The Intent

I'm trying something new.

My husband is across the country for the next four months and he left me with a mission.  "To survive."  While we're not in a war ravaged country, my senses are daily bombarded by the screams and tears of tiny humans.  M is 8 months today, Z is 2 and 8 months, and E is 4 and 5 months.  These are trying times.

I used to blog.  Write, write and rewrite until my sentences were grammatically sound and something of quality.  Now that is a bunch of Sweet Brown and I'm having to fight the urge to just.keep.typing. for twenty straight minutes and hit "Publish" so there will be some sort of proof that I was here.

I'm forgetting that I exist.  My world is my children's, and that is good and Christ-like (they aren't what I fit into my time; they are what God gave me time for), but nobody wants a screaming, out of control Mombie.  So, here I am. 

So, today I realized that my 4-year-old does not just maybe, jokingly have Asperger's, but probably really, really, truly does lie further down the spectrum than I thought.  (Can you tell I'm still trying to come to grips with this?)  I'm on the verge of literally sweating about it (I should probably be on Zoloft) and wondering "How is this going to affect us going forward??" but then I realize we've been dealing with this since he was a tiny babe.  We're affected now, with or without a label.  We will just.keep.trudging. 

My two-year-old won't stop coloring on himself, and I don't know what to do about it.  No punishment seems to work.  He just doesn't care.  He says he'll only color paper, and every day he liiiiies.  Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiies!!!  He's still stained orange from yesterday's bout and today he turned himself black.  I'm sure they'll all look like awesome bruises when I take him to speech therapy tomorrow.

I have no friends in this city and it blows.  Absolutely blows.  We've been here 3 years, isolated in a civilian town with a husband on recruiting duty.  Our military friends have come and gone (no more husbands with wives in the station) and now we're just here waiting for the next move. Well, *I* am since the hubs is away.  Why is military training so stinking long? I'm sure if they wanted, they could condense all these courses and save everyone a lot of time.

My sweet baby is probably the highlight of my world right now.  She's not crawling yet, which is great news for me, and she loves to snuggle.  After two boys who shoved me off to go exploring the world, her desire for my lap is so, so welcome.  She's been a grumpy little goose the past few days, though, which isn't fun (even the easy babies are work, it turns out), and I'm wiped out.  Wiped.the.ferk.out.

I am with these kids all day, every day, except once a week, my kids' therapy overlaps, and I get a FULL TWENTY MINUTES to spend in a waiting area with my baby.  That, friends, is my break.  Yes, I do want you to feel sorry for me.  Then tell me that I'm amazing for not driving myself into the ocean. 

This is hard, y'all.  Really, really hard.  But I promise I won't whine about it if you decide you want to go to the playground with us. We could really use some friends.

And that is twenty.