My Temporary Mantra: This too shall pass!

We are on day 6 of Aaron's new work schedule. He leaves here at 2:30 pm and arrives home around 5am. He sleeps from 5 until 11:30 am. This gives him enough time to eat lunch, take a shower, say 3 sentences to all of us, and get ready to go back to work again! It never ends -- there's no weekend, no days off. This should end somewhere between the 21st and 26th of March but it's only the 8th (I think!). Things are hard here. The kids are extra rambunctious and I am extra tired. I can't get a thing completed except run the dishwasher! On top of our home being a wreck, I have to keep them away from Aaron when he's sleeping, not so easy when they can open the door to the bedroom and if I block off the stairway, there's major Ethan fit throwing (if you know Ethan, then you know he can be SUPER loud and doesn't give up EVER). Today I decided by 8:30am that they needed to leave the house. So even though I never done this before I took all 4 kids to Walmart. My first shopping experience with all of them and I must say they did pretty well. They were loose because I can't pull that wagon and push a cart with Reese in the carseat and I can't just carry her carseat because somehow her 10+ pounds feels like 50 after about 5 minutes. We only had a few problems and I didn't lose any of them. I even ventured over to the toys and let them "look" for a while. Our kids are really good about looking and holding the toys and not thinking they are getting to buy them. We hardly ever buy them any except at birthday and Christmas and they pretty much accept that. The end of the trip got hairy but we were there about 1-1/2 hours and I'm pretty sure all of Walmart broke out in applause after the crazy mom (who forgot to comb her hair) and her 4 rugrats left the building.

I'm not so physically tired as I am mentally exhausted from no breaks from them. It seems like as soon as they are in bed, I start feeling the need to go there myself so I have no "me" time. Boy, do I realize just how important that "me" time is. My house being so messy exhausts me too. I start to pick up but then there's 3 people behind me undoing my work!

On top of all this I feel the need to say I HATE TIME CHANGES! Every time I hear it mentioned on TV or the radio the people are so positive about it and it makes me want to shake them. "It will give us so much more daylight time . . ." WHATEVER they must not have little kids! It plays havoc with their schedule. I know you're thinking everything will just happen an hour later for them . . . WRONG somehow it goes an hour the opposite way you think and then they are all messed up and I'm all messed up. Like tomorrow I will think they will be getting up at 8am the new time but really they will get up at 6am the new time which is really 5am the old time! Maybe I should be like Kramer in that episode of Seinfeld and say I'm not changing my clocks . . . of course this could cause a problem when the rest of world moves an hour ahead huh?

This too shall pass . . . This too shall pass . . . This too shall pass . . .