Kids and I Update

Man, have things been hard lately around here. I feel like everything just ebbs and flows, and just when one thing gets easier, the other things fall apart. Much like I said in Mark's update, I'm tired of waxing poetic with updates these days - feeling emotionally drained - so I'm going to summarize for each of us.

Kinsley

Things have been going SO much better with this little lady lately. We had been struggling with bedtime since this past summer, and just finally in the past month, she is not only back to sleeping in her own bed (which I thought would NEVER happen again), she's super excited to go there, and waves excitedly to me saying, "Goodnight, Mommy!" over and over with a big smile on her face each night. What a HUGE answer to prayer! I have my evenings back again, as long as I stay disciplined with the time bedtime starts.

She doesn't seem quite as clingy as she had for a while, and it feels like this phase of separation anxiety has passed - hallelujah! She is happy, giggly, mischievous, super goofy, and cheerful much of the time. That is, of course, when she's not ready to claw your eyes out for telling her, "no". Two is fun.

Ryan

While I had been so encouraged two years ago that only my older two boys would be painfully aware of what was going on, or have any memories of their Daddy being sick, I'm afraid Ryan is really becoming affected by it. He'll be 4 next week, and he is just becoming so much more aware of everything around him; particularly that other kids have Daddies. He mentions about once or twice a week that he's so sad that Daddy has to live in Mankato and he once even got really excited and said, "But Mommy! Daddy could come and live with US!! He could sleep in my bed with me!!" Breaks my heart :( He was just newly 2 years old when Mark moved into Assisted Living, so he certainly doesn't remember that Daddy used to live at our house. He has been VERY into watching old family movies (the ones from 2016 and 2017, when he still looked normal, and Ryan was so little, and he sees himself interacting with Daddy).

He is starting to get a little bit better about bedtimes, and only comes up to sleep with me in bed about once every two weeks, which is a FAR cry from every single night from about 2 months ago. He still asks me every single night if I can come back down to his room after I shower and get ready for bed and let him play with my hair, but I've gotten better at not giving in, and he isn't coming out of his room anymore, thankfully. He seems to be sleeping much more soundly.

Kendrick

This poor kid has had an extremely rough go of things over the past couple months. Between really big emotions that he's really struggling to manage about his Daddy to seemingly daily spats at school, to struggles he's having at his after school program, it has been tough for all of us, but especially him. It doesn't help that he was continuing to have accidents a lot with #2. It was beginning to happen much more regularly at school, and after realizing he hadn't had a significant throughput in over a month, I took him back to the doctor and we started a colon cleanse after an x-ray showed he was so pull of poo that his entire torso on the x-ray was completely covered in it. Let's just say that without trying to get too invasive, this cleanse ended up taking 4 days, and he and I are both far beyond done with poo at this point. He seems a lot more cheerful at home, however, and says his tummy feels better too, so hopefully we can keep on track.

He does, however, continue to have episodes of explosive anger on occasion, which scare me at times. Right now, although he's getting a lot bigger, I'm still bigger than him and my bark is a little louder than his, so even if he initially doesn't listen, he does eventually, and will go to his room to calm down.

His allergies are also beginning to ramp back up with the spring thaw on its way. He's allergic to Alternaria mold, which is found in wet soil, so yeah...pretty much all this time of year, it's a hot mess for him. I was so focused on all the other things that I forgot to start him on his allergy meds again, as he hadn't needed them at all this whole winter, so we're behind the ball on that one.

Cashel

Cashel has also been struggling with emotions lately, and specifically asked me a couple nights ago at bedtime if he can stop visiting Daddy for a while. It is HARD to see your own father wearing adult diapers, and see him randomly pulling his pants off right there in the middle of the living room because he wet his pants. I told him I'd let him stay back until he asked me to go again, and he seemed more content about that.

He and I are very hot and cold right now. My struggle is that he, at times, is less helpful or responsible than the little ones are. But when I call him out on it, he gets really angry. He's very intuitive and holds himself to a high standard. He's very much like me, and when called out, gets really upset, basically, because it's validation of what he already feels to be true. He seems more depressed lately, and would prefer to sit downstairs and watch youtube videos of people playing Minecraft all evening and all day if I would allow it. He doesn't like to interact with us as much unless I take away the remote, which I do often. I'm sure that between seasonal affective disorder, which all of us struggle with this time of year, and everything else going on, it's just not a great combination for him.

He's also struggling a lot with self-esteem and comments regularly that his feelings get hurt by seemingly minor comments at school. He takes it VERY personally if I make a sweeping comment about how I'm worn out by "you kids", and reminds me often that he isn't the one who is driving me crazy. He's right.

He is REALLY into spending his money lately. He stockpiles it for a while from grades and birthday and such, then wants to go on shopping sprees. I think he likes to have control over something, which being able to decide on what he buys gives him.

Amy

I mean, no one has taken my picture lately, so I guess it's up to me, huh? haha

I'm...doing. I've been pretty overwhelmed with managing all these kids and their emotions and their school and extra-curricular stuff (Art parent for two kids the same week, talent show, preschool program, hip hop, AWANA). That's not to mention helping to manage Mark's care and facilitate conversations and the whole working full-time thing. And home renovations. And financial decisions. Life has been packed. I'm tired. My body has officially adjusted to approximately 5 hours of sleep a night now, which is frustrating sometimes, when I have longer than that to sleep and can't do it. It's not insomnia, and I'm not anxious about it, I'm just...done sleeping. It just makes for really long days when they start so early.

This past week in particular has been just I-N-S-A-N-E. Being a single Mom during cold and flu season during the week my boss is in Key West...sucks. Murphy's Law, right? This week I've had 3 kids with strep throat on top of myself having a solid 2 day stomach virus. Thank goodness for Mark's brother Daniel and my dear friend Lana who put themselves in the front lines - seriously! And work rules only allow me to take sick days for me, so in all honesty, I was super grateful for getting the a gastrointestinal virus for 2 days so that I didn't have to worry about asking anyone else to manage my sick kids. I just got to do it while sick myself, hallelujah!

I've just started really pulling myself back together, though, and am focusing on what I CAN do. Right now I can't control the speed with which the renovation projects will be getting done, but I CAN focus on getting the entryway cleaned up and put some temporary hooks back up to hang things up instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor. Right now, I can't make any sweeping decisions about the living room, but I CAN pick things up and remove stuff that doesn't need to be there and stop whining about it all and feeling overwhelmed. Right now, I don't have the time to go through all my clothes to weed them out and swap them out for the seasons, but I CAN hang up what's on the chair in my room and close the door so my room looks picked up. I CAN de-clutter as I come across things that need to go away. I might not have time to clean out the whole SUV, but I CAN pick up all the visible clutter within reach when I get out of it today after work. It's those little things that are keeping me busy enough to not focus on the enormity of life.

But I'm struggling. I'm back in this season of life where we all come out of hibernation and families start frequenting parks together. And we start frequenting parks, just minus one person and that extra set of hands. This is the first year I'm entering into spring without needing to help a wobbly toddler climb the ladder. This is the first year I "get" to be that parent who takes a book to the park and ::gasp:: reads. Or stares at her phone, awkwardly avoiding talking to that other family, because the conversation always somehow comes around to where we live and what I do, and since I'm wearing my ring, what my husband does, and well...as much as I could care less about telling my story again (although I'm weary of it), I'm tired of making other people gasp in horror and feel super awkward again. I'd much rather people think I'm being a snob than to have to recall the past two years once again.

This season is tiring. It's certainly more preferable than winter, but I'm tired of being this single Mom everyone feels pity for. I long and desire so badly to have a full, complete family again. I miss Mark tremendously. I miss when planting season came along and I'd be angsty about having to be a "farm widow" for a few weeks, because it was so exhausting to single parent the kids. I miss having this life that is now my full-time reality be just a short little window of time. I miss doing 3 times the laundry I usually did because of all the dirty farm clothes. Or gym clothes. Or just project clothes. I miss warming up a plate from supper while he would shower after a later night at the farm.  Because at the end of that season, we'd be a family together. At the end of the night I'd go to sleep next to my husband and in the morning I'd wake next to him.  And if he was out later, he'd call to say goodnight to the kids and I and would tell us he loved us, and that he'd see us in the morning.  I knew at the end of the day that I had my person, even if he wasn't there physically at that moment.

So...I'm good, but I'm not, if that makes sense. I know I'm still doing all the right things, but I just feel less accomplished, and much less satisfied by doing them.