Random thoughts in bullet point....

*For the last couple of days or maybe even a week I have been incredibly short-tempered and it is driving me crazy! This is not me, but I don't know what to do about it.

*My son just walked down the hallway to my room and he is suppose to be in bed right now. I just want to cry because I am so tired of this new routine we have since his dad started working nights.

*Ugh. I just growled at him. It is possible I will be paying for his therapy later in life.



*I truly love being a mom, when I was younger I wanted 8 kids. Now, I honestly have no idea how people who do have 8 or even 6...or 5 do it.

*I wish I did a lot of things better.

*My tailbone still hurts after falling down the stairs a couple weeks ago...how long will this last?

*I want to be pregnant again.



*I got all crazy like and took my two kids to the library at 5 in the evening. Checked out 30 items. Only 10 of those were for the children....

*My son loves people. Anybody and everybody. He waves and says hi to absolutely every person we pass. This sweet innocence of his makes me want to hug him forever and ever.

*I wish I didn't feel that homeschooling was the right choice for us. LOL.



*Lately I have missed college. I miss that excitement I had when picking classes each quarter. There is so much I want to learn about.

*I would like to learn archery, spying, and writing and reading code.

*Mrs. Pollifax is amazing, I want to be like her when I'm an old lady.

*Visiting teaching is one of my favorite things to do each month, I love all the ladies I get to hang with.

*Every day I strive to be a less selfish person, but it seems to be a slow process.



*I am eager to adopt someday.

*Sunshine in Washington is one of the most beautiful things.

*Looking forward to the smell of fresh cut grass this summer.

*Oh and camping!! Camping, that sounds so lovely right now.



*Despite my venting tonight, I love my life and family and only wish I was better at my job as wife and mother :)

Note: All these pictures are from the past year. Trying to catch up in posting them.

Running away

As I child, I can't remember ever wanting to run away. Home always seemed better to me; it seems as if I was a homebody even then. However, today....ohhh today I want to run away and cry cry cry. Cry big fat tears. Big, fat, messy, and gross tears that make me feel even more ugly and fat than I already do. How is that for honesty? Brutal.

I don't even know what it is about today that has me down and out. Well, I sort of do. It is the yelling I did today. The temper tantrums that were thrown and the way it makes me feel like a horrible mom. And then I feel like a horrible person and a horrible everything! Yes, this post is so eloquent isn't it? Am I cut out for being a mother?!? I apologized to Elliott three times today for yelling at him. This last time was right before bed and we were cleaning up his bedroom. He was being a almost 4 year old boy and tossing his legos into the container. One of them hit me in the head and it was the tipping point. I lost it. I yelled and cried. Then I ordered him onto his bed and finished cleaning by myself while he was crying holding his teddy. Yes, it was as bad as it sounds. I kept muttering to myself and telling him no every time he asked for a toy in his bed. I was just getting more and more upset and exhausted. You know what I mean?? Where you just feel like you can't clean up one more thing, can't do one more dish, one more load of laundry, one more anything.

After his room was clean, I climbed into his bed and held him and said, "I'm so sorry Elliott, I'm so sorry for yelling." He immediately stopped crying and relaxed into me. Then I felt even worse. This beautiful boy has complete trust in me and sometimes I shudder at how much I feel like I'm failing him and his sister. I asked him if we could have a prayer to help us both feel better and he said okay. I prayed and started crying and said I was so sorry for yelling and scaring Elliott and in the middle of the prayer, happy as can be, he said, "It's okay Mom."

I don't understand what I did to deserve these children. And then I don't understand why some days all I want to do is run away from them. What is wrong with me?!? I love Elliott and Annabelle with my whole being....sometimes I feel it so much it physically hurts. I lay awake at night and think of all the things I could be doing better and worry about them every second of the day. Why can't I be as good as I want to be? Or as good as I thought I would be as a mother? Right now, I would love to talk to Her. Our Heavenly Mother. I'm sad and lonely and completely in love with my children.

Not giving up yet!

I swear I am not quitting blogging again. Just been a hectic week with a sore and bruised tailbone :) I will post our past year highlights soon :)

Confessions

I have literally written this post hundreds of times in my head, desperately trying to get it right. Thinking, that somehow, I would be able to convey the fear and hopelessness with magic words that would come to me. Guess what, I was wrong. Completely wrong. I have no idea how to put these particular thoughts down. I don't know how to tell everyone that I just could not write. I sat in that hospital bed day in and day out and pulled up the blog countless times prepared to share with the world our journey. My fingers refused, my mind shut down and I gave up.

In middle school, high school, and into college I always kept a journal. I have a box of said journals and reading them now is such a humbling and sometimes humiliating experience :) Writing was always therapeutic for me. I could write the absolute truth down and feel validated. I could write those feelings and thoughts that I felt were "too" much, "too" real, "too" everything and no one would look at me like I was crazy. So, I kept writing and writing. For years, this worked well. However, I have to admit that once my first child came, the writing lessened a considerable amount. No surprise there, I'm sure :) But, I valiantly tried to keep up, specifically on this blog. And if you have read this blog before, you will understand how I failed most of the time. Hehe.

Let us speed up a bit to my water breaking at 23 weeks and me ending up on hospital bed rest at Evergreen. Countless people and tons of literature told me that it would be helpful to write everyday during this ordeal, to put my feelings and worries on paper,to record everything that happened. Write down how much she weighs each ultrasound, how much fluid you have in your amniotic sac, how each monitoring of her heart went. Put it down Lindsey, they said. Get it off your chest and it will help you feel better! Logically, this made sense. I can see that. Honestly, I could even see it then. So, I put on my big girl panties and gave it a whirl. After all, writing had been a source of solace to me long before this, so it would make sense that it would provide such comfort again. Again...wrong. A big fat WRONG.

I think I wrote about 2 blog posts while in the hospital. I also had a pen and paper journal to record those monumental happenings....and that one has one page written on. And since then...a year and a couple of months later...I haven't been able to write anything. Not emails, at least not anything substantial. Not letters, not cards, and clearly not blog posts.

It has taken me a long time...and a lot of therapy to come to this conclusion. I didn't feel safe. In the middle of a storm, writing should have been a safe harbor, but instead it was like jagged rocks that ripped up my boat. Every time I wrote something down it became more real. It was already too real for me, writing only helped it become permanently etched in writing for all of history. Writing it down meant that I couldn't change it, couldn't do anything about my situation. Ugh. I know that I already couldn't change it, but writing confirmed it in my head. I know it doesn't make any sense, but my heart said otherwise. I was only trying to survive each day thinking my baby girl was going to die and being separated from my son. Honestly, I don't think I could have handled it and so I didn't. I stopped writing and just got through each day. Sadly, I have sort of being doing that since then. So, I am sorry. I am sorry for you, for me, for my children. I'm sure it would have been nice to have that experience down for posterity, but perhaps now that I have slowly started writing again...it can come out.

Up next, a catch up of the last year. It is sure to be scintillating :)

Minus a cute Annabelle who was off to the side gnawing on my pearl necklace ;) She wasn't impressed with the photo session.