This past week has been a lot better. I wouldn’t say that the kids have been easier to deal with, but I think I’m enjoying them a lot more. Eden has been SO funny. Last night we were at Target and I was letting her look at toys so I could get a better idea of what she wants for her birthday. I’ve been planning for awhile now to get her a Cabbage Patch Kid, so I let her look at which one she would like. She dismissed them and every other toy I showed her, “That’s cool mom, I want a Barbie.” Jim started showing her other toys and she just told him, “Daddy, I need a Barbie.” I explained to her that she needs to wait until she’s bigger to have a Barbie (there’s no reason to jump ahead of things, she’s only going to be 3) and she seemed to be ok with it. It’s amazing what television advertising can do to kids.

Honor has started saying a lot more in the last day. He says Papa, Cheese, Please, Juice and Daisy (the dog). It makes it easier to make some progress with him. I actually feel like I’m finally getting through to him.

It’s been a tough week. A judgmental week. I posted last week what a hard time I was having with Honor. Which he quickly proved by making us go to the hospital. Well, nothing has really changed. Things just kind of suck. It’s hard to talk about things on my website because well, people read my website. But if I can’t say what I feel on my website, where can I say it? I need to have at least one place where I can really be myself, I need to say what I feel.

I pretty much always feel like I’m a crappy mom. There are things that I don’t do that I wish I would. I’d really like to teach Eden to recognize her letters. I really want to teach Honor more sign language. I want to be a better housekeeper, I want to be more organized and able to help more with the business. I wish I wouldn’t get so frustrated with these kids all the time too.

So feeling like I’m doing a rotten job is not helped by other peoples criticism and unwanted “advice”. I don’t know why I have a hard time with things that other people can do easily. But I do. It just makes it SO HARD to constantly have people point it out. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t leave trails of candy leading to the toilet so Honor will go play in it. And although my house is usually messy, we don’t live in a slum. I’m trying, really I am, I’m not doing great, but telling me so (or emailing me so) doesn’t help anything. It’s hard enough doing this without feeling like the whole world thinks I’m doing a bad job of it.

I don’t understand why, after I already admitted that I am having a hard time. certain people will go and kick me while I’m down. I don’t need to be told what I already know. I already know it. I don’t need the judgmental eye of the superior looking down on me. I’m doing a good enough job of judging myself.

Last night after youth group, some of the “sponsors” wanted to go out. This is usually something that we NEVER get to do, because our children don’t do well after 9pm. But then we realized that we’ve got an untapped resource. A teenager living at home whose curfew is 9:30. What have we been thinking all this time??? So, for the first time in what seems like forever, we went out with friends at late hours on a week night.

It felt like we were visiting a past life. It was really, truly strange. I almost felt like a kid who was sneaking out after curfew. And even though it wasn’t the funnest thing we’ve ever done, it was SO NICE to have a break! One of the hardest things about becoming a parent is that you loose all sense of self. I’ve become so dedicated to my children, that I’ve totally lost who I was before they were here. It’s nice that I’m starting to regain some of that. I think that is why last night was so enjoyable.

In my effort to be more “dooce”[aka open and honest about everything] on this website, I’m going to try to write about this.

I don’t know what to do with Honor. Jim puts it best, “Honor is good at what he does.” Seriously, the child is a professional destroyer. I just can’t keep up with him. He goes from one thing to the next destroying as he goes. I just don’t know what to do with him. I feel that some changes need to be made around here, but I don’t know what to change. Or maybe how to change? I need to figure out a way to keep him contained. Or at least keep the mess contained. I just don’t see any options. He is lucky that he is so stinking cute, sometimes you can’t help but laugh at the guy as he’s sitting in the middle of a sopping wet toilet water mess. I love the kid, I really do, but I think I’m about to lose it.

I packed up the kids today around 1pm to go shopping. I’ve been putting it off and we were down to our last can of frozen juice. Things get bad around here when we’re out of apple juice.

First we headed off to the bank to put our whopping check from our refinance into the bank. Which, sadly, will only go to pay off debt. Boo. Then we headed to Vitamin Cottage. Every time I feed my children a graham cracker, I feel like I’m sinning against my healthy upbringing, so I needed to get the kids some healthy, sugar free, whole grain snacks. Eden was very excited about the healthy bunny shaped mac and cheese. (And now you know what’s for lunch tomorrow.)

Being so close to Michaels, I just couldn’t resist. I mean, who could blame me? With on sale yarn right next door, how could I NOT go? Really. (Jim would say it’s part of my disease.) But, I will have you know, I did manage to keep myself out of Old Navy. It was hard, but I think I will recover.

At this point in the trip, things weren’t going that bad. I got the kids a fruit leather (all natural) at Vitamin Cottage and they were still digesting when we got into the car. And this is where I made my biggest mistake. We went to Evil Wal-Mart. Well, it was the point of the trip, to buy food, but still….Evil Wal-Mart at 1:30ish in the afternoon, I’m crazy. I would have been happy to go home and live off saltines for at least another 24 hours, I had new yarn. But one little whine from Honor reminded me that we were dangerously low on juice. So off we went to EVIL WAL-MART.

See, the problem with waiting till way past the last minute to grocery shop is that you have to marathon grocery shop. Since everything in the house has been eaten, including the yellow mustard, there’s a lot of shopping that needs to be done. Herein lies the problem….Honor can only sit still for about 2.4 seconds. We were at Evil Wal-Mart for over an hour. I pulled out every trick in the book and we were only on aisle 9. I finally stooped so low as to open the bag of raisins and that kept him at bay for 4 minutes. And I can officially say that it takes 4 whole minutes for a 1 year old boy to dump a whole box of raisins all over Evil Wal-Mart.

So somehow, through all the screaming and kicking in the Kid Fight Carts we managed to make it to the checkout line. The checkout line. Yeah. Where you’re supposed to check out, right? It’s more like the wait in line for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS line. Seriously, does Evil Wal-Mart hate me that much? I spent $163.00 there today, why would they do that to me? Why? WHY? How in the world do they expect two little children in kicking distance from each other to not scream? I wanted to scream.

Needless to say, from this day forward, I solemnly vow to ALWAYS shop alone. ALONE, I say.