another chapter for my book

Another chapter in my “book” that I need to write someday.

Since I am down on not total bed rest but with orders to what I need to do to keep my contractions to a maximum of 5 per hour that means sitting around and acting like I am sick and in pain and should not leave my bed for longer than 10-15 minutes at a time. I should not pickup my kids-yeah right William is only 12months old nor should I try to pick up the messes on the floor left by my 5 all under the age of 8 children. I truly am doing my best to restrict myself to only lifting William when diapers need to be changed, in and out of the tub, crib, and on and off the bed/couch. I am cautiously doing the laundry, doing dishes and only sweeping the floor when absolutely necessary which amounts to about 3 times a day. I’ve given up any dreams of running a vacuum cleaner or pushing around a mop. I do “flylady” my bed and make it in the morning so that when helpful people come to help me they can see me sitting on my made bed instead of a ruffled one. A sister in my ward called and chewed my out for milking the goats yesterday morning and insisted that if Jon wasn’t around to do the job that her teenage son was capable of doing the job. (Jon has since let his Dad in on the fact that I am trying to stay pregnant and asked for his help with the morning milking).
The first Day that my Mom is gone I of coursed milked the Goats. Stiles and Marcus did help. Then After breakfast and orders to my children to make their beds I decided that Erica, Hunter, and William could all really use a bath. After throwing them all through the tub and getting fresh diapers and clean clothes and the right hair pretty’s in the right way I turned myself over to the computer for some mind numbing or stimulating games of solitaire to keep me from trying to do more work. My kids disappeared out the door and I was okay with that- or so I thought. After about 20 minutes I hear Hunter screaming bloody murder and I went to see what was wrong. My kids have turned on the water and did what is the funniest thing to do with running water in an out door environment and made a nice mud puddle then proceeded to throw mud at each other until they were quite caked in mud. I knew I did not want the mud monsters tracking through my house in their present state so I got out the little pool and the hose and instructed them to get themselves cleaned up. It of course tuned into another game and since they were not wreaking the inside of my house I sat in a chair outside and let themselves hose each other off until I deemed it okay for them to drag their wet but not muddy selves inside to dryer clothes. Then they went out again in clean dry clothes and tried play in the water and mud again! They were immediately grounded from going out of the house. I was told that I was so mean and unfair. I was sitting there thinking I was an awesome Mom for not pulling out a switch and beating the mud off of their bodies, I let them run through the sprinklers to remedy their mess.

SO THEN! This morning rolled around…I am exhausted. My insomnia is worse than ever and the contractions wake me up all through the night. I am often throwing little tantrums at 3 am over the lack of sleep I am getting and wishing I could kick my sweet snoring Jon and somehow that would make me be able to sleep. Anyway so I can hear my kids up and running around. I roll over and try to get just a few more minutes of sleep because a tired mommy is a really mean Mommy. After about half an hour I decided that I really am not getting sleep anymore and should go get on with my day.
Well I knew that this type of activity would happen in my house- Hey I have three stairwells and 4 boys if I thought It wouldn’t happen I would be living in a fantasy world. My dear sweat adorable children had thrown every pillow, blanket, stuffed animal, and all of Marcus clothes, clean ones and dirty ones I might ad, into a big pile at the bottom of TWO DIFFERENT flights of stairs and then were sliding down the stairs on pieces of wood and crashing into the pile.
I did not yell, I did not spank, I did not even swear- well not too bad anyway. But in the end those kids picked up all of the mess and I sat in chair and ate all of the left over desert from last night in front of their faces while they were doing it, telling them it was just too bad for them that they made a big mess and now could not have another treat.

The joys of mother hood!

I really am okay, I just wish my kids would get the picture that I can’t clean up anything more that the dishes right now and could they just quit making other messes for the next 10 days! PLEASE!
They are going to play at a friends house this afternoon, so I can take a nap!
Monica