Our little distractions

One thing that my kids are really good at doing is distracting me.  There are times where this is obviously not a good thing.  Getting anything done in a timely fashion is difficult.  It probably took me over a half hour to empty the dishwasher the other day because I was interrupted so many times and I ended up filling it with dirty dishes before realizing that I hadn’t finished taking out the clean ones.  Grocery shopping with kids takes twice as long to get half as many items as I really need.  During our last shopping trip, I had to go back and get multiple samples of bread as a bribe to keep the kids in the cart.  This caused me to forget what I was shopping for in the first place which in turn resulted in me circling the store multiple times until I finally gave up and just grabbed random things because the kids starting fighting and trying to vault themselves out of the cart.  Fun times.  :)  It’s practically impossible for me to have a conversation on the phone if the kids are in the house and awake.  They could be quietly watching as movie and the second I get on the phone, it’s like they’ve had seven shots of espresso after drinking a dozen Mountain Dews.  Complete nutcases.

There are those times, however, when I am desperately grateful for the diversion that they provide.  On the days where my anxiety and worry threaten to overwhelm me, I welcome their crazy, wild antics with open arms.  This has definitely been the case lately.  I’m having a difficult time with not being home in KY right now.  I want to be there for my mom and the rest of my family.  I feel helpless and I’m not able to do anything, but sit and worry and pray that everything will be okay.  It’s upsetting and hard, but thankfully the kids get me keep me busy and focused on other things.  This weekend was no exception.  

We took the kids out to breakfast on Saturday to Der Dutchman, am Amish restaurant in Plain City.  The kids had fun sampling the delicious food from the buffet and Mitchell ate his weight in white grapes.  We did chalk and dry erase art in the afternoon and had a movie night that evening. It was good, low-key family day.

Unfortunately Sunday morning wasn’t the best.  Mitch got me up at 5.  Then Evie decided to have a monster attitude and both kids thoroughly tested the limits our patience with their tantrums and fighting.  Things improved somewhat when Mitch took an early nap and we got to rest a little while watching some of the Olympics.  Evie has really gotten into the gymnastics portions.  I recorded some of the balance beam and floor routines and she was so amazed at what the gymnasts could do.  She really enjoyed the rhythmic gymnastics in particular.  She danced around the room and rolled on the floor trying to imitate what they were doing.  I told her that we could help make her look like a real gymnast.  She put on her pink leotard, I pulled her hair back into a tight bun, we got out my yoga mat, and I put on some classical dancing music so that she could ‘practice’ her routines.  She has a ribbon wand so she spent some time looping that in the air, but that was soon abandoned so that she could focus on her jumps and twirls.  She had a grand time.  And I see ballet lessons in her future.  Later, we took the kids to Kohl’s and then out to eat, followed by a few hours at the zoo.  It was a gorgeous day and we needed to get out of the house.  But Pat and I were definitely wondering why we left the house at all at one point.  It’s not that we didn’t have fun – we did.  But towards the end, both kids appeared to lose the ability to listen to us or follow a single direction and they seemed to think that being at the zoo gave them free reign to act like wild animals.  *Sigh*

They drive me bonkers at times, but like I said before, I’m supremely grateful for the distraction these days.   I don’t know the next time that I’ll be able to be in Kentucky.  I hope that it’s soon.  But until that happens, I intend to keep filling our days and evening with activities that make it impossible for my mind to wander too much.  I’m also going to teach Evie the Serenity Prayer in an effort to remind myself of the truth in the words.