It all adds up

the stress of children...

Kacen has been potty training now for over a month, but still 90 % of the time poops in his underwear. I have to watch him like a hawk and try to predict when he will need to go. And sometimes I am off, like today with the timing. And for the majority he waits till I'm not watching and then goes in his underwear. It usually happens while I am feeding the baby, I'm a little distracted and don't pay as much attention to him at that point. And when I go to help him clean up or catch him in the act, even when I am really nice about it, he says, "you made me sad". He sees that I am unhappy with his choice and feels bad inside, and so I make him "sad". Even when I am so calm and nice and help him clean up. Maybe he is sad that he made mommy sad.

Saturdays is the day for the children to clean their rooms, mainly just picking up after themselves, their clothes and toys on the floor. It is so drawn out that it causes so much stress. I have to sit in their room, if I leave they play and take hours and hours to even pick up one item. When I am in there I try positive reinforcement. Sitting in there means that I am not able to get anything else done, just sitting in there with them. Frustrating when it takes ten minutes to get them to pick up one thing.

By the time that cleaning their room is finished and I have already cleaned up a messy three year old and his clothing, I am getting worn down. It starts at 9 am on Saturdays and is usually to this point by 1:00. Lunch is in the oven and so we try to do something fun while we wait. We make a craft or do something together, today it was making Indian headdresses. They are all interested in different things, Kacen is super excited in just playing with the glue, Abbi wants to make her own thing and it was cute this week, she wanted to make a "belt" for her cousin Kellie. Wish I could take a picture of that, but my camera is broken. And Alona is my big helper and helps draw and glue shapes while i cut them out. And of course I am nursing a baby 3-4 times by this point and taking care of him, he is such a cutie. He now grabs everything that I am holding takes it and puts it in his mouth! Seriously adorable.

We then have lunch, and then more starts.

They ask for treats, which is fine, they get a treat if they eat their meal. But Abbi has in the past two or so months decided that her food just has to "disappear" and she will get to have that treat. Cause then Mommy will think that her food has been eaten. So I walked out of the room to do something, Abbi runs back in and exclaims that her food has been eaten. So I go look and it has all disappeared a little too quickly and I know that something is up. I tell her to show Mommy where her lunch is, she needs to bring it back to the kitchen. She goes down the hall to go get it, I think that she has hidden it in her room, but I didn't see her make the detour, into the boys room where Jesse is sleeping. Having been laid down just 30 minutes earlier when we were doing crafts. I see the light on in the boys' room and hear the noises, Abbi had hidden her food in the boys' closet behind a box. She had to climb in to their closet, reach behind a box and get her burrito. The box fell out of the closet everything dumped out. With the light, the noise from the closet and Abbi, Jesse was wide awake and crying. His nap was not long enough and my break, the quiet time didn't get to happen.

I dont know how to talk about treats with them when the result will be hidden food and treats dont happen after that anyway. I believe that Abbi's Halloween candy is going to last a very long time.

I took Abbi in to Paul, it was time for him to be getting up for work soon. I was almost at my breaking point, I needed help. She is in there for a minute with her dad, lunch was finished, clean up from the craft needed to happen. The vacuum couldn't suction up the big pieces of paper. I should have just cleaned it myself. Instead of cleaning it they wanted to jump on couches, run around and other such more fun activities. And that point was reached for me, I couldnt take it anymore, clean up time was done, quiet time in their bedrooms.

They had their quiet time, we played with play-doh and we got OUT of the house to get stress relief :) took daddy a drink and got myself a drink too, a caffeine fix is nice every once in awhile. I bribe them to sit in the van while I go 10 feet away, the little ones don't know how to get out of their seat-belts and they can see me through the window. They get the choice of half a caramello bar or 1/3 bag of Swedish fish for sitting quietly for 60 seconds. Oh how I wish they had drive in convenient stores here in Utah County, then I wouldn't resort to bribery. We even went to wal-mart and found Alona some boots, I also picked up some disposable diapers from the baby section, put them in the cart, but then by the time that I got to the check out and the price was adding up with the things that I had to pay, I was thinking... I don't want to pay 15 dollars for this! I slid them under the checkout (sorry store workers) and decided to hurry run home and wash the cloth diapers before he ran out. (we had one clean one left). The relief of not having to hurry and wash diapers was not worth the $15 for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love my children. I wouldn't trade them for the world, they are the best. Two children are much different than four and a husband home at the end of the day is so much different than a husband that cannot get to sleep when he gets home at midnight, but can get to sleep usually by the time you are waking up and then goes to work when he wakes up. My trials have changed so much in the past three years, they seem to have quadrupled. And its just nice to get some of it out there, because I am not able to change anything at this time.

It is very hard to get through the day, when they are all home all day long, when i know there is no end in sight, no help to look forward to. I break down at least once a year living here, so far away from family, knowing that during long dreary days I cant just go to my sisters house or go visit a grandparent. I know I would be a different person if these options were there for me. I even lived with my sister last year during my break down and was such a different person for quite some time after coming home. The only thing keeping us here, Pauls job...we would need a job up north to be closer to family. And that doesn't seem to happen, we are STUCK here. We have been stuck here for a long time. This is the longest that we have lived anywhere in our married life, and the most miserable that we have been. Forgive me for being so open and honest, I seem to do that a lot, seems like I am typing to a screen , so easy. And I don't know who all reads this. And I dont mean that everything here is so miserable, just that the struggles here so much outweigh the good parts