Time's A-Wasting

So if time is a-wasting, why I am I writing a blog post at 12:26 am instead of going to bed? So I can whine, of course!

Today was a bad day. I woke up at 4:00 am to Jackson crying and never quite got completely back to a deep sleep. I had great intentions, but even though I did make my bed (YES!! I am keeping my New Year's Resolution!), not much else happened. Can it really take 3 hours to make oatmeal, eat aforementioned oatmeal, feed breakfast to a one-year-old, take a shower, give two kids a bath, get them dressed and comb their hair? Don't answer that.

Jackson is still recovering from a cold/flu bug and has a faucet runny nose that he likes to wipe on my shirt/pants/sweater (he usually chooses the most expensive or least washable item to be his handkerchief). He has also decided that certain types of baby food which he previously enjoyed are no longer palatable to him. He indicates this change of preference by swinging his hand into the spoon, flinging mushed peaches with baby oatmeal all over my wool skirt (on Sunday) or pajamas (on Monday).

Today my tummy hurt (whine), my head hurt (whine) and those dang dishes just wouldn't go away, no matter how long I stared at them. Jackson finally went down for a nap and I then wasted all his naptime working on something for choir #2 on the computer. He took a great nap. He slept for a REALLY long time, until I realized that the baby monitor was not turned on and that he was screaming in his crib and for all I knew he could have been screaming for a solid hour. I felt so bad.

Jared and Camryn had an educational afternoon of watching Pokemon and Cyberchase on TV while I scrambled to finish some (take a guess...) choir stuff on the computer and fold the laundry that had been sitting in the hall for a week. After I finished folding, I started to put clothes away and returned to the stacks of clothes in the hallway to find Jackson performing experiments with gravity. He found, remarkably, that neatly folded clothes, when tossed through the wood posts in the upstairs hallway will fall down from the second story to the ground floor and land in a messy heap. Unfortunately, Jackson is not blessed with a mother who has his same keen appreciation for science experiments.

Despite my most hopeful, wishful thinking, no dish fairy appeared to clean up my kitchen. So we had pancakes for dinner (yes, it was a mix, but hey- at least it was whole wheat) and I finally did the dishes myself. It really wasn't so very bad. I cut Jared's hair (to Jackson's great amusement), attempted to remove some of the rubble of Jackson's dinner from the floor and had Family Home Evening with the kids.

We sang a couple of songs, read a scripture, told the story of the Brother of Jared (Jared got a kick out of that) and talked about how sometimes when we have problems and pray about them the Lord asks us what we think we should do about it. We talked about Nephi building a ship and how sometimes we get asked to do things that are hard, but the Lord will help us do them if we have faith. And then we played "Simon Says" and sang a closing song. We also sang "Jumbo Elephant" and "Whirly Twirly" at the end, just for good measure. We figured Jackson would get a kick out of the older kids swinging their arms like an elephant trunk.

So often, Family Home Evening can be a fight to get the kids to sit still or it just seems like an unnecessary delay of bedtime, but tonight I actually enjoyed it. I still got the kids to bed late. Dave still had a super-late night at work. I still have a million choir details to try to work out. My list of home organization to-dos hasn't gotten any smaller. But hey- at least I accomplished something today. And don't forget, I made my bed.