My ridiculous life

I'm beginning to believe that humans weren't designed for 3 children 3 and under. Well, 3 1/2 and under now but either way. Perhaps it's just me who is not designed for it but that would mean there is something wrong with me and I'm tired of beating myself over what is truly a ridiculous life.

When I try to find an analogy that might provide a glimpse into our world, everything falls short. For instance, I picture the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy is working at the chocolate company and is overwhelmed by the chocolate coming down the conveyor belt. I can relate to the sense of things piling up and occurring regardless of my capacity to handle them or not. I can relate to using every part of my body to hold, carry, or work with my babies but I can't relate to the background laughter because it just ain't funny. I can't relate to standing in one spot or having other people there to do part of the work. Finally, I can only imagine that it smelled good at the chocolate company (and thus not like dirty diapers), Lucy had probably had a shower and she was able to at least eat something.

Today, I had a moment that pushed me over into "beat myself up for not being an octopus with eight hands, a spider with a million eye balls, or a vegetable that doesn't react obviously to stressful, external stimuli." In brief, here was the scenario as I described to my hubby moments afterwards (Note: this all occurred within 5-10 minutes at the most):

"neil peed in potty (good). i didn't know he did (not so good). evan found it (bad). evan splashed around in it (very bad). rushed evan and dylan to bath (good). neil found lysol i was going to use to clean up play room (bad). neil sprayed it all over him (very bad). i bathed all 3 boys (good but bad). all three boys soaked me with water (annoying). put babies in neil's room with gate while i finished neil's bath (good). forgot neil had the scrabble game on the floor (bad). evan and dylan found scrabble game (bad). thankfully, other than scaring me to death, they didn't eat any of the pieces they had thrown all over the floor (good)."

To think that after all this ridiculous business, I actually beat myself up over my inability to take this peacefully. Only a zombie would respond calmly to this situation. Seriously, an 18-month old splashing in his brother's pee, a 3.5 year old spraying himself with Lysol, and so forth. Now I'm going to beat myself up for beating myself up. Now, that makes sense.

So, tomorrow will be just as stupid as today and, tomorrow, I'll feel just as incompetent. Perhaps at the end of the day, after the boys have survived the chaos once more, I'll pat myself on the back for a damn change and take heart that they're getting one day closer to being bigger boys and maybe, just maybe, our lives will be a little calmer and a little less ridiculous.

I can only hope.