These kids have been rocking my world to pieces lately. I've been so tempermental it scares me. One moment I'm a horse giving a lift to two squeeling riders and the next I'm a monster telling my daughter to just "puhlease just listen!". It makes me cringe with guilt when I hear Tessa say "I just can't take it anymore!", a term obviously picked up by her awful mother. But honestly, lately I can't. I can't take this bleak, bone chilling winter any more. I can't take chasing after a running 11 month old attempting to eat insulation that's hanging out of our completely wrecked kitchen while a three year old screams and whines and demands god knows what in the background. Getting them dressed takes literally hours. Thatcher will not lay down to be changed. Tessa will not let me brush her hair, ever. Their needs do not cease. Why should they? They're children. That's their essence, right? Growing and developing requires things be it light and water or books and mud pies. Mostly it requires patience and that I'm afraid has become a scarcity around these parts. Jason's back is out of commission these days and my brain resembles a bad eighties tv ad for drug addiction. Our poor daughter comes up with statements like "let's stick together" during dinner time. It's enough to make you cry right there. Or throw up. But then things would just be worse and there'd be another mess to clean up. I requested books through our local shoebox library the other day one being "Dr. Sears' Discipline Book" and the other "No Cry Sleep Solution" and the elderly librarian looked at me and point blank said "oh dear, why don't you just use your common sense?". Seriously. She said that. I thought I would throw up. Again. But I explained in a completely calm and sane way (the opposite of what I was internally experiencing which pushed my boundaries of repression to their limit) that I just needed a few new ideas. So how does it happen then that I lay here at night looking over at my baby boy, missing my wild girl in the next room and feel that I've won the lottery of life? How do I end every day with a breath of thanks whispered up to the universe? A prayer that life keeps rocking me and my family like a wagon wheel always? That we learn to roll over these frost heaves and slip through these muddy ruts unscathed? Rock me mama anyway you feel.... Oooh mama rock me.
