Beyond exhausted

I don't know how people do it. I just can't keep up anymore. My kids aren't babies, they sleep through the night and can feed themselves, for the most part are potty trained, they talk, walk and will play in the backyard when the weather is nice. So they don't need a lot of my undivided attention, like a new baby would. Oh, I know they need my attention as their mom, but that's not really what I mean. I don't have to be standing in the same room with them watching their every move. If I need to go to the bathroom, they are ok for two minutes. They mostly get along with each other and overall are well behaved, curious little creatures that light up my life. But I am so tired.

Not the kind of tired you experience as a new mom. Maybe there is some sense of newness and excitement that comes with a newborn. I mean the kind of tired that makes it agony to get out of bed and the kind of tired that makes one think caffeine should come in an IV drip. Everything I do is exhausting. I would nap if I could. I would take a vacation to an exotic island and sleep on the beach. But I can't, because just thinking about how I would get there makes me tired.

I love my job. It's my dream job, one I worked hard for. I want to keep it. I sometimes will stay an hour or so past quitting time, and I'm on call every third week. But I don't work eighty hour weeks or go without any sleep. So why am I so tired? My life isn't drastically different than it was a year ago. In fact, my kids are a little older, my job is a little bit easier and I have a little more time. But I have a lot less energy. I creak and ache like an old lady. It's ironic that I am often told I would feel better if I would exercise more, but you have to be not tired to even start the exercise. What a dilemma. Maybe it's my thyroid or my blood or a tumor growing somewhere un-noticed. I feel like I should be expecting my own version of dead-Denny to come and "be here for me".

There is a special place in heaven for single moms. I don't know how they do it. And for my husband, since he picks up all my slack and lets me sleep late on Saturday mornings. Maybe I'll call a doctor. This can't be normal.

Nighty-night!

Love the cookies, hate the soliciting

I want to be a good mom. I really do. I wake up every morning and think about what I can do to be a good mom. I want my kids to have the best of everything. I would go into debt up to my eyeballs and sell my kidneys to make sure my kids have every experience and opportunity they deserve. But, at this time year I start wonder if I should draw a line somewhere.

How many boxes of Girl Scout cookies should I buy to prove I am good mom? I LOVE the cookies. I will eat almost every flavor and eat a lot of them. I think the Girl Scouts are a worthy cause for my daughters. But I am very wary of allowing my girls to sell cookies door to door, even when I am with them. It's uncomfortable. I usually hit up a few of my co-workers, but I hate doing that. My daughter wants to sell 165 boxes of cookies and I can't buy that many boxes. At four bucks a box, that's $660. I guess I could take it out of my tax return. But I don't really need 165 boxes of cookies.

So what's the answer? I don't know, but I know I'll be buying and eating more cookies than I need. Maybe a lack of sleep from being out of town for so long has warped my ability to think reasonably. I have a week to figure out how to get people to buy 155 boxes of cookies. I'll buy 10, but the rest is up to the actual Girl Scout!

The vegetable dilemma

My kids are constant snackers. They would eat all day, every day, if I would let them. They do like a fair number of healthy snacks, like cheese sticks and yogurt. But they never seem to be full. So I am trying to find ways to fill them up in the hopes that they won't be so hungry all the time. Vegetables, in particular, are supposed to be bulky and fill you up.

Challenge 1: I am not a creative cook. I cannot make little pizzas on Ritz crackers with kiwis and strawberries. That just takes waaaaayyyy too much patience.

Challenge 2: I am an extremely picky eater, which means I have bred three extremely picky eaters in my likeness. I haven't exposed my kids to things I don't like, and that's a pretty lengthy list. So it totally amazes me that one of my girls likes to eat salad (if you know me, you've heard my explanation about trying to find a way to like lettuce). My son pretends to like carrot sticks, but what he really likes is licking off the ranch dressing and then dipping it in again. Our diet is very limited because of my poor example.

Challenge 3: We are having a hard time identifying what exactly constitutes a vegetable. I was always under the impression that if it has seeds, then it's fruit. So tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers are not vegetables. One of my friends recently told me that corn isn't a vegetable either, it's a grain. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense. I asked each of my girls to name their favorite vegetable so I could buy it at the store. I figured that if one of them was eating a vegetable at every meal, that was a start. KB promptly named her favorite as green beans. KA couldn't come up with one, but she did remind me that green beans have seeds.

I give up.