(I’ve got Pandora goin in the background, so if what I write starts to look like jibberish, don’t blame me. Blame the background music. I have a one track mind.)

Aahh…it feels like a good day.

I feel rested.

Arden is at preschool and Addy is taking a nap. Good time to blog.

I just read a post on one of my favorite blogs, The High Need Baby Blog, about the feeling of being overwhelmed. Oh holy guacamole. I have one word to add to that:

DAILY

How does Michele Dugger do it? I only have TWO, not nineteen.

The last few weeks have been brutal. Admittedly not single, homeless mother of four brutal. Not kidnapped by guerillas in the Philippines brutal. Just sensitive, middle-class, mother of two brutal.

My sister and two nieces came to visit just as my husband began work on a project that worked him over like a rented mule. Normally I shrug and say to myself, well, this is the work he chose. But this job actually had me feeling sorry for him. It was b-r-u-t-a-l. And when it’s that brutal for him, the brutality extends onward…to me. This project took place nightly so every morning as he came home, on his way to bed, he would mumble off a long list of things he needed me to do that day to prepare him for the following night’s work. I was a wreck, trying to juggle his list of needs with the typical needs of my kids and my longing to spend every possible second with my sister and the girls. Thankfully, my sister jumped right in and helped me.

I don’t even want to IMAGINE what sort of mess I would have been if she weren’t here but I feel bad that so much time was spent working instead of having fun together. Lucky for me, my sister is my best friend, and she gets it. She didn’t give me any pressure at all. She just jumped right in and kept the wheels moving. We were able to do things at the end of the day, after getting Neil off to work, so all wasn’t lost. I just wish her visit could have been a little more relaxed. But, it is what it is. Today is a new day.

I don’t even know where to go with my post now…my brain sort of works like a tree and I have to keep myself from heading down one of the many branches, pruning them as I go.

I told myself that I would just write and not worry about how twisty and windy my post ends up – it’s been so long since I’ve written anything that there are too many things I’ve wanted to write about to keep focused on just one. I’m hoping you’ll hang in there with me.

So Addy is now walking. Yes, yes she is. I can hardly believe it. I sent her to the store for milk and she came back with a husband. That’s how fast she’s growing. Good Lord. It seems like just in the last few weeks she’s gone from little baby to toddler in one fell swoop. I’ve started on baby sign with her and she’s picking it up so quickly that it’s as if she’s been waiting for me to put the puzzle pieces together for her forever. I’m not kidding. Yesterday I showed her the sign for quiet for the first time and she immediately duplicated it complete with “sssshhh” sound. Wh-wh-what? I’m thinking of teaching her how to enter receipts into my accounting system so that maybe I’ll have my taxes done before the extension deadline. She’s got the pointing finger thing down. So it would only take teaching her to peck the keyboard. That would be great if I could hire her out as a bookkeeper. Hmmm…have to think about that.

And Arden. Oh goodness. That child.

He says the funniest things. The way a three-year-old’s mind puts things together is amazing. This isn’t really a good example, but it’s one for his baby book: When my sister was here we were all in one room hanging out talking. Arden was flip-flopping on an inflatable mattress and out of the blue he started whining that his “butt-hind itches”. He quickly got really agitated, wriggling around on the mattress, “My butt-hind itches! It itches! Squwatch it – squwatch it!” as he pointed his little butt-hind in the air. We all began laughing at him as he continued to wriggle around like he had ants in his pants. I wasn’t sure if I should oblige him or what. Uh, what’s the protocol here? Do I actually scratch his butt-hind and put him out of his misery? Uh, Okay…yea. I guess that’s….uh…what I am supposed to do. I couldn’t think of an alternative except tell him to do it himself, but that didn’t work. He continued to wriggle around. So that’s what I did, my friends. I scratched my little boy’s butt-hind. I did. And peace and harmony returned to Earth. What was wrong was made right again. I would say score one for me but is that really a score?

And on that note…I must go get my boy and his butt-hind from preschool. He only goes half-days now, thanks to a show-stopping fear of nap time that I’m sure I bestowed upon him by being so obsessive about it. Ahh, the toils of motherhood.

Word.

(Sorry, this post was written earlier today. I got busy. Not Starbucks barista at seven a.m. busy – worse. Mother of two busy.)

Word again.