Before the Dawn

It's always darkest before the dawn.

Yes.  There is great truth to this!

Here it is the last night of having to hold down the fort while my husband is away with his new job -- traveling 2 out of the last 3 weeks.  You would think that I would be feeling sheer relief, but perhaps all the events of today are clouding my mind a bit.

By 8:15 this morning both boys had already had a time-out (rare after only being awake for a few minutes!).  A good friend of ours had invited us to pick strawberries today but I could not even picture how that would happen as I am continually leaning my pregnant body low to the ground to acquire these berries   while chasing after my 2 boys as they ran down different rows in opposite directions.

So, after letting my friend know that we just could not make that work today, I thought of something that would allow me to be able to actually sit while the boys sat with me and were entertained.  

Going to a movie!  

You would think that it would have been a magical experience, after all, how could you go wrong with Toy Story 3?!

I should have known that our (active) newly turned 3 year-old would want out during the previews!

What was I thinking?!  I spent $26 for a "special" experience that I wished we had never had!

Between trying continually wrestle P as he wanted to run up and down the row, lean over and in between the seats in front of us to make new friends, take off and lose his sandals (under a VERY dirty seat), yell loudly for water and popcorn repeatedly, I found myself a tad bit overwhelmed.  

If our 5 year old had not been living out his dream there in the movie theater, I would have jumped ship and counted it as a loss.  I knew however, his 5 year old cries (wales) if we walked out at the beginning (yes, P really did want to leave during the previews!) or even in the middle would have been enough to have us banned from this theater in the future.  

A no-win situation.

By the time we got home and ate a late lunch, I hurried to get the boys down for a rest time (with high hopes of having a moment to catch my breath).  Between T needing assistance in the bathroom and him coming to talk to me about wanting to go and play specifically where I told him he could not, I did not get the break I needed.


P woke from his nap by telling me that he had poop.  He's been potty trained and in underwear for about 6 months now.  I thought he meant he need to go...so I quickly ushered him to the bathroom and helped him take down his pants.  Only to have things smear EVERYWHERE!  This child that is usually a "daily regular" has been holding ALL THAT since last Sunday!


Of course today would be the day to let it all come out.  In the underwear.  And everywhere!  WHY NOT?!


After that, the boys had their heart set on playing with water balloons but we left the 100-pack at a neighbor friend's house and could not reach her by cell or home phone.

I then thought for sure the kiddie pool would be a huge hit with the boys!

"Hit" it was!  The 1st time going down the slide into the pool, P managed to bust T's lip open and send him into panic mode as great amounts of blood flowing from the injury site.

After tending to the wound, thinking the hose would be a great distraction for them while I was trying to manage a phone call from my dearly missed husband, they found that they only wanted to fight about who could squirt the hose...of course they did.

While attempting to make dinner, the boys had to take turns going in and out of time-outs.

My dear mother-in-law then called to confirm that she would not be able to make it to come and put the boys down and watch them so I could get to my Thursday night Bible study.

After dinner I decided to wear out the boys so that they would FINALLY go right to sleep in their new arrangement of sharing a room with a bunk bed.  The long walk was fun until I was eaten alive by bugs -- THROUGH MY NYLONS!!!  

While fighting off the bugs that were biting me and plastered all over my legs, I did not watch where I was walking and tripped over a stick covered with thorns and ripped a hole in my $168 pair of nylons.  

Of course.

The boys seemed to finally be exhausted and I was so thankful at the prospect of an easy transition to sleep in their bunk bed, that I pulled both of them in the wagon up a series of hills back to our house (all 90 pounds of them combined) as I overheated from my lovely non-breathing nylons.

Somehow the boys got a 2nd wind and by bed time, after being tucked in, they both needed to come back out of their room to take care of pressing potty needs (yes, they did go before bed but had to wait for after bedtime to go #2).

After a long time of attempting to get them settled again, I decided to move P back to his old room to sleep so that I could finally have a moment to myself...

After I cleaned up the kitchen from dinner and wrestled the heavy trash and recycling cans to the curb...

And here I am needing to process what happened.  I need to go to bed since tomorrow will come all too quickly again...

Between getting up every couple of hours in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom with my pregnancy bladder and helping P through his nightmares this week, rest is hard to come by these days. 

And I've got the boys' dentist appointments to brace myself for tomorrow morning.

But, tomorrow my sweetheart comes home...thankfully, this is simply the darkness before the dawn.