Crap legacy

I suspect that some years down the road, when I look back on this era in my life, I will think of it as a time when I didn't do anything particularly well. I'm pretty smart and accustomed to feeling more or less successful in whatever way I choose to spend my time. Not in a brilliant, genius kind of way. Just, you know, pretty good.

Now, I don't whether it's because a third kid has thrown me or if the new business is taking its toll, but I just feel like I suck at stuff. I can't keep up with this blog or others' blogs or even the business blog. I can't manage not to yell at the kids at least once during the course of my day (and let's face it, it's usually more than once). I can't figure out how to improve my deteriorating relationship with Sister which seems to be made worse with every day of math homework. I can't get anything done. The house is filthy. Every available horizontal space is taken up with boxes of crap. You know? It's just overwhelming if I stop to think about it. And I've never been very good at ignoring things that bother me.

Intellectually I know that this is probably par for the course with young children around, but I just don't know how to turn off my inner control freak.

Things not to say to Husband

What I would put right now as my Facebook status update if my husband didn't have me as one of his friends: "Sugarmama is real damn sick of her husband running half an hour late for dinner lately. Especially on nights when she got no fucking sleep because the baby kept her up."

There. I said it.

And now for a pre-late-dinner cocktail.

Baby's jones

My first two girls seemed to get all the oral fix they needed through nursing. Neither Sister nor Bean ever cared for a pacifier. (I did offer one sometimes if all else failed to soothe their screams, but it was always rejected with outrage.) Sweet P is very different. She nurses plenty, but when she doesn't have a booby in her mouth, she also likes her little rubber plug. She's even discovered that I often keep one in her car seat in the dining room so as to never be without one in the car. She'll sometimes get this look in her eyes in the middle of whatever she's doing--today it was me playing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" with her--and she'll crawl off to find that spare. She pops it into her mouth and looks so pleased with being able to help herself that I don't have the heart to take it away.

But I think she might be developing a little oral dependency now. For the last week she's been waking up 5 or 6 times a night as if she were a newborn. She doesn't appear to be teething anymore--that was three weeks ago and teeth numbers 5 and 6 finally came in on her upper gums with no more inflammation anywhere in her mouth. I think it's just that in her dimly night-lit room, she can't find her freakin' pacifier. I nurse her to sleep and generally put her down without incident. But when she wakes up a couple of hours later, I give her the bink and it puts her right back to sleep--'til it falls out. Again and again.

At 4:00 this morning, after waking up to retrieve it for her several times, it finally dawned on me that I was being used. Finally, I know, but I was tired as hell, okay? I told Husband--who at last registered that perhaps he should take a turn getting up--to just look in on her but not give her the damn plug anymore. He did just that, but when he left the room Sweet P screamed for quite some time afterwards. I'm not even sure if it was constant or if she dozed off. I was such a zombie at that point that I slept (fitfully) through whatever fuss she might have been making before getting up to nurse her at 4:45 when I heard her yet again.

Do you ever get the feeling that a good night's sleep is the modern holy grail? I'm going to stop giving her the pacifier at night, I think, in the hopes that a cold turkey approach will end this awful new nighttime routine of hers within a few days. I'm so tired of being so tired!

Making apple butter

Making apple butter, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

It's been a miserably long time since I was last here, and while I've been absent fall has come to NC. Isn't it funny how the last day of summer happens without you knowing that it's the last day? You kinda know it's coming, but you don't know that particular 95 degree, swelteringly humid day is the last one of the year? Turns out it is, though, and pretty soon you realize it's time to do stuff like whip up pumpkin muffins with your delighted 3-year old daughter and make a big mess of apple butter to go with it. That's what we've been doing around here lately, and it's very cozy indeed.

What not to do with your sister's colored hair gel

What not to do with your sister's colored hair gel, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

I swear, every time I turned my back on Bean yesterday she was doing something godawful. Witness this goopy mess of a toy here. What happened was that I left Bean and Sister playing happily upstairs while I went downstairs to make dinner. A few minutes later, I hear Sister wailing, "Oh no!" I went to see what was amiss, and found that Bean had climbed from the toilet to the bathroom counter where she was then able to reach the medicine chest. Fortunately, we don't keep actual medicine--which Bean thinks is "tasty"--there. But we do keep Sister's vast collection of colored hair gels there, and Bean had emptied 3 of the tubes onto this unsuspecting stuffed critter.

Other shenanigans yesterday: pulling all the flowers off a shrub in my front flower garden, catching gold fish from her father's pond (which always ends in fish death), yanking Sweet P's legs out from under her while she was crawling several times, and I can't remember what all else. It was a rough afternoon and I was near tears by the time Husband made it home (late).

Today's looking better, despite a rough night with the baby not sleeping. But apparently an hour of mama time first thing in the morning, even after very little sleep, cures most of what ails me.

Sunday house

I love my house most on a Sunday evening. All the laundry is done. The beds are made up with fresh linens. There are fresh flowers from the garden in the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the dining room. Everything is put away and clean. The kids are clean, with full bellies, in their beds. The trash is taken out. The refrigerator and pantry are fully stocked, as is the bowl of pretty, fresh fruit on the counter.

All is well.

Good mood mama

This week has been so much better than last week. I'm certainly not getting any more sleep than last week, but I am over a summer cold and I'm also consistently getting up at 5:45, about 45 minutes (if I'm lucky) before anyone else gets up. At 5:45 it's still dark outside, and some mornings I'd much rather sleep. But it's been worth it to have the quiet time. What I've been doing is making myself a cup of tea and going out onto our dark back porch to sit on the rug. I stretch a little because when it's quiet I notice how stiff my body is in the mornings now. (It didn't used to be.) I watch the sun rise through the trees behind the house because our porch faces east. I listen to the birds wake up and the crickets go to sleep. Yesterday I listened to an owl makes its way through our neighborhood, it's hooty calls getting farther and farther away from me.

My morning mood is vastly improved by starting the day off alone and quiet rather than having to be "on" the minute the kids wake me up. I may even set my clock a little earlier to get even more time like this!

On the fence

I've been trying to decide lately whether to keep going with this blog or not because--as the few of you still reading here have probably noticed--I'm having trouble fitting it into my life now. And part of it is also that I don't have all that much new to say lately. I'm either having a horrible time with the kids because I'm sleep-deprived and trying to do too much, or I've gotten a little rest and being home with my daughters is the very best thing I could possibly imagine doing right now.

I'm having one of those latter kinds of weeks right now, in case anyone is interested. I just spent two relaxed hours outside with Bean and Sweet P, weeding the garden, catching butterflies and frogs, trying to keep Sweet P from swallowing pebbles. It was a perfect couple of hours and just exactly how I imagined being home with kids could be in my pre-Bean daydreams. (It remains to be seen whether my inner grooviness will hold once Sister gets home from school and the daily math hysteria resumes once again, but I'll try.)

Anyways, I still can't make up my mind, but considering that my days go much better with the girls if I keep my computer time to a minimum, I may drop the blogging.