Serenity NOW!

Every morning I wake up.

No, it's more like I am woken up by what sounds like a herd of wildebeest prancing across the African Serengeti, but what is in actuality, a 3 and 4 yr old fighting over who gets the Lincoln Navigator remote control car, mixed in with them pretending to be Buzz Lightyear and leaping off the couches and landing with a resounding thud on the family room floor.

This general hub-bub occurs at the same time every day. 6:30am.

I am gleefully looking forward to the time change, when we can set our clocks forward an hour, and this daily chaotic ritual will happen at 7:30 instead.
April 2nd can not come soon enough. One more week. One more week.

It is becoming my mantra.

get through one more week. then things will improve. They will. They have to.

One night this week Duncan decided at 3 minutes before his bedtime that we should make cookies. I didn't have the ingredients to make cookies (namely, a prepackaged cookie mix that you add oil and an egg to), so I pacified him with a promise that we would make cookies on Friday - since he didnt have school that day, and it would be a fun thing for us to do.
By golly, it worked, and the boy went to bed, secure in the knowledge that mummy does keep her promises, and the new day would dawn with the baking of fresh homemade cookies.

Of course this meant that after they were all asleep, I would have to head out to get the cookie making ingredients.

We do have 24 hour grocery stores here - they are more expensive, so I try not to shop there unless I am desperate for cheese at 2am which admittedly is not all that often. I decided to go to Walmart instead.
Our Walmarts here are not 24 hr like they are in the States, thus, I knew, leaving at 9:40pm that I'd have to hustle my buns, as Walmart closes at 10pm.
I made it - I found my cake mix for 97cents, so I bought 2, and wandered around to the Easter displays where they have chocolate EVERYTHING. Chocolate Doras, Chocolate Spongebobs, Homer Simpson, even King Kong. There's no way I can look at that stuff during the day when the kids are with me, so I thoroughly enjoyed just looking at all the elaborate chocolates where the packaging makes up half the cost (and believe me, you do pay for that pretty wasteful packaging). I came home without succumbing to temptation - oh I really wanted to buy that chocolate King Kong.

Kids were up as usual the next morning, and by the time I struggled downstairs - I was greeted by my beloved boys, not with a "good morning mum" but by "It's tomorrow, can we make chocolate chip cookies now"
A furtive glance at the clock on the stove told me that it was 7:37am.

Too early for baking in my opinion.

I made him wait until 9:00am

the package indicates that there is enough to make 3 dozen cookies.
this is of course if they are microscopic in size. They mean 3 dozen cookies the size of a dime. Little teaspoons (as suggested) yielded almost 2 dozen. That's not so bad really, although the blatent lie on the front of the package had me somewhat annoyed - along with their pictured "serving suggestion" which is a cookie on a plate. Thanks. I would never have thought to put it on a plate.

by 9:30 we had 2 dozen (little) cookies.

by 9:40 we had 1 dozen (little) cookies.

ok, what to do with the rest of the day - look at the clock, 9:43am. Why does the day go so slow but when they are in school it goes by so fast, and I find myself looking at the clock to see that it's 10 to 3 and time to make a school pickup run!

I love being a mom, and I love being able to stay home with them, but 5 years is taking it's toll on me. They bicker and fight and push my buttons, whining for something every minute of the day. Then they fall asleep and they look so angelic and sweet that it's hard to believe that it took me 3 days to get this post finished for all the interruptions!
Serenity now! Serenity NOW!