Friday, October 7, 2011

Does It Need To Be This Hard?

I love those "demotivational" posters by Despair.com.  It must be my snarky sense of humor, because they always make me laugh.

Especially this one.
(I expected times like this - but I never thought they'd be so bad, so long, and so frequent.)

Yeah, that pretty much sums up where I'm at these days.  Sure, I knew there would be challenges in raising four children so close in age.  But is it really supposed to be this hard?

1.  Ty still isn't potty trained! 

He manages to get his liquids in the right place at the right time... most of the time. 

Except for yesterday, when he peed once at school. 

And twice on my clean kitchen floor.

But the real challenge is getting him to make a sit-down deposit.  Most days, he poops in his pants, takes off his pants, puts the offensive matter in the toilet, cleans himself up, and puts on a clean set of cloths... by himself.  I keep trying to convince him to cut the middle man, but so far, he hasn't taken my advice.

Although today he did he poop in the yard, pull up his pants, and skip clean-up altogether. 

I didn't realize what he'd done at first, but I also knew for absolute certain that we don't own a dog.  Ty confessed while I was scooping up the fly-covered pile.

2.  Since we're talking about potty troubles, I might as well tell you that Ella wets the bed pretty much every night.

Ty might be able to manage his liquids for the most part, but Ella can't.  Or doesn't.  I haven't really decided which it is, yet.  All I know is that I've been washing sheets a minimum of four mornings a week for over three years now.

The problem is, Ella - like Ty - tries to clean up the mess on her own.  She strips off her wet clothes and crawls into someone else's bed (sans proper undergarments) and falls back to sleep.  Suffice it to say that no mattress has been left unscathed.

Including mine.

3.  My children whine.  A LOT.

I know, I know.  All kids whine.  But people who've spent extensive amounts of time with my children?  Well, let's just say that they're all quite diligent when it comes to birth control.  In fact, I'm thinking about renting the kids out to our local schools. 

Talk about "scared straight."

Although I still can't figure out why they whine so much.  It's not like I ever cave to their demands.  I suppose that I do torture them rather frequently... by making them eat my homemade buttermilk pancakes...

... or telling them to wear socks...

Oh, the horror.

*********************

I could probably spend plenty of time listing out more of my pitiful complaints, but honestly, I'm tired.  I need to get some sleep.  I suspect I will face a lot more challenges tomorrow which will require my perseverance.

(The courage to ignore the obvious wisdom of turning back.)

Or not.

2 comments:

ermaloff said...

I love that you love the demotivational posters - I've thought about ordering some for whatever office I happen to be in. Do you ever watch Supernanny? I find myself pretty sucked in whenever her show comes on (and I've worked with kids a good bit and have my own tricks). What would Supernanny do with Kari's kids?

danielle

Jenny said...

Ok, I've never heard of the demotivational posters and laughed myself to tears last night after reading your blog then heading that way. Hang in there, friend. You are a great mom and your kids know it. I'm seriously going to wait until Megan's 5 before starting to potty train her, though. Just saying...I'm a little spooked now!