Tornado, whirlwind... something of the sort

Debating -- write a blog or just write a personal email to one person? The reason I hesitate to write a blog when I'm exhausted and wiped from a long day is because of what happened a long time a go. I used to have a blog - well, I used to have many blogs. They're like journals but with responses. The problem is that most of my responses, rather all of them, are from people that I know. Maybe sometimes it would be easier to write an anonymous blog and get responses from people I DON'T know - then I wouldn't have to censor everything I say for fear of who's reading it!

A long time ago I used my blog to complain. I was going through a really really REALLY hard time with my child who had finished with a huge bout of hospitalized disease and became an anxiety filled monster. Actually we already went through this twice with her and BH now she is on anxiety medication which will hopefully keep away future anxiety monster eruptions.

But I was using my blog to complain. My husband was away at the "Harvest" and I had a child who would not let me leave her sight. It was long and hard and blogged about it all the time. A friend of mine was really bugged by this, the loshon hora that was pouring out of the blog and the way I was I was handling my parenting. She wrote me a long letter which hurt me and made me shut down my blog and my complaining publicly. After a few months, we got together and talked it out. I learned a lot from her and from different paths of help that Hashem sent me (SUPERNANNY!).

Now though, I hesitate to complain on a public blog. But this is not very public - it's mostly family and close friends, so here I am - complaining once again.

As mothers, I think we should have the right to complain once in awhile. We can't hold everything in all the time. And I'm sure, after the night is over and I've had a full night of sleep BH I can get some version of that nowadays, I will feel very differently about my day.

The first thing that threw me off is that we had a doctor's appt for 2 of my children today. There went about 2 of the hours that I usually spend at home alone with Nini. Nini also has been acting differently in the past day, cranky, tooth related I'm assuming. Anyway, she fell asleep in the car at 9am (naptime was scheduled for 10:30) and slept through the appt until about 10. That's all nice for the appointment, we were able to focus on the task at hand, except it then took away from the nap that was supposed to happen while I frantically ran around the house knocking things off my to-do list. (Yeah right - when's the last time THAT happened?!)

So my normally 8:30am day started off at 11am, with an awake baby. Things went sloooow. I got dinner made and lunches made for the next day, which is an accomplishment in itself which I wrote about in a previous blog. It's not about what gets done on the list, it's about my children being taken care of and happy. If I didn't know that, I would've been more miserable, thinking nothing got done. But I don't think that anymore - I now know that making dinner and lunches is a HUGE accomplishment - EVEN IF IT GOT DONE IN 4 HOURS! How did I only do those things in 4 hours? Beats me. I'd love to have a minute by minute video to analyze.

After some of the kids got picked up, we stuck Nini in for a 2nd nap, which doesn't exist anymore on normal days, but today wasn't a normal nap day. She slept from 3:40 til 5pm - NOT GOOD says the Nap Book. Too Bad, says Mommy who needs a Nini Break. (When she's tired, she tends to live in my arms. 19 pounds now kh.)

Things were calm for a bit, my brain was frantically going through everything on my list, wondering which things to get done. The voices were saying though, "Don't do anything. It's okay to sit for a moment. The Kids are home anyway, if you try to do anything, they'll just need you. Give them attention." So nothing gone done and they didn't get attention because I was busy trying to figure out if I should be working or not.

Tatty came home and we ate dinner. It was one of those 'everybody talking at once, Penina yelling for food, kids bouncing out of their seats' types of dinner. Ever experienced that?

Then Tatty left to go pick up diapers which somebody forgot to notice we were out of and then Tatty went straight from there to a meeting, which he is still at now at 8:30pm.

Older kids decided to focus on homework because bedtime was imminent and suddenly realized they needed a grownups help. Penina, who is usually out of the picture by this time, was wide awake due to the late nap. Mo needed his personal game and bedtime songs and help putting on his pajamas and brushing his teeth. And Neighbor called asking to borrow a dvd player which was somewhere in some box, last seen the last time we went on an airplane. Mom went to look for it and offered up a few prayers of HELP!

Now all is quiet, I have no idea how and house is a pain of a mess to look at. Dinner is still out, lunches need to be cleaned out and put together and here I am doing my complaining. Siiigh, that felt good. Thank you for your time:) SuperMom here I cooooome..........

Sara - Outgoing Social Butterfly

I've changed. It's such a shock!
When I lived in Seattle, I needed quiet in the mornings while everyone was out. I hated getting on the phone, because it would distract me. I couldn't turn on music because it gave me a headache and I could only listen to a shiur while doing mindless washing dishes tasks. I had loads of friends BH (hi;) but didn't appreciate them or hang out as much as I should have.
Now that I've moved, I can't stand the silence. When everyone leaves, my mind jumps all over the place. The silence is depressing and music helps calm the mind. I have music on all day, I text and Email and love getting on the phone! Today I got to do a lot of that and I realized how different my mood is when I'm social. I get so much more done! How is that possible that I used to get distracted while talking and got nothing done, and now I get so much more done while talking?! Can a person change that much?
Maybe it's being somewhere new. At this point, it's not that I don't have friends here, I don't even want to be friends with most people here shsh, don't tell. They'll just never live up to my fun Seattle friends!!! I make small talk all the time, but I'm so tired of small talk. And the kids... I LOVE the kids here! I always loved kids here, but they're my friends. This morning, Penina and I spent two hours volunteering at school, watching the kids after they got their flu shots. This school asks for A LOT of volunteer hours, we are to volunteer as much as our schedule allows it. I spent the whole morning, just hanging out with everyone while they waited off the 15 minute post-shot time. It was so nice! I guess it just takes more to try to like adults as much as kids. Kids just talk and talk and talk and nobody has to worry about if they like you or not.
There's probably a whole process that people go through when they move. (L'havdil like a death - the different stages of bereavement, which we should never know of...) Someone (Elisheva Hiller) did tell me the whole process once. She said we'll reach the part where we just want to go back home. I think we've reached that. Menucha constantly asks if she could move back. She has a miserable class here - the girls are cliquey and constantly play that friend game - best friends/hate eachother... I think it's the age, I think RM went through that at this age in Seattle. It's sad because she hasn't been there long enough to feel settled with this group of girls yet and whenever I'm around them, I don't really see any of them being nice to her. She's lonely, but I don't think she picks up on it. She just knows she misses her friends in Seattle, but doesn't know why. BH, everyone loves RM in her class. She's easy to love, pretty and quiet BH. She gets tired of too many friends! And Mo, he has thrived immensely here! None of you would recognize him! He plays all day with all the boys here, no matter what age. He BEGS to go to shul on Shabbos and be part of the boy crowd. He said to me, "Isn't Providence nice?" I asked why, and he answered, "So many friends, so many doors to knock on!" BH.


Anyway, please Email me, text me... I am that new social bird, the one that answered in the previous blog "I don't find a need for friends, but I contact them because I think they need it." That seems to have been the old me. I hope I don't get clingy and desperate;)