On Monday Abe left for sales kickoff in Salt Lake. Since the meetings start early and end late, he spent the night at his parents’ house and the kids won’t see him again until Thursday. So to make the absence a little easier, Abe stayed home until 8:15 in the morning so I could go do a full yoga session.
The roads were so slick and crazy! I spent forty five minutes driving to yoga, and then it took me the same amount of time to get back. By 8:10 I had already been on the road for an hour and a half. But I was grateful to have the chance to do yoga. With our treadmill out of commission and our local rec center under construction, and with the slippery roads and sidewalks, yoga is really the only exercise I can do. To make up for the days of exercise I missed this past week, I did hot pilates before my regular bikram yoga and almost had a heart attack afterward, but once I recovered I resolved to try to do that combo every week. It felt very effective (as long as I don’t accidentally kill myself. As I lay on the floor pouring buckets of sweat for a full five minutes after it was over, it did occur to me that this exercise combo might actually do me in).
When I got home I was so hungry, but I promised Ammon if he peed in the potty we would go play outside in the snow. He immediately peed, so I delayed breakfast and went outside to play with Clarissa and him. Clarissa was so funny! I kept thinking she had fallen down and couldn’t get up because of all of her snow gear, but instead she was just lying on the snow licking it up. That happened a lot. And Ammon was so happy making angels, playing with snow toys, and running around. Our yard is now the only one in the cul de sac that doesn’t look pretty with unbroken snow…but we did have a great time.
Doesn’t Clarissa look like she’s stuck in the picture below?
But she’s not! She’s just licking the snow. Look at her happy smile:
During Clarissa’s nap, Ammon and I did a beautiful insect puzzle together and I folded a million loads of laundry. Then Clarissa woke up and we all went to pick up the girls from school.
I don’t know what it is, but when we pick up the girls and I have four kids instead of two, I morph from being a fairly patient, kind parent into this horrible monster who’s so deep in fight or flight mode that I literally can’t think of simple vocabulary words like “plate,” “shelf” or “socks.” I start talking/screaming and then I can’t finish a sentence because my brain can’t think of words like those. And wow, the girls’ practices are just insane. I feel highly stressed and irresponsible because I can’t see Clarissa, who has now learned how to climb on tables and is always attempting to scale the stove. Since our TV is no longer in our basement, I can’t sedate Ammon during the girls’ practice anymore, so he is a chaotic, free-roaming agent who might, at any minute, pee or poop on something. And if those two things aren’t stressing me to the point where I’m a yelling, crazy mess, then trying to get Mary to focus or Lydia to learn something new makes me INSANE.
So basically I was a total disaster for several hours and spent the rest of the evening after the kids went down feeling sad and guilty, binge watching Victoria, and buying Lydia her wishlist of Scholastic books because I felt so bad about her harp practice.