Cat poop

Oops, slacked off with the blogging again!  At least I have a valid excuse this time.  Since I last wrote we have acquired a plethora of cats, one of which has brand new kittens, which means she is living in our laundry room.  Since acquiring said cats, we have also acquired several piles of poop on the carpet and a vet bill for de-worming and antibiotics.  Good times! 

On the bright side, Jezebel (the cat with the kittens who I've been wanting to steal from my mother-in-law) straight up put the dog in his place.  We usually keep the door to the laundry room and the downstairs closed, but there are six kids, so shiz happens.  Anyway, Stryder managed to make his way through the door that had been left wide open, and discovered his worst nightmare in the form of a mama cat.  When I found him, he was hiding under the bed downstairs, whimpering, and Jezzie was standing guard, not letting him out.  He didn't think it was so funny, but I did!  I feel like this was payback for when he got out and went after the rabbits and I managed to scrape up my arm up trying to get him away.  My arm is now lovely shades of yellow, brown and red.  For the record, it's probably not a good idea to get your arm caught between a large dog hyped up on rabbit fumes and an old, wooden rabbit hutch.  Or any kind of rabbit hutch, for that matter.

Ethan's birthday party plans are coming right along.  I have acquired one decoration and thought about the menu.  Last minute frantic party planning is what motherhood is all about though, right?  I still have several days, so I'm sure something will come together.  In the meantime, I'm trying to get the house clean in anticipation of my parents' arrival on Saturday.  I know they couldn't care less what the house looks like, but I feel like I should at least clean up the animal feces.

Oh hey, in super exciting news, I managed to get the kids on the bus (and one on his way to school with his dad since he couldn't find his shoes in time) without yelling once.  Bam!

It's all in how you look at it

Over the last few months I've learned a lot about adjusting expectations and changing how I look at things.  For example, some people might say my yard is full of weeds and I should do something about it.  I prefer to look at it as we're going green and growing our own rabbit food.  We also have a huge pile of junk in the backyard that may or may not look slightly white trash.  Instead of focusing on the fact that it's a breeding ground for tetanus, I think of it as a pile of stuff that may one day save our lives because, as I was told last weekend, if there is ever a zombie apocalypse, we have an oil drum stand on which to put a barrel full of gasoline.  Nevermind that we don't have a store of gas lying around-we can siphon it from other people's cars.  So you see . . . you can choose to focus on the negative or you can change your perspective and be grateful for what you've got.  It's all about perspective!

To do list

• Stop saying no to everything.  Am I the only one whose immediate reaction to everything a child asks for is "no"?  I need to start looking for reasons to say "yes" instead.
• Remember that I have a husband in addition to six kids.  Poor Tyler is not only on the the back burner these days, but he's on the back burner at some house down the road.  I saw him yesterday for about 10 minutes before he went to work and I was already in bed when he got home last night.  I did manage to wake up enough to ask him how his day was, but I have no idea what his answer was because I fell back asleep.  Maybe when harvest is over we'll be able to spend more time together.
• Plan a birthday party for Ethan.  The little man of the house is turning 7 in two weeks.  I kind of want to do a Duck Dynasty-themed party.  He loves that show as much as I do, so we have mom-son bonding time while watching it.  Happy, happy, happy!  He also loves dinosaurs, though, so maybe a dinosaurs in camo party???  Hey, what about a dinosaur hunting party?!?  The kids can wear camo and "track" the dinosaurs.  I could make dinosaur tracks for them to follow or something.  Am I thinking too much about this?  Should we just have cake and ice cream and call it good?  Does every birthday party really have to have a theme and activities? 
• Put sheets on the bed. I shouldn't be admitting to this because it just shows how lazy I am, but we've been sleeping on the mattress pad for three or four days now.  My reasoning is that when I took the sheets off to wash them, the dog got on the bed and now the mattress pad needs to be washed, but the dog gets on the bed every day, so if I wash the mattress pad now it'll just get dirty again, as will the clean sheets.  Yes, I realize how sad and pathetic my line of thinking is.
• Get new bedding for the rabbits.  The mystery of the wheezing rabbit has been solved.  I put down extra bedding for them last night because it was supposed to be really cold over night, and Oreo was wheezing again this morning.  The last time he was wheezing new bedding had been put down too.  Apparently you aren't supposed to use cedar shavings for rabbits.  Good to know!
• Do the dishes.  This item just permanently lives on my to do list.  The dishwasher is broken, so right now it's just being used as a very large dish drainer.  This means that everything has to be washed by hand and I swear the kids take a new cup every time they get something to drink.  We run out of kids' bowls and cups every single day.  I've tried having the kids help do the dishes but they just end up playing in the water for an hour.  I should probably put forth more effort to supervise them and teach them how to do the dishes properly, but I just don't care enough to do that. 

Observations

As a follow up to yesterday's entry, I would just like to announce that all of the kids made it onto the bus fully clothed with shoes and a jacket, they all had their backpacks with their completed homework, everyone had a full belly and everyone's hair was done.  Plus the dishes from last night and this morning were all washed.  Pretty much, I made this morning my b*tch. 

Now to move on to my observations on motherhood; both motherhood in general and me as a mom.  It's been an interesting transition from single to instant mom of six and these are a few of the things I've noticed about myself and how I do things.

• I start out the day as kind of a cross between Michelle Duggar and Glinda.  (Are you a good child or a bad child?)  If I'm not careful, I finish out the day more along the lines of Mommie Dearest and Hannibal Lecter.  (If you don't go to bed right this second, I'm going to eat your face off!!!)
• My mood sets the tone for the kids' mood.  
• Because my mood sets their mood, it is extremely important that I take a little break and go elsewhere when I start to get frustrated.  One of the women I admire most in this world told me how she used to take her babies into the bathroom and lock the other kids out so she could get a break.  For me, it's more like leave the babies and take the dog.
• Animals calm me down.  If I am going to be any kind of a decent mother, there must be animals involved.
• I say the following things way too much:
• Get your finger out of your nose.
• Knock it off!
• Come here, let me smell your bum.
• That's too bad . . . life's hard.
• What did I ask you to do?
• Don't make me ask you again.
• Put the shower curtain IN the tub when you take a shower!
• Whose shoes/clothes/backpack/toys are in the middle of the floor?
• Boy, it's a good thing you're cute!
• Go to bed NOW!
• I have got to start remembering that if I leave a sharp knife sitting on the counter or the table, it will be found and it will be played with and there will be blood.
• Clothes can be washed, kids can be bathed, dishes will still be there later and anything clean will shortly be dirty again, but memories of fun times together last forever.  Or at least until dementia sets in.
• I am horrible at following through.  I need to stop making threats that I know I'm not going to follow through on.  Four of the kids sleep downstairs and I'm always yelling down to them that if they don't quiet down and go to sleep, I'm going to come down there and when I do, they won't like it.  In the real world, I'm too lazy to go down there.
• Rewarding is a much better motivator than punishing.  Unfortunately, it also takes more effort, thought and planning.
• Even though they drive me crazy half of the time, I can't stand the thought of being away from my kiddos. 
• The kids are much more forgiving of me and my faults than I deserve.
• Whenever they ask if they can help do something, I try to always let them, even though it probably won't be done the way I want it and it would be quicker and easier to do it myself.  
• As you may have noticed, bedtime is when I struggle the most.  By that point, I'm tired and just want quiet and to get in my own bed.  I'm more of a morning person, so I would rather have them go to bed early and get up early rather than vice versa.
• Speaking of mornings, if my day is going to go at least somewhat smoothly, it is vital that I get up at least half an hour before everyone else.  
• I am constantly telling myself that it's not the end of the world and they'll survive.  So what if the same load of laundry has been sitting in the dryer for two days now . . . it's not the end of the world.  So what if we still don't really have any toys here-there are cardboard boxes, my high heels and Tupperware containers for them to play with . . . they'll survive.  So what if I still have not gotten any thank you notes out . . . I have six kids and people will understand the delay-it's not the end of the world.
• Money will always be tight in the farm world and we'll always be poor, but the kids couldn't care less.  They think it's awesome that they get free lunch at school.  Ethan would actually rather have hand-me-downs because it means that he gets to wear Colton's clothes and Colton is super cool.  I know that at some point they won't be so ok with these things and not having the new, fashionable clothes might be embarrassing, and they probably won't want all their friends to know that they get free lunch, but for right now, life is good in their little world and that's what matters.

Guess who has the internet again!!!

The internet is finally hooked up!  Hooray!

I just got the kids out the door to catch the school bus and it was a bit of a crazy morning.  Potato harvest started today so Tyler had to be out the door at 6am for a meeting.  This means I had to be up at 5:30 to get him out the door since he doesn't seem to be able to get up on time on his own, despite his incredibly annoying alarm going off every 15 minutes.  He left, then I had a few minutes of peace before I had to get the kids up.  We ran out of milk, bread and eggs, so the kids got yogurt and instant oatmeal (which they refused to eat) for breakfast.  I managed to do one child's hair before the dog, who had been bugging me to go outside while I was doing hair, pooped on the carpet.  Whoops-my bad!  I got that cleaned up and went to take the poop outside, when I noticed that one of the rabbits was wheezing like crazy.  No time to deal with it right that second, so I went back in to finish getting kids ready.  Unfortunately, the bus came early, so the kids ran out the door in the following state:

• Ethan had yogurt all over his face, but he did have his backpack which had been missing for most of last week.  We finally found it on Saturday-it had been tucked into the pantry cupboard.  Why, I don't know.
• Lily left with her hair unbrushed and wearing an interesting ensemble.  She put on a fancy black shirt that had sparkles on it.  She wanted to wear it with jean shorts, but I said it looked weird, and she needed to wear pants.  She went and put on white leggings, but the school doesn't let them wear leggings without something over it, so I told her to go get jeans.  She came back with brown jean capris, which looked funny with the shirt.  I told her to either change her shirt or her pants, but then the bus came, so she left with her black, sparkly shirt, brown capris and gray dress shoes.  Hey, at least she had clothes on and her backpack!
• Morgan was actually dressed appropriately and had her backpack, but she had to take her shoes and put them on on the bus.
• Kylee's backpack is now missing.  But her hair was brushed and she was dressed, although she too had to put her shoes on on the bus.  

None of them had jackets.  I still consider this a win, though, because they made it on the bus plus I didn't yell once this morning.  Victory is mine!

P.S.  Trysta had the nastiest poopy diaper this morning.  I was gagging and my eyes were watering.