Summer Joy

I'm so over summer already.

Granted, I must admit that swimming in the evening with the kids at my mom's house yesterday was nice. It felt great, the water was warm, and everyone had fun. Swimming this morning at the community pool was pretty enjoyable as well. There's only one problem with swimming though: we can't live in the pool.

Any kind of swimming with the kids wipes me out. I spend much of the time treading water next to K, who with no fear at all heads straight for the deep end of the pool. He wears a float vest, but he still has his moments where one minute he's fine and the next he's swallowing buckets of water and can't breathe. So I have to spend every second around him hypervigilant, as well as keeping an eye on the other three kids to make sure no one is drowning a sibling while I'm not looking. It's an exhausting endeavor.

At some point I have to pack the kids up and head back home to be hot, even in our air conditioned house. Only I'm wiped out from the swimming and just generally exhausted because I'm pregnant. (Unlike some lucky ladies I don't get any special burst of energy during the 2nd trimester. Mostly I just function better because I'm not nauseous.)

See where the "joy" comes in?

Tonight I am especially wiped out, but I just had to tackle two chores that can't be put off any longer-- the laundry and the mending. The laundry is a constant, of course, and since I haven't done any laundry at all since last Thursday, the situation was getting dire. Right now I have mountains of dirty clothes and bedding and towels covering the living room floor. If I'm lucky, I might get a few loads done before bedtime. That only leaves me about eight more to do tomorrow. . . .

As for the mending, I've been putting that off for about five months now. But Terence is down to only one functional uniform, so I had to get to that tonight. Do you know how many times I've had to try and repair his uniforms? I've sewn up so many split crotches that I can't count them. You'd think that by now I'd be a pro, but after surveying tonight's repairs I think I'm still a novice. Good thing Terence doesn't have to pass an academy inspection in these things. He would have essays galore to write as punishment!

Anyway, laundry, mending, cooking dinner and paying bills, plus being hot and exhausted have led to one huge problem:

I am one grumpy woman tonight.

It has been building all day and then just exacerbated by little things-- I pinched my finger in the dryer door, I knocked a cup of water off my desk onto a bunch a stuff that really shouldn't get wet, I have a minor headache creeping on, I had to dress a squirmy toddler who proceeded to kick me right in the stomach. All these are such insignificant things in and of themselves, and yet, I'm at the point where one more thing might make me scream.

I'm putting the kids to bed early tonight. I don't care if it's still light outside. I just hope they cooperate and at least stay in their rooms! No one wants to see a pregnant mommy in full meltdown mode, do they?

UPDATE: Small miracles still occur-- at bedtime I went into the living room to collect my children for family prayer (they had been watching a movie) and found that B and K were fast asleep. No bedtime fights with the younger two! And getting M and J to go to bed was relatively painless-- dealing with only two at a time is so much easier than trying to wrangle four. Hooray for a much needed respite! There was no mommy meltdown last night!