Some days seems like you can’t catch a break! Literally. All you want to do is sit down for 10 minutes, drink a cup of hot coffee (hot out of the pot, not warmed up in the microwave for the third time) and give the old ears a rest. The little dears say “Not a chance Mama!” and cackle with glee. Some weeks feel like this. I’m having one of these weeks. It’s not ALWAYS impossible to get all three babies down for a nap at once, just most of the time. Moments to myself are truly few and far between.
The girls have hit a supreme “getting into”, “messing with”, “climbing on”, “tearing up”, “throwing around”, “jumping off”, “pushing down” phase. Doing crafts, reading books, letting them help me cook or anything else fun have all become recipes for disaster. PLUS (oh yeah, there’s a “plus”) Lily has regressed in her potty training. She does great with anyone else, anywhere else, no accidents, but when she’s home with us forget it, she’s not gonna sit on that potty.
I believe I’ve finally figured out the problem though. She feels left out. Clara and Gerhardt are still in diapers, they still have bottles (Clara occasionally) and she has to be the big girl. She jokes about being a baby and asks for a diaper sometimes. I think she’s going in her pants to feel like she’s still a baby. I try to make her excited about being a big girl but since she and Clara do so many of the same things there isn’t a very clear way of showing her how she’s the big girl and not a baby. I just don’t know that she’s old enough to grasp this idea and I’m at a loss on how to “convince” her to go back to using the potty as well as she was. Sigh.
This is a very tough age and stage my girls are going through. Of course, I’ve thought that since Lily was 8 months and screaming for fun and suffering from separation anxiety (in our living room), then when she was 14 months and Clara was 3 months and again when they were both mobile and following me everywhere crying…wait, they still do that. Two years old is a world of its own for sure. And the 18 month old who thinks she’s two…well, it can get crazy around here to put it nicely.
I think I may also suffer from very unrealistic expectations. Some days I feel like I’m losing control of everything, discipline, order, cleanliness to name just a few things. So I’m always trying to remind myself that I need to adjust my ideals for this season of my life, I can get a little bent out of shape when things get too messy and chaotic. But everything eventually calms down, gets picked up, gets washed and gets cooked.
I can feel overwhelmed by all this responsibility but I know our Lord gives comfort, counsel and strength, most of the time when and where we don’t expect it. And He puts kind people in our lives to help us during these times. This is easy for me to forget and to take for granted. Without His provision where would I be?
