Cows, Crickets and Kids

Blessed quiet. A cuppa. The morning news. Crickets and cows. These are the some of the beautiful things I am blessed with. Kittens gallumping around, playing with dust, or air, or each other. Doing funny things, mostly which cause unusual noises.

I could use a good glass of wine, but alas! It’s only 8:59 a.m., and even for me, that’s a bit early.

The kids were a bit fractious this morning. I love that word fractious. And, it perfectly describes my morning.

Last year, we arose at 6 am. I had an entire ½ hour to myself before I woke the kidlet up to get ready for school. We had to leave the house no later than 7:15 to get her the ½ drive to school and me to work.

Now, the bus arrives more or less promptly at 8:34 a.m. Which means I can sleep in till 7:30. Doesn’t mean I should.

To awake at 7:30, I set the alarm for 6:30. Because I keep rolling over and hitting the snooze button. For an entire hour. I really don’t like getting up.

I have never in my life had trouble sleeping. It’s getting up that’s the problem for me.

Both babies were up in the middle of the night. The youngest had a nightmare. Her screaming woke the older one up. I heard the screaming through the baby monitor, but by the time I managed to come to enough consciousness to realize what was happening, find my glasses, find my slippers, get out of bed, climb over the MONSTER, who even though he is not my dog, insists on sleeping on the floor on my side of the bed, watch out for the Chihuahua who has now jumped off the bed (she sleeps under the covers, behind my knees), cause she is a nebshit who thinks she had to know every single thing in the world that is happening, and made it through my bedroom exit, into the living room, hoping there were no dog toys left out to trip me up (big dogs have big dog toys, do not step on them, they hurt), into the baby’s bedroom….

To assuage her fears, which didn’t work, then pick her up, realize she is too heavy (I am still mostly asleep and will do anything within the realm of possibility to return to my bed quickly), put her down and say “go get in my bed you can sleep with us”..so she runs off to get into our bed…..

Which prompts an immediate and angry waaaaiiiiillllll of gargantuan proportions because the next thing I heard was….


“Sissy is ALREADY in your bed, I can’t sleep with Sissy!”

:::sigh::::

Because when woken up by the baby’s nightmare screams, the older one promptly got out of her bed and raced to get into our bed.

Now I have three people screaming at me, and two dogs jumping around, one large, one small. I tell DH to please be quiet, two screaming is one more than I can handle at 3 a.m.

I tell both girls to EXIT my bed. They are both going back to their beds. All the 56 feet from one to the other, they are protesting, rather loudly. Okay, crying. I tell the older one, just please get back into your bed, I will be there in a minute after I calm your sister down.

Thankfully, she does. Well, first she says,

“Can I get on the computer while I wait?”

Oh. Let. Me. Think.

“NO”.

DH is already back asleep. Nice for him I guess.

Put the baby back into her little Dora bed. Calm her down. Rock her whilst sitting on the floor, wrapping my safe grandmother arms around her little scared body as she lays in bed. She goes fairly quickly back to sleep.

Go into the older one’s room. She, the ADHD kid, is now wide awake.

:::double sigh:::

Climb the ladder, standing on it, quietly and calmly tell her, “honey, tomorrow is a school day, you have to go back to sleep or you will have a really bad day in school.”

She can’t go to sleep, she is scared. Okay, I will sleep on the bottom bunk till you go to sleep.

I climb into the bottom bunk.

I go back to sleep. The dog puts his very wet face on mine. Please go sleep with daddy you dorky dog. Please.

I awaken about 45 minutes later to quiet. They are both still asleep and it is 4:15 a.m.

Back to bed I go. My bed is lots more comfortable.

Till the alarm goes off at 6:30.

Get out of bed. There is a kid in there with me. I don’t know when, or how, but the oldest one at some point, revisited the bed.

Wake her up, tell her to get up and go to her own bed. Instead, she says, I will be on the computer. Okay, I am too tired to argue anymore.

Realize that it is only 6:30 and I can go back to sleep. Reset the alarm, because I already turned it off, instead of snoozing it.

I know, if I am aware enough to reset the alarm, I should have just simply gotten out of bed.

One major fight this morning. The oldest one is vacillating between wanting to be a boy, or accepting the fact that she was born a girl. I will let her do this, up to a point. The point is whenever it really pisses me off. Its sort of an ambiguous point I know, but then, you’ll have that.

This morning, we reached that point almost immediately.

She wanted a pair of baggy shorts like the boys wear. She doesn’t own any (nor will she). So, it was her idea to cut off a pair of her baggier capri’s so they would resemble baggy boy shorts.

And, the fight was on.

I said, wear your Nike basketball shorts, they are baggy. No. Not good enough. They have to be jean shorts.

I have that headache, the one that sort of starts in the middle of your back, between your shoulder blades and then crawls slowly and painfully up the back of your spine into your neck and eventually to your brain and your brain just hurts the rest of the day….?

I say, if you cry anymore, your eyes will be red and ugly, and all the kids on the bus will no that you were acting like this.

She doesn’t care.

I say, if you wear that, everyone will laugh at you.

She doesn’t care.

I say, if you don’t get dressed right this second, I will take your computer away!

I win.

Desperation breeds bad parenting. Threats, cajoling and whatever it takes to get them on the bus on time.

I haven’t made their lunch yet, gone to the bathroom or had my coffee.

Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhh !

But, I finally did get them calmed down, dressed, fed, teeth brushed and on the bus with lunches packed, faces clean and no tear tracks.

A successful morning for the second day.

Now, the house to clean, inventory to take of the almost empty pantry and fridge. I have yogurt in there that expired two months ago. Ewwwww.

Have an unemployment meeting at noon, have to go to the bank (1/2 hour away), go grocery shopping, buy the baby a pair of size 12 shoes (why do kids feet grow one size between buying school shoes and the day school starts?) get gas for the mower and make it home by 3:30.

Hi ho hi ho it’s off to run I go.

We live near a large Black Angus Farm, called Summitcrest Farms. They just opened the field next to us (the same field our shed blew into two weeks ago), to the cattle. So they are grazing and sleeping.

There may be a link there. The baby’s bedroom window is approximately 18 feet from the barbed wire fence. The herd has been sleeping outside her bedroom window for the last three nights, and every single night, she is having nightmares. I think she is hearing them in her sleep. She will get used to it. It beats an airport.