I took these pictures tonight after dinner. Sweet sisters reading together and everyone is happy. Life looks peaceful and easy. I treasure these moments and take lots of pictures of them. They are part of our reality but they're not all of our reality.
Take for instance this picture that I took about 3 minutes before the previous ones.
Emmie's face says it all. Emmie was sitting in Ellie's seat finishing Ellie's hot dog. Franklin was trying to get any scraps he could. I had just finished moving Ellie from crawling over Ruthie and finally got them settled with a book and Ruthie had let me put her down for the first time all afternoon. (The only reason we actually had dinner was because of the Moby wrap...thank you Kira Stokes!)
And the hour before the picture. That was a hard hour. Ruthie had finally fallen asleep in my arms and the girls were playing upstairs and I hard a loud crash followed by a crying child and another child crying that they don't want a spanking. Always a bad sign when they know they're in trouble before I've gotten up there. Apparently Ellie was climbing on their play kitchen and it fell over onto Emmie's finger. We rounded up the boo bunny, cleaned up the mess upstairs amidst lots of tears, I sent them outside to play where they promptly got in a fight over the play lawn mower, cue more tears and yelling, and then me making them come in causing even more tears. (Aren't you glad I didn't take any pictures of that!)
There isn't a picture of my jubilation when I managed to get all three sleeping girls in from the car without waking them and my devastation when, as I went to lay down, all three woke up. sigh.
There isn't a picture (although I'm sure it would be an entertaining one) of us at the zoo today. My bright idea to hit the zoo right after I picked Emmie up from school. Apparently there are lots of counties around us on spring break this week and they, along with every elementary school in the state, decided to go to the zoo today. sigh. I was reminded of why we always go to the zoo first thing in the morning. Poor Ruthie was so overwhelmed and overstimulated that she wanted me to hold her. the whole time. sigh. So I held her and pushed the stroller and followed after my, fortunately, very well behaved older girls.
Then there was our slightly funny moment today when I went to pick Emmie up from school thinking they had early dismissal. They didn't. I was an hour early. My mom was so proud. (She was the parent who was in line to pick up as soon as she dropped off...first in line every time.) I couldn't figure out how I had messed this up...I KNEW I had read that there was early dismissal. Turns out it wasn't on the calendar but was in the classroom newsletter. Really I was just glad I wasn't going crazy. So we ran home so I could feed Ruthie and get lunches together for the girls to eat on the way to the zoo. By the time we got back I was about 4 people from the end of the line. My mother was no longer proud! Lol!
And there wasn't a picture of me up twice last night with a baby who stopped sleeping through the night this week. Really hoping it's just a growth spurt (she certainly acts like she's starving!).
Today was a crazy day but not that much crazier than a normal day but you know what? Even though I'm sitting on the couch exhausted beyond belief, wondering why in the world the big girls are still awake in their room at 9:30, I wouldn't trade this life for anything (although I might wish away the moment when all three girls were crying at the same time). It's wild and crazy and exhausting but it's our little family's crazy.
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