Collapse of the Zen

I don't know what happened, I was living in the Zen zone, I was feeling like a zen master. I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday saying how great I was doing, handling three young kids like a pro. Feeling like a zen mama. Then today, I felt like I was barely hanging on to the ledge. I am sure that part of this is that our new mattress is causing my back to ache all through the night. So what little sleep I am getting is now reduced even more because my back keeps waking me up. ARGH! I called the store where we bought the dang thing. They were not much help. "Ma'am we don't have a warranty for comfort" Now go back and read that with a thick Texas accent. "I'm sorry you don't like your mattress but people give off bodily fluids, your mattress is now used, our hands are tied." More Texas accent. Never mind that I bought the $80 waterproof mattress pad that he recommended. Searching for Zen place. I am certain there is a life lesson here, but not sure what it is. Perhaps someone should sell mattress insurance. I would certainly buy some.

Ph.D. in Poop Control

I know I have mentioned that we have three children under the age of four. Our oldest is potty trained for the most part. He still wears a diaper at night, which means that in the morning I have to change him which means there is still the potential for three poopy diapers from three different bottoms. On Friday they seriously all pooped at the same time. I laid them down next to one another and went down the line. Later on that day, about 1700 I decided to put a load in the wash. The oldest H. came over and asked me if S. could poop in the potty. I said that he was too little and that S. was not a big boy like H. I did not think anything of this conversation, and I continued with the laundry. As soon as I was finished I went to S.'s room where I found him covered in poop. Now I was messing with the laundry for less than five minutes. He had poop in his hair, in both hands, and it was also smeared all over the rug in his room. I took him to the bathroom to clean him up, where he managed to get poop on my clothes and on the outside of the tub. I cleaned him and the bathroom. I thought I was done, but the final volley was from C., the baby. One last poopy diaper for the day.
Of course you would have thought I learned my lesson, but my husband gave S. a bath when he came home from work last night. S. hit the ground running, he likes to run around naked. I am sure you are all groaning at this point, because surely, surely we would have remembered the night before and put a diaper on him immediately. I was feeding C. and my husband was rounding up pjs for bedtime. He walked into H.'s room and S. was sitting on the floor squishing poop again. Argh!!!! It took me quite a while to scrub the poop out of the rug in H.'s room. Plus I had to go hunting for the little pieces of poop that he'd deposited. I think he must have been running?!?! Not sure, but I do know that S. will be under tight diaper security.

Oh My Gosh, They're Alive

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there. If you have kids you understand how difficult it is to go out to dinner. Especially with little children. So this year instead of doing a special Valentine's dinner out over the weekend. My husband and I decided to order a lobster dinner online which included two lobsters and came to the house in a large cooler. You would think that because the website has live in the site address, I would have clued in ahead of time that the lobsters were alive. Needless to say it came as a surprise that there were two live lobsters in the box sitting in my kitchen. I am amazed that they could survive so long out of the water there was a saltwater soaked pad on top of them. I would not have ordered live lobster. The thought of boiling them alive is upsetting. I thought about trying to free them, but we live about 10 hours from the ocean. I also thought about adding salt to the bathtub and letting them hang out there. I wasn't sure how much salt to add and honestly I think our 19 month old might try and take a bite out of one. That would have been an interesting trip to the emergency room. I watched my husband drop the little fellas into the water and fortunately there was no screaming and even though the pamphlet warned of it, there was no tail splashing. I mean can you imagine watching the tales of the lobsters splashing in the water, yikes. I guess I got over the moral objections, because I can report that the lobster was very tasty. However, I will never do that again. I don't care what anyone says about lobsters feeling or not feeling pain, I just cannot stand the guilt. I also must admit I feel sorry for the lobsters at the grocery store. Sometimes I think strongly about becoming a vegetarian.

Great start to the day

This morning all three of our boys were laying in the bed with me. No one was crying or fighting. It was a wonderful way to start the day. Granted two seconds later two of them started fighting, but for a couple of minutes I just looked at the three of them and was extremely grateful.

Something Sad

I have recently started reading Learning to Live, it is a blog by a military widow. She lost her husband in Iraq and she is blogging her life experiences so that her son will know how she coped. It is amazing. It is brutally honest and extremely personal. I can only imagine what she has gone through. My husband has been to Iraq twice and I am pretty sure we are in for several more deployments. Reading her blog is like reading the endings of my worst nightmares while my husband was deployed. Every time the doorbell rang or there was a knock on the door I felt panicked. Every time we talked on the phone and the phone line went dead I had to have faith that the lines were down and that it wasn't that the building had been mortared. She lived the knock on the door. I highly recommend that people read it. Whether you are for or against the War in Iraq you will get a very personal insight into what the tolls of war are.

Here is something new

I've never blogged before. I thought this would be a good outlet for a bored and stressed out stay at home mom. I have three children. My husband is in the army. Obviously there is a whole lot more to it than that, but it is a start. We live on an army post. Yes, post, not base, the air force has bases, the army has posts. We have small quarters. I was particularly grateful for the free (which irritates my husband, he says we earn it every day) ac during the summer when I was pregnant.

I am calling my blog Everyday Something New, because I learn something or experience something new everyday. I have a 12 week old, a 19 month old and a 3 1/2 year old. It gets crazy. I am extremely grateful for all three of them. Some days we have so much fun!!!! Other days, it is almost too much to handle, but those days are rare and I always find some time to laugh about it. Particularly when I bat for the cycle, which means changing three poopy diapers in a row, it has to be three different ones, if someone doubles up, still gross, but it doesn't count.

Lately I have been having a hard time being a home. I love my kids and I know what a luxury it is that I can stay at home. I am feeling like the woman that I was before is starting to disappear. It doesn't help that three pregnancies so close together has left quite a few pounds on my body. That kind of thing really messes with your head. I have been trying to come up with something that I can do, maybe a stay at home business, writing novels, anything. I haven't come up with the perfect solution, but I am soul searching.

So today, my new thing for sure is this blog. We will see if I keep up with it or not, I kind of like it.

Sarah