the dumps

Man oh man, it's been hard to stay in a good mood around here lately. Take this morning, for example. Wednesdays mean an early departure for lovely husband to go play basketball before work. He was leaving as I was starting my morning routine (ah, those early morning sessions with the breast pump... good times), and it all pretty much fell apart right away. The baby has decided in the last few days that he has simply forgotten how to sleep. Just up and forgot how to keep his eyes closed during the night, but he certainly does remember how to make noise. Lots of it. Crying isn't even strong enough of a word to describe the sounds that were coming from his little body last night and this morning. You know that recommendation for 8 hours a sleep a night?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. I haven't even accumulated that over the last two nights.

So, the baby decides to wake up immediately upon my becoming the only adult in the house. Wake up and cry. Cry cry cry. Thankfully the big kid was already awake, doing his usual reading in bed. I tentatively asked him to read on my bed with the baby so I could get a shower. (If I don't get a shower in the morning... honestly, it's a recipe for disaster. I NEED a shower, simple as that.) So, a quick shower while the 7 year old 'babysits.' When I got out of the shower, I heard a loud sound from outside. What's that? Kinda sounds like the common areas around our townhouse are getting the lawns mowed. Hmmm, it's February, no lawn mowing going on lately. No, wait, it sounds more like a chain saw.

Oh no.

Back in December, a tree fell in the 'woodsy' area adjacent to our property. (As 'woodsy' as you can get on the corner of a major state road.) This is my son's favorite play area. Dirt, mud, trees, places to dig, this is heaven to him. The tree had become the star of the show as of late. It had severed down low near the base of the trunk and had fallen in such a way that it made a perfectly horizontal line with the trunk. This had transformed the tree into the most amazing climbing apparatus- way better than any system designed by man. I would watch him climb up to the trunk and walk across, balance beam style, and I have been very impressed by his balance and control. Needless to say, he loved that fallen tree.

Remember that sound? Yup, workers had come and were chain-sawing it into pieces to haul away. Ugh. When it had first fallen, I wanted the tree to be removed immediately-- it just seemed like what should be done. They had very quickly cut up the parts that had blocked the sidewalk next to the road, and I had assumed the rest would have been taken care of just as quickly. But, no, time passed and with the recent spells of warm weather, the big kid has spent lots of time playing outside and falling in love with the opportunities the tree afforded him. After a bit, I began to hope that the removal of the tree would get done as quickly as anything else around here, which is to say, not for a LONG time.

Well, if you know my son at all, you know he has some emotional regulation issues. This is a major part of how his ADHD manifests itself. If you could have been a fly on the wall this morning in our little 'house of doom,' you would have witnessed a MAJOR falling apart session. I'm talking about an hour of hysterics-- crying, kicking the floor, just your all-around out of control emotional meltdown. At one point, he actually opened his bedroom window (which faces the woodsy area) and screamed at the men working. "AAAARRRRRRRGGGGG!" That must have scared the bloody hell out of them. Now we'll be known as the screaming house. Fantastic.

Meanwhile in that hour, the baby continued to cry... and cry some more. He simply wanted to be held. The toddler, in all her glory, has decided that her main form of communication should be an ear-splitting combination of whining and crying. So there we all are in the little kitchen- baby on my left hip while I try to get breakfasts ready one-handed, toddler in her high chair demanding her breakfast like a miniature tyrant, and big kid raging in his bedroom. Don't you just want to come vacation here?

Wow. As sucky as the whole morning was, I do think it's somewhat cathartic to get it down in print. Still not able to laugh about it yet. There's just so much going on right now, this morning was just a drop in the bucket, you know? Okay, time to turn off the square babysitter and pray that the baby will stay asleep for a bit this morning- goodness knows he needs some sleep. Also, time to think of a game I can play with the toddler that simultaneously allows me to be horizontal on the floor or the couch... wish me luck!