How Did I Get Here?

I remember as a new mother coming home one stormy night by myself from visiting my Mom and sister while Mark was helping his Dad with planting season. I needed to stop at Walmart for a few things in Fairmont, and Cashel was right about at his 3 month growth spurt, which meant he was hungry all the time. I was breastfeeding, and he wasn't taking a bottle well yet, so I knew I had to nurse him, and had no idea where to go. So, I sat there in my car in the back seat feeding my baby. I was at this place in life where I was so new to parenthood that I was still battling my pre-baby judgments against what I now knew were absolutely asinine, and I remember sitting there sobbing, thinking, "How on Earth did my life come to this? Sitting in a car in the Walmart parking lot in a thunderstorm with a baby attached to my boobs?" Of course, that's a completely normal thing for a new mama, but to me at that point, not sleeping for more than a handful of broken hours a night, and just adjusting to this new motherhood thing, this seemed like a whole new low. Honestly, at that point in time, it WAS a big deal. Becoming a Mom was such a stark difference from what I thought it would be, and the realization that this was going to be my new normal was a a little overwhelming for me.

Yesterday, I took my 4 kids to Mankato to visit their daddy, my husband in assisted living. I opted to take them to get some lunch and hit up Fallenstein Park for a while. We were really, honestly, having a great time! The kids were running around through the slushy snow and most of the equipment was pretty dried off, and there were certainly large spaces where it was dry.

I had to carry Kinsley through a lot of it, but we had a blast. Until we didn't. Ryan apparently peed (and pooped - that was a surprise) his pants. He has been potty trained with nary an accident for a year now. However, instead of running to me and asking me to change it, he ran away from me and left me putting the other kids, through big puddles, into the car to wait, then had to go chase him down. He was soaked, not only from the accident, but also from splashing in puddles, so stripping him down to change his clothes (thank goodness I still keep a change of clothes in the car for every kid), I found out that he pooped when it came out and fell onto the floor of my new vehicle. Seriously.

Along with that, Kendrick was on day 2 of a colon cleanse, so I had already spent a day and a half cleaning up after that. Considering we hadn't seen Mark in a week, and his Facebook Portal wasn't working again (he accidentally hits buttons and can't remember how to undo what he did), I opted to just pack everyone up anyway, and just put him in pull ups. Let's just say that 2.5 hours is FAR too long to wait to clean that up. I'll leave that there and not expound on it. I am eternally grateful that when we were fishing this last summer, I had thrown a box of rubber gloves in the back (because I'm too dang squeamish to touch the fish with my bare fingers), and hadn't yet dropped off the recycled plastic bags for the grocery store. And that I still had a full package of wipes in the back as well.

I spent a solid 20 minutes getting everyone cleaned up and calmed down (it was pretty tense, mostly on my end), we dropped off a few things for donation, then my sweet friend Trisha took them off my hands for a couple hours while I took a break, grabbed a drink and got a pedi at Caribou.

I'm going to be honest and say that while it was a nice break, it did not prepare me for what I faced next.

After my pedi (which, seriously - that nail tech did an incredible job on my callouses I've been working on for months), I picked the kids up right away, then headed over to visit Mark, who was just finishing up his supper. I walked in, and right away went in to change Kendrick again, as it had been a couple hours, and yes - again - disaster. However, when I walked into his room, there was what looked like little cotton balls all over the floor. I just so happen to know that that comes from adult diapers, and started picking it up and putting it in the garbage. Next to his bed was the remnants of his clothing and TENA from his nap from earlier, and he needed to be shaved again, so I got to work on that, while the kids were actually not tearing each other apart for a few minutes.

As a fun aside, I finally finished his Christmas gift, and it had arrived just two days prior, so it was fun to finally see the finished version :)

I got him all shaved up nicely, then went back to break up a fight between the big two, and Ryan opens the closet door and peeks his head out to say, "Mama, I peed my pants again", and as I was chastising him for a second accident that day, I turned around to see my grown, adult 40 year old husband having just had the same issue :(

I helped him change his pants, and put another pair of TENA pants on, selected his last pair of clean sweatpants, and made sure he was situated, and then he leaned over to me and said, "Can you get these kids out of here? I don't want them here."

We had been there 20 minutes. In fairness, they were particularly "extra", as I like to say, this day. I wish I had been able to just ask them to leave as well, but alas, that's not how it works.

This disease sucks.

I feel like I need to interject here that I DO finally have some regular 20-something babysitters lined up for regular time off for me for these visits. I had been struggling through the entire winter so far to find sitters, but the end is in sight for these visits with all the kids at the same time.

It's crazy to me how 8 years ago in that parking lot, I thought that the simple act of feeding my child on the way home from Iowa overwhelmed me.

Fast forward to Monday morning, where Kendrick was still having no success with the cleanse, and both older boys started complaining that they had bad sore throats.  But...my boss is on vacation this week, so I scheduled another doctor appointment for both of them, since I needed to address once again the lack of results from the cleanse, and turns out these sore throats were strep.  And I was the only IT support for the entire plant.  Thank goodness Mark's brother happened to be visiting and was willing to sit upstairs while they sat and watched YouTube videos for the afternoon so I could get back to work.

And then last night, I woke up sick with a nasty stomach virus which got progressively worse through the day.  It got so bad that I had to call in bedtime backup since I couldn't even lay in bed comfortably.  It all culminated an hour ago, but MAN I could go for this week being over NOW.

In comparison... It's a very good thing that God didn't let me have a sneak peek at what my future was going to look like, because this is most definitely not at all what I envisioned.

My friend Erica and I were chatting a bit ago about how miserable life is when the event that will give you final peace as opposed to this torment is for the man you love more than anything to pass away.  Her husband passed from FTD/ALS just shy of a year ago, and she is only just now seeing new life again.  

Still...that for me is one component in a sea of responsibilities that also won't be going away anytime soon.  What I wouldn't give to be back in that space where my biggest struggles were the embarrassment of nursing my baby with a supportive husband home waiting for me.