Why Do I Even Bother?

I know why the kids have an earlier bed time than the parents, at least around here. Because after they've been in bed an hour or so, I can reflect on the day without getting a pounding headache. I can (usually) tell Aaron about the fun things we did and leave out all the things that caused me stress or anger or lack of patience. And then I can go to sleep (and hopefully sleep through the night) and wake up the next morning, having had enough seperation (again this is hopefully) from my children to be refreshed and ready to go again.

It's funny how a good night's sleep will do that. Some days I think that I cannot possibly spend one more second with my kids or I will go nuts, and that bedtime couldn't possible come soon enough. And then after bed time, a few hours of peace and quiet, and a night's worth of sleep, I get up and do it all over again every day.

I've been thinking about this concept lately. Especially as I look back over my blog and see the activities that we've done. Someone who reads my blog said to me a little while ago, that my kids must be so good, and I must be such a good mom because we do so many fun activities. I wanted to laugh right in their face. Because this is simply NOT the case.

Last night, for example, when we made the chicks. It was close to bed time, the kids were out of control cranky, and not wanting to listen at all. We were all sitting on the living room floor. Aaron was trying to cut out shapes for eyes, beaks, etc. I was trying to trace the boys' hands. Lincoln was crying because I wasn't at that moment tracing his hand, Ivan was crying because I was tracing his. While I was cutting out our hands, Lincoln kept grabbing markers out of the bucket and taking the caps off and handing them to Ivan, who was trying to color everything but the paper. When I took the markers away Ivan would scream hysterically. Once all the shapes were cut out, it was a nightmare to keep the kids from ripping the pieces before we could get them glued. Then I gave Lincoln the glue bottle, which he usually does ok with, but he didn't want to listen to me and wanted to pour glue on everything and way too much of it. When I took the glue away, he threw a fit, and while I was trying to calm him down, Ivan grabbed the glue and tried to eat it, and then threw a fit when I took it away from him. And on and on. Like I said in the other post, I am amazed that we even finished our chicks. (And in fact, Aaron and I glued ours together after we put the kids down to bed.)

Not all of my projects are quite this in sane, but most of them are not what you'd call the picture of calm. And keep in mind that I never post pictures of the mess. Maybe I should :) It seems I always have at least one cranky child to deal with, and on top of that, Lincoln is very particular about when and what directions of mine he chooses to listen to. So ya. I just wanted to get that out there for my friend who reads my blog and thinks somehow, that I must be super mom. It's not true. By the time I finish most of our projects, I wonder why I even bother, because they make me so frustrated.

But now I am going to tell you why I bother. I'll stick with the chick example. This morning, after the boys and I got up and ready for the day (well, almost ready, I stayed in my pj pants, and didn't wear any makeup, but as ready as we were going to get), we hung the chicks up in our window. Lincoln was so proud of the chicks, we wanted to go outside and see how they looked from out there. He probably would have stayed out there for an hour if I would have let him. He just kept saying, "There's Lincoln's chick! There's I-mahn's chick! And Mommy's, and Daddy's!" And whenever anyone came to our door today (it's the end of the month and rent is due, so we have quite a few people coming to our door) Lincoln would show them our chicks in the window. Then, if the door was still open, he'd run out there to look at them again. When Aaron got home, Lincoln told him a very long and mostly incoherent story all the while pointing to the chicks in the window. I think he wanted to make sure Aaron knew that we'd hung them up.

And that is why I bother. Because after the frusteration wears off, and the mess is all cleaned up (which never seems to happen in ALL the rooms of my house at the same time, btw), and I've had a night's sleep to get over the fact that my two very energetic and curious boys do not have even an ounce of the ability to sit down and calmly quietly complete a project and follow all instructions...I wake up in the morning and Lincoln (and I'm sure Ivan will once he has the ability to express it) is still excited about the project. He loves to see it displayed, and he loves to tell everyone about it.