The cake we baked for the birthday boy.
So, what’s up? Where’ve I been? Why am I losing my readers by the second?
I’m in over my head.
I’m sick. Like I’ve never been sick before. Yesterday my husband took off work to come home and rescue me. By the end of the day I had kept down 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries. That’s it. I could not handle the kids or the day by myself. That is disturbing to me. I’m not good at failing at my job. And right now I’m failing miserably. And my incredible husband is saving me at every turn. He went grocery shopping for me the other day – and bought instant foods. Which I was so thankful for. But even my oldest the other day said, “Mama, when are you gonna have another baking day?” Remember those? Because I barely do. I had cut our grocery bill in half for the last 4 or 5 months. Gone. I can’t cook. I can’t clean – really, the house is an embarrassment. I haven’t met any of my deadlines for Heart of the Matter. I haven’t taken the kids out to play nearly enough. I haven’t been posting here. School work has come to a screeching halt. What they learn is almost strictly from real life. All lapbooking has stopped, all workbooks have fallen by the wayside. Can you say delight directed? And not in the most productive way.
Things have been going on around here that I’ve meant to tell you about. We got a trampoline – that I almost completely assembled myself – on one of those rare productive days. We even have cute pictures. We got a 12 mega-pixel camera. Love it. Have incredible zoo pics and such that I’ve meant to put on here. My husband has built us a bed. Amazing. Haven’t gotten pics, much less put them on here. He has also built the three older kiddos a loft. Incredible. A double twin bed loft on top and a playhouse below. He’s still working on the playhouse, but it’s looking more incredible everyday. No pics of that either. We’ve used our compost to fertilize a little bitty garden that we’ve planted. Big stuff for us. No pics. We’re trying to grow bamboo – we plan to use it for a kind of fence. We’ve had our first ever science fair. It was awesome. My kiddos did better than I thought they could and learned more than I thought they would. And we had so much fun in the process.
But I’m overwhelmed. For the first time in all my baby having I’ve asked myself, “What am I doing?” As my husband said the other night, when the 2 year old BigMan was having a screaming bedtime fit, “I’m thrilled about having number 5, but I’m through. I don’t want to do 2 years old for the next 10 years.” I couldn’t have said it better. I’m miserable, people. Maybe I’m old. Maybe I’m worn out, but let me tell ya, I cannot go through what I’m going through again. I can’t see the light. I’m sick of being sick. I want to just cry. A lot. This is not me. Maybe it’s His way of letting me be content with 5 sweet babies. I’ll take it. I always wanted 5 babies. That’s the number that’s always been in my head since I was a child. And I’ve been blessed to see that come true. And now I just want to raise them. Well. Because right now I feel like a mama failure. And I just want to go to bed. And cry.
