A Little Spot of Sunshine

The last few weeks were kind of brutal. School started. This is a great occurrence, as anyone who's dealt with bickering siblings for months at a time can tell you. (Unless you're a teacher. Then it's probably dread and horror. Except that teachers are amazing and actually seem to look forward to having my kids come to school and spend all day with them.) But I digress. The problem with my oldest starting school is that my kindergartner didn't get to start for another week. So I got to hear the injustice of his situation for hours at a time every day. And he is unfortunate enough to have an October birthday, which puts most of his friends a year ahead of him in school, so when he was waiting for school to start, most of his friends were already in school and unavailable to play with him. There was a lot of whining. So the first week of school wasn't ideal.

The following week started with Tim departing for the next 8 days. His dad needed help getting a large piece of land ready to sell, and there was a lot of physical labor that needed to be done. Tim needed to help him. It was the right thing to do. But it didn't mean being at home without him was super fun or easy. I'm not going to describe every day of that entire 8 days, but I will say that there was not a lot of sleep on my part. There was a lot of yelling on my part, though. I'm not proud of it. I never pictured myself as that mom that's snapping at her kids all day, throwing adult tantrums because she's not getting her way. But I was that mom. It was horrible. Some highlights of the week include the following:

My 37th birthday. The boys fed me breakfast in bed. It was amazing. I fed the boys Eggos for dinner and ate ice cream and better than sex cake for dinner (I made it for myself. I am always looking for excuses to make that cake). My friend came over that night and we watched Austenland, which totally saved the evening for me. It was a much better day than I'd anticipated. (Also, my friends kept giving me chocolate all week in the name of my birthday, which made the horrible week a lot better.)

 My 5-year-old's first day of kindergarten, where I had a mini-meltdown outside the classroom after dropping him off (I was really stressed and even more tired). He emerged from the school with a huge smile on his face, and told me he loved his teacher and school in general. I almost melted down again from relief.

I had a little break in the middle of the week when my friends took me out for dinner and shopping. That, plus all the chocolate I was given, saved my kids from more mama drama than they'd have gotten. I should have them make thank you notes for all my friends.

The low point was Thursday, my 5-year-old's second day of school, when I moved his bike from its original parking spot at the school so it would be closer to the kindergarten's meeting spot, resulting in a huge panic attack from him when his bike was missing, me running around the school to find him (after a very long bike ride), then running back around when I just missed him, then walking him around one more time so we knew what we were going to do every day. This was followed by a bike ride home with me listening to him scream insults and threats at me. The rest of the afternoon went pretty much the same way. I had promised my oldest a movie night that night, and, after a harrowing hour of getting the younger two kids in bed, I came into the living room to start the movie. This is what I found, along with a bag of mini-Oreos and a box of Mike and Ikes:

  And when I flipped it over:

(Blogger won't orient the picture right, no matter what I try. You'll have to read it sideways.)

"I love you more than Oreos and Mike and Ikes!"

My week wasn't much easier after that, but it didn't seem to matter anymore.

Last weekend Tim had to go out of town again for an 11-year-old Scout camp out. Once again I had promised a movie night to the 9-year-old. Once again, I ended up yelling at everyone after an exhausting evening with very little cooperation. My poor kids looked beaten down. I felt like the worst mom ever. So I sat down and explained that I was tired and it was really hard not to have dad's help, so I needed their help, and I'd try to stop yelling so much. Bedtime happened, and this time, when I came downstairs, there was a tall glass of chocolate milk and this:

I did not deserve it. But I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed hanging out with him and watching a movie together. He is my little spot of sunshine.