Nothing special...which makes it special

I took these photos a couple of months ago.  It wasn't a birthday.  It wasn't a holiday.  It wasn't an original location or first-day-of-anything or last-day-of-something or even a Saturday.

It was just an ordinary day.  Evening I think, since Cooper (at six years old) is always lobbying to sleep in the top bunk.  I didn't even crop or edit these pictures; I kind of didn't know what to do with them.

But now I know: I'm taking more pictures like them.  They're a reminder that I need to take more photos of the ordinary times.  The special occasions...of course I have a lot of shots of those.  The day-to-day stuff?  Not so much...not since they've gotten a little older and in school.  Seems like school and all its activities have crowded out the routine but special time I used to have so much of with the boys.  At least this time of year...

So here's to more of the ordinary.  And Cooper getting to the top bunk someday.

If an apology falls on deaf ears, do you still have to apologize?

So yesterday morning when I got the boys up I thought I'd try apologizing for acting the way I did the night before.  I wanted to tell them it's hard to have a lot of patience all the time and that at the end of the day that patience gets thinner and thinner and when I have to do tasks I really dislike it puts me in a rotten mood and I took it out on them but also Cooper you shouldn't have hit your brother but I shouldn't have reacted like that and I'm soooo sorry.

Yes, I really wanted to say all that, but I knew they would just stare at me and probably at the end of my diatribe they would just say "okay."

So I decided to take an easier, less dramatic route.  I waited until they were a few bites into their breakfast and then I said "sorry I was such a crab last night.  You get double goodnight kisses tonight."

Chewing their waffles, they looked up at me and Cooper says "okay."  I don't think Carson looked up.

Seriously, are apologies to my kids more for me than for them?  Do they really care?

I did feel better having said it to them, and maybe in ten years they'll remember their mom wasn't too good to tell them I'm sorry.

But just in case they never remember that, I showed up at the school to have lunch with them.  Maybe they'll never understand why I was there on that day, but for whatever reason they make a big deal about it when I surprise them at lunchtime.  And that's just fine with me...

One of those nights...

Who knows why I'm choosing such a crappy night to turn to you, neglected blog readers (if there's any of you still out there).  But tonight, for whatever reason, I feel compelled...

It was a busy night here: we got home from soccer and eating dinner out at 7:15.  Not insanely late but still late, considering the boys' bedtime is 8:00 on a school night and I am a major scrooge about varying from it even a little.

So when we walked in the door I realized...and nearly turned back around and walked out...that I'd forgotten to get clean sheets on all our beds.  The boys' BUNKBEDS were already stripped of their bedding or I'd have put off this horrible task yet another day.  So I started my barking at them to begin their bath while I tackled the beds.

And our bed was jacked up, too.  For some reason there was gigantic hole in the bottom sheet where my feet go.  Maybe I desperately need a pedicure or something, but with each passing night the hole ripped further and further until it got about two feet (no pun intended) wide.

So every bed in our house needed changing, on a school night with baths still ahead of us at 7:30 p.m.

That's a lot of not-needed detail just to say that wrestling with it all just put me in a foul mood.  Bunkbeds have their place in life, I suppose, but OH MY.  Changing the sheets on those things ranks right up there with dental work.

And since the clock was ticking toward bedtime I got to parent (i.e., yell) from afar to the boys to hurry up with their baths and teeth-brushing.  That's fun.

Dwayne was in the house, in case you're wondering.  And he did show up in their bedroom to help.  But he's just not as, shall we say, enthusiastic about keeping bedtime on time as I am.  I tell him all the time if he was the one who had to drag them awake every morning, he'd make sure they got to bed on time.

So finally the task of clean sheets was done and the boys were momentarily alone in their room, and I hear a "whap!"

The sound of Cooper's hand hitting some part of Carson.

So given the mood I was in and the late hour and whatever else had been piling up in my mind...I totally went off on him and yelled until the chandelier rattled (okay, if we had a chandelier it would have rattled).  I made him apologize to Carson and then put them both in bed without saying goodnight or prayers or reading a story or even giving a kiss.

I went in the living room, got the remote, and for one hour I polluted my mind with Kim Kardashian's wedding special.

See, you'd feel like crap, too.

I think Dwayne went in to the boys and tried to smooth things over for me, but I didn't get a chance to ask him because he, too, went straight to bed.  Asleep.

So looks like, at this moment, I've hurt the feelings of everyone in this house.

Right now I really just want to go wake everyone up and tell them I'm sorry.  But I know all these men, and I believe they all like their sleep more than hearing me grovel.

I suppose I've done the crime; tomorrow I'll have to do the time.  I don't really know what I can do to make it up to everyone.  Frankly, I think the boys will forget about it pretty quickly and move on.  Probably the more I say about it, the more they'll just be like "okay, Mom.  Can we have fruit snacks in our lunch?"

Tonight, though, I think some prayers for patience are in order...