Chicka boom

I am SO being tried this week.

Day one, Danny drops my new bottle of nail-polish off the counter. I painted my nails from the puddles on the tile floor. My house smelled like acetone for two days.

Day two, I go to the prospective reunion site to take pictures of the beach and my flip flop kicks sand up behind me. The sand somehow manages to fall on the camera as it dangles from my wrist and the grains get trapped inside the lens retraction mechanism. I waited a year for that camera and broke it in less time than that.

Day three, Danny is back at work, and I have one of those marathon afternoons- make Melissa's birthday present, wake up Noemie at 4PM, rush to the condo association to renew our pool access cards (on the last day before we'd have to pay extra fees), pick up Dominic by 5 from his gymnastics camp 20 miles away, stop at Publix to grab foodstuffs (which, with three kids, is always an episode in itself), cook dinner while bathing the kids, feed kids and have them ready for bed before Danny gets home at 7:45.... except that Danny has to work overtime... so now it's 8:30, Danny's walking in the door and Noemie's crying doom and despair because she has to sleep in bed by herself. Serve dinner for Danny and myself though the pork tenderloin is lukewarm at best and I'm ready to fall over. Except that there's nowhere to put the served plates because our house is a mess and there's no room left on the pass-through.... So one of the dishes falls and now my dinner has gone from barely lukewarm to cold and wet, lying in a pool of water on top of the dirty dishes in the sink. Danny runs to my side and scoops it back onto the plate and says, "ta-da!", presumably so I won't have a panic attack.

Today was one of those days where about half of everything I've said has been in a tone of reprimand. I've been snapping at the kids all day, and with reason. This evening Dominic drops a drinking glass on the floor and it shatters into a billion shards....just as the meat begins to simmer on the frying pan and the baby decides to wake up with a raging hunger. Glass everywhere. Children everywhere. I left Cristovan screaming his head off as I carried the other two away and then proceeded to flip meat and sweep simultaneously. I was finally able to tend to the baby after fifteen minutes. After he was fed, he looked up at me with a huge smile, like he didn't remember his fifteen minutes of abandonment. I, meanwhile, was still writhing in anger and frustration at the other two, who were now sitting at the dinner table dropping spaghetti noodles slowly and dramatically into their mouths and down their shirts.

-"Dominic, cómete la comida."

- "Te ves muy linda."

-"Gracias. Te ves mentiroso."

- "Gracias"

I was reminded at the moment of Psalm 103: 8-12

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

Being a stay-at-home mom is not easy. I think it's funny when feminists demean it, as if there's any job in the world that requires more patience, more creativity, more skills, or that matters more. I also think it's funny when babies remind me of Jesus.

Dominic did well in his gymnastics camp. Every morning I'd drop him off at 8:45 and pick him up at 4:45. He would come home every evening thoroughly exhausted. The last day I dropped him off, I was stopped in the foyer by another mom who told me that she thought it was cute how the kids got along with Dominic. (Dominic is the youngest). This was some relief to me. As I turned to walk out the front door, a hear a girl on the gym floor yell, "Dominic kicked me!" I turned around to watch through the french doors as a crowd of 8-year olds was standing around Dominic. Another girl said loudly, "Raise your hand if Dominic has hurt you this week!" Almost everyone raised their hand. And on that note, I ducked out.

I know that I don't include that many soundbites of Noemie and the reason is this: Dominic says funny things. Noemie just is funny. It's her personality and the way she perceives the world and the way that she says things. For example, she was watching ants climb up a tree this afternoon and I told her to be careful, that they would bite her. So she began to shake her finger at the ants and yell, "No me cómes, hormigas! Tu no me puedes comer porque eso es muy malo!" This went on for almost a minute.

Toby doesn't say anything yet but when he does, it's going to be awesome.

Taking Toby's passport picture was a bit difficult. He was so excited about the prospect of going to Venezuela for Danny's birthday that he couldn't stop dancing! Specifically, it was a jig. It's the Scottish in him coming out.

Noemie understood that jigging babies makes for blurry photos so she performed a take-down maneuver to solve the problem.

They are going to drive me CRAZY!

My sanity.