Wake up Call

I hear a rustling outside my bedroom door.  I look at my clock; 6:55am.  I groan and roll over.  I guess no one told my four year old that it is possible to sleep in once in a while.  My dream is to sleep in until 8:00am.  The door opens slightly and I see a smiling face peek through the crack.  My son pushes the door open and I see the cause of his excitement.  In his hands is a cookie sheet.  I can't help but smile as he walks slowly toward me trying to keep food from rolling off the tray.  He is so proud of himself as he displays the breakfast he has prepared for me; a peach and a tomato.  This is one of those moments that make motherhood all worth it.  I thank him and tell him how much I love him.  He opens his mouth to speak those words I have been waiting to hear, "I'll go get you a knife."  He darts from the room.  The race is on.  I fly out of bed knowing I have 0.3 seconds to get to the kitchen.  The day is off to an exciting start.

Numbers

Baths my son has had today:  3
Fecal smearing incidents I have cleaned up today: 3
Times my son has thrown up from the stress of losing his favorite toy: 1
Loads of laundry I have done today: 3
Loads of laundry still needing to be done: 5
Temptations to runaway from home today: 10
Times I have been forced back to reality: 30

Spring Cleaning

It is officially summer and we spent the week swimming.....in our basement.  It is great.  You don't have to worry about the kids getting sunburned.  Actually, our recent flooding got cleaned up rather quickly thanks to some close family members and men from our church that spent an evening trudging up and down our stairs.  My husband is now home again, and I put him right to work sorting the basement, a project we have been working on for the past three years.  In penance for being absent during the flooding he did not hesitate to comply with my new list of chores.  We already have about twenty large garbage bags in our garage waiting to be donated to the local thrift store and we are only about halfway done.  This flood finally gave us enough reason to clean out the past eleven years of hording.  My husband says that maybe the flood was a blessing in disguise.  Easy for him to say, he didn't have to wade through the lake!  In all fairness, he is now up to his waist in junk.

God's Humor

God must be somewhat bored.  I think he is sitting up in heaven contemplating ways to push my buttons.  I think he finds it funny.  For example, my husband is away this week helping a friend move across country.  This situation was somewhat stressful for me after having just been gone myself for two weeks.  My autistic son's therapy caused quite a bit of anxiety for him and he is just starting to recover from the stress of it all.  Add on that the very restrictive diet that he, my other sons and myself have been put on, and I have been a picture of mental health this week.  So I decided to join my family at grandpa's house for memorial weekend for a little fun.  The weekend went great until the last day when my son started freaking out over food that he was not allowed to eat.  His stress level went through the roof and therefore so did mine.  I whisked my children away to return to our own home only to find that he was even more upset that we left grandma's house.  He began screaming when he recognised our exit.  Apparently, he had thought we were just going on a three hour joy ride.  The screaming continued for an hour.  The boy's bedtime was moved forward to 6:00pm that night, because by then I was done.  I had a bit of an emotional breakdown at this point and practically begged God to give me a break because I couldn't take any more.  This is where God's sense of humor kicked in.  He decided to prove me wrong.  At 9:30pm I stepped off the last step of my basement stairs to find myself wading in three inches of water.  The entire basement was completely covered.  My husband and had I talked about getting a swimming pool this summer, but the basement wasn't my first choice of location.