrible and neglectful mother.

My head is aching pretty badly. I make some eggs so that I don't have to take medicine on an empty stomach. Synnove devours half of them and asks for more. It's almost lunch...she'll have to wait.

I head downstairs to get some clothes for Soren. I check out Synnove's room first...still a mess after her so-called cleaning yesterday. I hate a dirty room....but I guess the time is coming that I just have to let it go. It's her responsibility now. I can nit-pick till I'm hoarse, or I can accept that her version of clean is not mine. ANYway, back to Soren's room. I walk in to find the entire contents of his closet on the floor. In a somewhat ticked, yet exhausted voice, I ask Synnove..."what happened here?" Synnove replies, before even entering his room, "Soren did it." Oh really? Right. Anyway, I call down Soren who is 99% honest 99% of the time and ask him what happened. He says, "I didn't do it, Synnove did." Then, the blame game continues for a minute or two. I've caught Synnove lying quite a few times in the past several months, and it's so disappointing and frustrating. I'm trying not to sound too angry (not really working), and ask Synnove SEVERAL times not to lie to me and to tell me if she did it or not. She eventually says "Soren and I did it." Oh really? Right. Either way, Synnove lied, so she had to get punished. I won't go into detail...but disciplining Synnove always ends worse than it begins. And that is always more frustrating than the original offense.

I'm just too tired and in too much pain to try to get the kids to participate in cleaning up the mess, so I clean it up myself. Under the mountain of clothes I find one of Soren's favorite Christmas gifts crushed. That only adds to my building emotion. What next?

When the closet is finally clean, I calmly call the kids down to complete some simple clean-up tasks. I find that Soren has put on plastic underwear (he's been wearing them over a diaper at night lately) inside out (plastic side to the skin) under his pull-up. Uhh...ok? Goodness. So, I tell him to take them off and put only his pull-up on. This is something he is quite capable of doing, so I go into the other room to do a bit of clean-up. Not even a minute later, Soren comes up to me and says "I peed." I say "what do you mean, you peed?" He says, "I'm sorry mommy." I say, "what do you mean you peed??" He goes in and points to his closet. Let me just tell you that his closet doesn't go to the floor...the bottom of it hits my thigh...so it's kind of high up. ANYway, I say "you peed in your pants? or you peed somewhere else?" He says "I'm sorry." and points to the inside of the closet. There is pee all over the inside of his closet, on some of his clothes, and some of his stuffed animals. I cracked. I was done.

I could not help myself. Soren was covered in pee because his plastic pants were inside out, yet there was a huge puddle in the closet. How on earth did this happen? I angrily send him upstairs to the tub. I'm already frustrated with Soren, as he has been peeing his pants several times a day, every day for the last month. I'm wanting to scream. Instead, I sob. I sob hard.

When I'm done with my little breakdown, I decide to write a blog about it (this blog). The kids are upstairs watching a movie. I'm almost finished when I hear them venture downstairs. I go into the bathroom to see what they are doing. Soren is naked, and Synnove has no pants on. Both of them have just gone to the bathroom and I notice that the training potty is smeared with poop and they are attempting to wipe Soren's bum. POOP! Back to the tub they both went. While in the tub I notice that Synnove's leg has a bunch of black marks all over it. I ask her if it's marker. She says "no." I try to wipe it off thinking it's dirt, or heaven forbid, poop! It doesn't wipe off, and I say..."what is this?" Synnove replies sheepishly..."marker." Lie #2 for the day. My kids are on a roll.

The day has only just begun. It's Winco or bust....busted car, busted head, busted bottoms!! I'm praying it's not "bust."