Monday, Monday

People say to me often, "I don't know how you do it."  And I just shrug and smile, because what do you say to that?

Well today I yelled at the top of my lungs, out of complete frustration, to no one in particular, "I DON'T KNOW HOW I DO IT!!!!!!"  SERIOUSLY.  Ugh. 

I have five little children that all need me at once. 

Today I was giving a spelling test to Savannah, while holding Caroline, feeding Caroline AND Zach yogurt (Zach was standing beside me), and helping Charlotte with her phonics.  OK, so maybe that was four children all at the same time.

I don't know exactly how it came to that.  I think it was just interruption after interruption and we just had to get school done no matter what.  I really wish I had a helper in the daytime for the little kids.

Savannah- Two tantrums today.  SHE's 8! : (  It is very unusual for her.  She was rude first thing this morning and it just went downhill from there.

Maddy-one tantrum;  Thank heavens.

Zach-one tantrum and no major messes. :)

Charlotte- none... my sweet, wonderful, even-tempered child.

Caroline-none... my angel baby.


Here is my solution to the chaos that I am going to try this week.  We will stop school at 10 am and will not resume until just after lunch.  10 am is about when everything starts to get out of control.  Everyone gets hungry and grumpy.  I feed everyone a snack, but then I try to keep pushing through with school because we have so much to do.  I think that is my mistake.  I need to feed everyone their snack and then hang out with the little ones for a few hours and let the bigs take a long break. 

Plus, that is about when Daddy wakes up; he works nights. 

He woke up early today from the screaming Zach in the hall, sees the gigantic mess that Maddy and Zach have made building tents all over the house (he hates messes), and I'm hyper-focused on schooling and mothering on a particulary bad day, which means I'm NOT in wife mode at all. 

Grumpy, sleepy husband (large child) meets hyper-focused, unsympathetic wife (psycho) = NO GOOD.  Isaac didn't say much, I could just tell he wasn't happy.  He went outside to work.

So, we are stopping at 10am, eating, cleaning, and playing quietly and happily until naptime this week.  We'll see how that goes.

On the positive side, we got everything accomplished, we had an enjoyable poetry tea-time outdoors, and everyone went to bed happy.