I always find it funny when people make comments like "Wow, you handled that so well. My hat's off to you!" Yesterday I was the recipient of comments like that on 4 separate occasions. What they don't know is that after all the kids were in bed I hit the wall hard enough to put a big dent in it and cried. I never cry.If yesterday is any indication of how the week is going to progress, it's going to be a very long week! It was one of those parenting nightmare kind of days. In the morning I dropped T off for his yearly week long work "holiday". He calls it work but anything that involves having time to oneself, the ability to sleep uninterrupted as well as staying in a hotel, eating food that someone else cooks and not having to clean anything is a holiday in my books. The day itself was not so bad, and left me feeling optimistic about the rest of the week but around 4:00 it all went drastically downhill. Yanna has had a rash for the last several weeks. I have tried every natural treatment that I can think of with no success. She was getting to the point where she was scratching her skin raw. I, feeling good about the day, decided that enough was enough and perhaps it was time to consider seeing a regular doctor (blech) I called health link to determine if there was anyone close taking new patients and was given a list of names to chose from. Dr. Adams. I figured that it sounded like a pronounceable sort of name and was optimistic that perhaps he spoke English and drove the 30 minutes to the west end to see him. 2 hours. I waited in a crowded waiting room with 4 kids for 2 hours. It was NOT fun. Yanna kept trying to take her clothes off (because they were itchy) and make "snow angels" on the floor. We read every book in the waiting room, played eye spy with the older two, pretended she was a bear in a cave under the chair and counted everything we could think of. I used all of the usual tricks and then some but after two hours nothing works. By the time we got to enter phase two, aka known as waiting in the actual office, I was peeling her off the walls. At this point I was thinking that the change of scenery was nice and kept Yanna busy looking at the bone charts and things on the walls. Then Lex, who never spits up, puked all over my foot. I was wearing sandals. Once the doctor came in, it was obvious that English was not his first language (the name Moufasa on the wall gave me the heads up)....or even his second. He barely understood me and didn't understand Yanna at all. I still felt ok about the whole thing...until he started sporadically saying "help me!" and pretending to cry throughout the conversation. Apparently he got a kick out of the baby's horrified expression. After a bizarre checkup, he announced that it was either ringworm or eczema. Excuse me what??!! As someone who grew up on a farm, I'm pretty familiar with ringworm...and as someone who also suffers from eczema, I'm pretty familiar with that too. I felt that given the fact that we currently live in a city and have not been near any animals other than the dog in a very long time, that the latter diagnosis was probably more correct. I suggested that too him and he agreed. A prescription for cortisone cream (which may or may not get used) and a few more rounds of "help me" and we were out of there. Once at the medication counter, Yanna decides that she's had enough and starts alternately trying to bite me and scratch Lex. I put her down and ask K and S to watch her. She bolts, forcing me to leave my place in line and chase her down. Fortunately she is predictable and we find her in toys. Once home, the older two kids decide that they no longer like each other and resume their regularly scheduled routine of incessant bickering. I finally got them in bed and had to try for another several hours to get the the younger two to settle down for the night . It was a very late night. T called to see how we were doing and told me how he had spent his evening watching TV and practicing his kanji. I was very happy for him.I did however buy a new book that I hope to actually read. It's called The Birth House and I am optimistic that it will be as good as I think it is. It doesn't have any pictures so that's a good start. I'm hoping that today will go somewhat more smoothly. There is an attachment parent discussion group that I plan on going to and I am way to excite about the prospect of adult conversation with like minded people.

You know it's time to cut the husband off when:

a) he starts talking with an Irish accent...and we've never been to Ireland...nor is there any Irish in his gene pool

b)he asks "how'd the baby get in the living room?" when he had put her there 2 minutes earlier. At this point I took up 100% of the kid duties

c) something to do with pirouetting across the kitchen floor and talking about pickles....neither of these things are remotely normal.Yup, time to hide the whiskey.

This was way more fun in days gone by when we had friends to have a good time with. Although, I am finding tormenting him highly amusing.

"I was the perfect mother...until I had kids"

Last night T and I managed to completely traumatize 2 out of 4 kids. Apparently we don't know them nearly as well as we had thought, or, perhaps it was simply the inherently flaky nature of kids. What was intended to be a fun and harmless practical joke completely backfired. Yanna ran crying out of the room asking us to put the "puter to bed" and K stormed out yelling the usual angsty pre-adolescent stuff - "I hate you...you guys are horrible!!!!" You know the the stuff that makes parents feel really good about themselves.? I have to admit though, normally I would have felt guilty at this point, but I was trying way too hard not to keep on laughing as that would have made the situation much worse. What was the joke you ask? We went to www.buzzme.ca and made videos using pics of the kids...and had a good time doing it I might add. In our, don't-get-out-much world it was really quite humorous. In the kids world....notsomuch. Normally they would get a kick out of that sort of thing but not this time...perhaps it was the eggplant casserole that I made for dinner.*sigh* I guess I'd better go toss another loonie in the kids therapy fund.