Unloading

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged much lately, friends.  I have worried that if I start, I’ll just unload everything.  Then I realized this afternoon, that you guys are my friends.  I can unload.  You can take it.  I can come out of my end-of-pregnancy hermit state for a moment.

Friends, this baby is sitting so low.  So uncomfortably low.  It hurts to walk, stand, and for some reason it hurts whenever I move my left leg.  There’s a nerve pinched or something.  My muscles are stretched to the maximum.  Most of my maternity clothes don’t fit anymore.

Oh, but God has given me so much grace.  I can’t skip saying that.  He’s helped me not fall to pieces about 128,431 times in the last few days.  I have no idea how I’m still here, other than his mercies.

David was at Bible camp last week.  He had a blast, and has been great since he’s come home, minus the last day or so.  Silje and Elias have their turn at Bible camp this week, though Elias is already home, and Silje doesn’t come home until Friday, because she’s in the older group.  She turns 12 this week, and I won’t be there for it.  I’m honestly really sad about that, but it’s what she wanted to do for her birthday…be at camp, and so I’m dealing with it.

David was amazingly wonderful on Monday, as he made breakfast for the little girls and me, served on china plates.  He even made some desserts in the afternoon, and supper that evening.  He was amazing.  He does so good when he is working or serving.  But he did too much, and it has showed, as he’s been struggling in days that followed.

Then he had so much fun hanging out with his grandpa on Tuesday morning as I brought the little girls to a local preschool VBS that we sometimes do.  I got to sit in a coffee shop and eat chocolate cake with some ladies from church during that time.  That was a gift.  But like always, after he works really hard one day, doing above and beyond, he has days that follow where he crashes.  It’s just not sustainable.

So then we got home at lunchtime on Tuesday, and everything started falling apart.  I was physically done for the day, just getting in and out of the van, and walking through parking lots.  My pain level was the highest I like it to be.  So I was done.  And David was a grump.  He had so much fun that morning that he wanted the rest of the day to be just as fun, and started talking back and being rude when I asked him to do the littlest things.  Elias came home from camp and was exhausted.  I asked David to do his regular afternoon chore of the lunches dishes, and he fell to the ground and cried.  And I just let him.  Because I can’t manage everyone’s emotions, and at some point, they have to manage their own.  Fine.  Don’t do the dishes.  Be sad.  I’m going to sit down and put my feet up.  If you want to talk, I’ll be right over there.  I told him that I will love him no matter if he does the dishes or not, but I couldn’t protect him from the consequences of not doing his work.

That evening we went to Tae Kwon Do.  The kids were much better after that diversion, and refocused, which is the awesome thing about that class.  We actually had a really fun discussion on the way home from town in the van.  I could tell they were doing better.

We got home at 6:30.  Knut texted me that he would be in the field until dark…which around here this time of year is about 10pm or so.  We had no clean dishes to eat on, because David didn’t do them.  There wasn’t even counter space for me to make supper.  So David saw the problem, and started doing the dishes, apologizing profusely that he is making supper late because of his bad choice.

7:30 (because David was mad at himself, and when he’s mad at himself he moves at 1/10th a normal person’s speed) we had some clean dishes, I had some counter space, and I started making supper.  It was hard because I was hurting, Elias finally wanted to talk about camp, David wanted to talk about his feelings about his choices, and the little girls wanted to hang on my legs that hurt.  So I kept trying to get them away, but they wouldn’t stay away and did the revolving door bit, where as soon as I sent one kid out of the kitchen, another one came in.  So what should have taken 20 minutes to make took me about 40.  If I had yelled, and put the fear of God in all of them, I might have gotten it on the table in 20 minutes.  But I knew if I lost it, it was all over.  The night would end in tears and I would hurt even more from my muscles tensing up, my heart pounding, and my throat raw.  God gave me an extra heaping dose of grace and we just handed it out to everyone and kept putting one foot in front of the other.  We lit some candles for the table.  We put on some soothing music to calm the hyper little girls who should have been in bed.

Then I ask the boys to set the table for me.  David brought out our big Britta water filter container from the fridge, and filled everyone’s glasses.  But he forgot to put it away.  Right when we were sitting down, Elias picked up the very full square pitcher with about I don’t know, 2 or 3 gallons of water in it to move it back to the fridge so he could get to his plate.  It was too heavy for him, and he dropped it.  The plastic cracked open and water went gushing all over the kitchen floor, and all the kids start screaming as if it’s lava destroying our house or something.

I stayed cool.  I grabbed a bunch of towels.  We got it all sopped up.  We sat and ate.  Elias felt terrible, and I kept telling him it was an accident.  David was crying that he was the one who was supposed to put it back, and I just keep repeating it was just an accident.  I’m not mad.  Let’s just eat.  They’re all trying to help.  Let’s just eat.  It’s all over with.  Let’s just drop it.

So around 9pm, we start eating supper.  (The little girls normally go to bed around 8.)  By 9:30 the little girls are in bed, and at 10pm, the boys are done feeding the animals, and I start working on trying to fix the kids’ school computer that Knut accidentally messed up when we were trying to add all of his files to it, since his computer recently died.  I’m no computer genius, but I fixed it.  That was the high of the day.

I woke up this morning to a charlie horse racing up my right leg.  I always get them bad in pregnancy, and someone told me that magnesium helps.  So I’ve either taken an epsom salt bath, or rubbed magnesium lotion on my legs, and it’s really helped.  Last night I couldn’t reach my legs to rub any lotion, so I took a bath just to soak my screaming joints, but I was so tired I forgot to put the epsom salts in.  I just miss one night, and I woke up in horrible pain.  I started kicking to make it stop and Knut woke from a dead sleep saying “what’d I do?  What’s wrong?”  He groggily massaged the muscle spasm for me as I was whimpering.  Then we tried to go back to sleep.

I dropped the little girls off at VBS this morning again.  They were so excited, though very tired.  A bunch of moms were going to meet at a park.  I told the boys there was a softball field and a playground there.  They packed up their softball gear “just in case” they could play.  We got there.  I said hi to my friends, and David noticed that there was a little league game going on at the diamond, so he couldn’t play there, and was left with the big open field or the huge playground.

He didn’t want to play catch with his brother in the field.  He didn’t want to play on the playground.  His life was apparently over.  So we stayed for about 45 minutes, and David interrupted no less than 10 times, inappropriately, when I was mid sentence, and with much rudeness.  His life was over, and he wanted me to know this apparently every 2-3 minutes.  I corrected him.  I gave out consequences.  I gave him ideas.  I kept my own attitude in check.  But after 45 minutes, I was done with that, and I loaded the boys up and we went to the store to buy a new water filter.

We had lots of extra time, so I let the boys look in the toy aisle.  David kept asking me to give him a job so he could earn some money and buy some more toys.  I told him he has to do a good job with the chores he already has, consistently, before he can get to the next level of getting a paid job.  (Every time we pay him for a job, he gets half done and quits.  It has messed up a lot, and it’s something we’re working on.)

We got what we came to get, went to check out, and David asked if I would buy him a little dollar toy.  I told him that I wanted to.  I told him that I had planned to.  I told him that I had big plans for that morning, to have fun with them, and I wanted to treat them.  But I don’t reward bad behavior.  Ever.  I reward good behavior.  It is not my job to make his life fun and wonderful at all times.  My job is not the fun fairy.  My job is to train him.  And rewarding someone for not listening and constant interruption is bad training.

We had a long talk about how when we feel weak and stuck, we need to pray to God for strength.  I told him he is in the season of training, and God isn’t there to make our life easy, and perfect.  He’s there handing us power and strength.  We talked again about the literary heroes he loves so much, and how heroes are made by overcoming, not by having things handed to them on a silver spoon.  We talked about how jobs are for people who can go into a broken situation and fix it, a messy situation and clean it.  Paying jobs aren’t for people who demand that everything is perfect before they lift a finger.  I don’t like it when my kids demand a paying job.  You earn a paying job.  You earn it with your hard work, reputation, and willingness to be trained.

Then we picked up the little girls.  They had so much fun.  But Ingrid was so tired.  I got them in the van, and overtired Ingrid screamed the whole way home from town, which set off David’s SPD, and he was holding his ears and sitting on the fetal position by the time we got home.

He was trying.  I was trying.  We were all trying.  We managed to get some lunch, and get everyone to their sanctuary spaces.

And now it’s quiet time.  My feet are up, and I’m going to do some seated work like reading, homeschool prep for next year, some behind the scenes blog work, and probably goofing off on Facebook.  That’s what the rest of my day looks like.  Knut is taking David to the library tonight where I signed them up for a free kids’ class on how to use the 3D printer they now have available for check out.  They are both looking forward to that.  So I should have some plan of what to do with the 3 little kids.  We’ll probably read books on the couch all evening.  I’ll make some tea for that.

But now it is quiet.  Ingrid is asleep on my bed.  Everyone is resting.  I intend to do nothing.  I have no idea what we are eating for supper.  Probably popcorn.  We will see how that works.  It just hurts and I’m done for the day.

I hope you guys don’t mind my sporadic writing until the baby comes.  I’m at the point of the pregnancy where I can only do what I can do, and I refuse to feel bad about the rest.  It’s a motto that has been keeping me sane.  I will crawl back into my hermit hole now, and just rest.  God is still good.  All the time.