Shame on me for spending the last (quiet, chore-free, childless!) hour online and instead of updating my neglected site, I was obsessively browsing Pink Is the New Blog. I don’t know what it is with me and celebrity gossip blogs lately, but I go to PITNB at least 5 times a week. I’ve even got Mario reading those sites when he gets bored LOL.

My French Vanilla coffee’s got me peeing every 5 minutes, I’m not kidding. I decided to drink regular coffee instead of decaf so I won’t feel so sleepy throughout the day since I had to wake up at 4:30am again to pee, as is the drill every night. At least I’m feeling Alaethia move a lot more now :). (Yes, I think we decided on that spelling. For now LOL.)

So let’s see…last Friday was a good day. It was Mario’s day off so he went with me to drop the kids off in the morning. I took Eenan to his class while he took Jaylen, and Jaylen stayed tear-less and tantrum-less. When I picked him up after school I asked him, “How’d it go? Were you brave?” and he said, “Yup! I felt like I was gonna cwy, but I wiped my eyes and I didn’t cwy!” (As you can see, he still has trouble pronouncing his R’s. Eenan had the same problem. I think it’s adorable though LOL.)

We spent that morning/afternoon moving furniture around (well, Mario and John moved stuff, I just pointed to where everything should go) so that we could finish up with painting. Mario and I did the closet in our room and in the evening finished up with the kids’ room. All that was left to do in that room was the edges near the ceiling and the corners, but I would do that later.

After all the painting we did on Friday, Mario volunteered me to help Mary paint her house. I was silently cursing him since I was hoping to finish painting our house (I still needed parts of the living room + edges and corners like I’d said before) and the whole house needed a desperate cleaning. There was sheetrock dust on every surface of the house and my floors still had clumps of spackle all over the place.

But, I sucked it up and went to help Mary after I’d had breakfast. I was to help do a texture that uses a plastic bag and paint all over her walls. It actually looks really nice and gives the room a vintage look, which works out since Mary has a few vintage-looking porcelain dolls on a shelf. After I’d finished there, I came to work on my house before I became engaged in anything else over there. I was feeling a little annoyed since I had to do all the painting by myself at my house and the only person to help me move things around was John, which I appreciated greatly. Elda, Mary and Noelia were all helping each other paint and were done with Mary’s room, the kitchen, living room, Noelia’s room and her bathroom in one day. Grr. I still had the kids’ closet to paint but I was way too tired to even bother.

We’ll need to buy maybe two more gallons of the beige paint, since the “new” walls don’t look glossy like they’re supposed to. I think the texture sucked it all up.

Noelia’s birthday was on Sunday. We’d slept in as much as we could and then got ready. The food was great and everyone was here, so it was nice. After Noelia’s lunch, Mario and I hurried to Target to get a birthday present for a little girl whose party we were invited to. While we were looking around for something to buy for a 1 year old girl (we were having so much trouble! We need to get used to the baby girl toys LOL) Mario called his friend Manny to check if he was going and he said no, so Mario didn’t want to go anymore either. He’s such a girl about stuff like that LOL.

So, instead of buying the birthday present, we got the kids 2 screen-print shirts that were on sale. We wandered over to the baby department and saw the 4-in-1 crib I liked (and it was less expensive than I thought!) and the Boppy and stroller/carseat combo we liked–in pink! I need to add all this stuff to my Pregnancy Timeline page to keep track of links just in case they don’t have them at the store.

Monday was a normal day, I think? Can’t remember now. Tuesday, of course, was spent doing these things and crying my eyes out because of all the Katrina Anniversary stuff on TV. I only got the things that are marked off done that day and of course washing dishes (which I did the next morning because I was dead tired. I had to drag myself into the shower at night. I even whined to Mario, “I wanna stay dirty!” which is Eenan and Jaylen’s favorite phrase.) I’m glad the house is much cleaner than it had been for a few days, though.

I spent most of Wednesday with a headache (I didn’t sleep enough) and was nodding off every time I was sitting quietly. I didn’t do much that day since the house was actually CLEAN!

Jaylen had been doing wonderfully all week–no crying in the morning since I’d give him a You’re Gonna Be Brave, Right? pep talk on the way to school every day. Well, this morning I didn’t get a chance to give him a pep talk since we were talking about other things. He immediately started freezing up as we approached his class and threw himself on the floor in front of the door. His teacher heard and quickly came to my rescue (thank GOD!) and tried consoling him. I ran away as fast as I could to drop off Eenan before he was late.

Eenan’s been doing great in school, except for the fact that he forgot his homework folder Monday and Tuesday. When he told his teacher about it on Tuesday he said she replied with, “It’s not my problem.” Geez. I know he forgot and all, but do you have to speak to him that way? She looks like she’s a bitter old woman. Hopefully I’m wrong.

He finally brought his homework yesterday though, with the warning that if he forgot it again he was going to get a Red Mark in his behavior folder. A Red Mark is like, the worst thing, ever. I hope he remembers it today *crosses fingers*.

Mario gets paid tomorrow and we’re sort of nervous since it’s been a slow week so far. They’ve been experiencing their Slow Season since about June, but Mario’s always done great. Well, this week they’ve hardly had any work, and Mario’s finally feeling the brunt of it. We have our car payment this week, Mario needs shoes (his current ones are “talking” to him), Jaylen needs new shorts for school since all the other ones we got him are HUGE, thankyouverymuch; plus our credit card, personal plan payment at JC Penny, and storage payments. Oh, and I forgot, we need to get the trim for the doors:

(Nice improvement from before, right?)

And trim, is it? For all the rooms and whatever we may need for the closets. I REALLY need those closets to be finished. Look at where my clothes are for the time being since we took out my old wardrobe closet on Friday (and it quickly decided to fall apart as soon as they took it outside):

May God help us.

Took a break to pick up Jaylen and Brianna and he did much better after I left. He even got another sticker for behaving well :). I’ve been keeping all the stickers he gets on a little sheet for his scrapbook. I wish I’d done the same for Eenan :(. John calls me “Psycho Mom” LOL.

I’m taking a break from sweeping/mopping since my feet are killing me and I can’t seem to go more than 5 minutes between pee-breaks. I’ve got lots to do today and only so many hours to do them in, plus picking up both sets of kids (Jaylen & Brianna: 11:30am, Eenan & Brandon: 3:30pm.) I know it’s a bit unrealistic, but I plan to:

1. Sweep/mop kitchen & living room.
2. Sweep/mop my bedroom. — Mary walked in when I was sweeping and took over. Thank goodness for her.
3. Sweep/mop boys’ room.
4. Sweep/mop bathroom.
5. Wash dishes.
6. Organize stuff in kitchen and put Mario’s tools in his toolbox.
7. Look through cups/plates/bowls and get rid of old/mismatched ones.
8. Go to Dollar General and get sugar, 2 cans of black spray paint, and q-tips.
9. Spray paint all frames in living room and DVD rack.
10. Go through giant piles of bills/papers and file or toss.
11. Buy scrapbook for Eenan’s Pre-K, Kinder and 1st grade art.
12. Scrapbook Eenan’s art.
13. Go through all the rooms and organize junk by room/closet.
14. Clean bathroom from top to bottom. Yuck.
15. Paint the kids’ closet white.
16. Touch up parts of ceilings (in white) I accidentally painted beige.
17. Clean oven and microwave.
18. Get John to throw out the massive amounts of trash. Mary and the boys did it.
19. Get someone, anyone who knows how to use a saw and router to make some chair rails for that small area in the living room (that the desk chair keeps scraping…grr).
20. Buy milk from corner store.
21. Go through all the CDs/DVDs scattered around desk and toss out scratched ones.
22. DUST.
23. Put rug back in the living room.

Whatever I don’t do today will definitely be done throughout the next few days. Okay, break’s up.

This morning was a complete shock. When I told the kids they were to have breakfast then get dressed right afterwards Jaylen happily asked, “To go to school?” with a huge grin on his face. Of course I thought we’d have a great morning.

We get to school and I take Eenan to his class first, since he wanted me to buy him a blue school shirt. The teacher didn’t have change, so she sent me to the office to get one. Said ‘see you later’ to Eenan and went to drop Jaylen off at his class.

As soon as we get out of Eenan’s class Jaylen says he has a sore throat (which he’d been complaining of in the morning) then he was thirsty, then he needed to go pee and finally his tummy was hurting. I told him I’d take him to the restroom, then his class and he threw himself on the floor and started screaming, “I want to go home wit chuuuu!” I was trying to control him and pick him up and he ran out of my grasp. All the way to the front of the school where he almost ran out the front doors. He would have gone right through the doors but nobody was holding them open and I told him a teacher was going to get mad at him. I had to literally run and grab him and then drag him to his classroom because he would just not get up. A teacher’s aid saw me having trouble with him, so she came to help me but it only got worse since he started kicking. I ended up dragging him myself to his classroom. His teacher was shocked and said, “Aww, he did so good yesterday.” Me, with my messy hair and flushed cheeks reply, “Yup. I know. I don’t know what happened. He was excited to come today.”

He wrapped himself around my legs and sat on my feet. I kept trying to comfort him and convince him to stay (and unwrap himself) but he refused. It didn’t help that about 5 other kids were screaming, too. Those kids ended up calming down once Mrs. C. got them onto the play rug and they started singing. I was a bit annoyed that neither the teacher, nor the teacher’s aid were helping pry him off of me, but then again the teacher’s aid is pregnant, too. I looked at my cell phone and it was already 8:15. I had to wake Mario up at 8:30. I managed to forcefully unwrap him from my legs, then carried him to a chair on the other side of the class–to hopefully give me enough time to scurry outside in a few minutes. He seemed a little more calm, since he was intently listening to the kids sing “The Days of the Week”, but was still sobbing and wiping his nose. When I kissed him on the forehead and started walking away, he ran behind me. That BitchWoman I mentioned in the previous entry was coming in trying to control the other little boy that wouldn’t let his mom leave. She was followed by the new computer teacher. I made a sign to him that Jaylen was quickly running to me and he gently grabbed him and said, “It’s okay buddy, Mom will be back.” That’s all I heard before they closed the door.

I felt a little emotional, but a little more annoyed this morning than the other mornings. I felt so embarrassed. At least the other kids who were crying waited till they at least got into the classroom!

I bought the kids their school shirts and then rushed home. I got here right on time to wake Mario up for work. I told him how frustrated I was and just left the room before I started bawling my eyes out (damn hormones). I’ll try again tomorrow. If it goes the same way Mario’s going to have to drop them off whether he likes it or not.

My legs/pelvis hurt so bad right now from lifting that boy up. I shouldn’t have done that but I had no choice. Man, I really wish tomorrow’s a better day. And I hope he’s not in a mood throughout the day. I have too many things to do (like babysit, clean and finish painting) to be making sure he stays in time out.