Rehash, Review and Redo...

I just couldn't come back here to complete even a single thought for over a year! Life is no fun when it is that chaotic. Colin's blessed arrival after such a traumatic beginning to my pregnancy with him brought some relief, but I have yet to recover physically and emotionally... I am tired. In my bones, in my mind... and sometimes in my heart. At the end of each day I either go to bed with the attitude of "Thank god this day is over...." or "Tomorrow maybe things will go better..." Rarely it is with a "Can't wait for tomorrow!!". I think I just need a serious amount of rest and rejuvination.

Parenting four is rather difficult. Managing such a wide age range leaves me feeling like I am not addressing everyone's needs like I should. I am constantly disappointing other family members by being late to practically everything. I feel the disapproving looks of others who visit our messy house. I have not been able to progress beyond the bare-minimum-survival mode that you go into when a newborn comes home. This is sounding depressing and pissy doesn't it?? I am coming off of a pretty bad trip to OKC and I know it is still affecting my mood. Nothing in particular about the trip was bad - we enjoyed visiting with family and friends. There were no direct incidents to speak of... it was just an general over-all feeling that I got. I feel like our kids just go nuts with behavioral issues whenever we are away from home. We enter a restaurant/home and three little tornados break free and wreak total havoc. I know I am exaggerating, and that my perception is way more acute than the average bystander, but I feel like we are totally out of control when we are on the go. It is impossible to impose any kind of schedule, so naps and meals happen more by accident than design. We also had a ridiculus amount of holiday shopping to do, so we spent waaay to much time in the car. The drive back to Colorado was just as bad. There is nothing like 6 loud, screaming voices in one little mini-van, all trying to be heard at once. That is when I feel the worst. I sit back and think to myself - "This is absolute craziness?!!?" I make it a general rule to avoid families that behave like that!

Bouncing back from a change in family dynamics is a constant process. Especially when it is a new baby. They constantly change the rules as they grow. Just as you get some semblance of a routine down - they develop new capabilities and the game instantly changes. Colin's progression of growth of course has been bittersweet because he is the baby (the last baby), and so each new change makes me feel sad. My post-partum emotional turbulence has been at its most extreme with this third and final pregnancy. There were some dark, dark days in the early months after he was born. Not the do-your-child-harm kind of darkness, but more of a do-myself-harm kind of darkness. It never got to the point where I was thinking seriously of doing anything, it was more of a constant emotional battery that I would put myself through. I was continually feeding myself self-hate messages of failure on a daily, if not hourly basis. I've improved some, but I still go through bouts of 'I am not the mother/wife/daughter that I can and should be'. way of thinking. It is at its worst when I am just flat-out tired and stressed.

2010 was a very good year for us, so I am thankful for that. Otherwise, I think my emotional downward spiral could have been worse. Of course there was the arrival of Colin on February 5th. He is such an easy-going baby. We needed that after the sheer hell that Owen put us through during his infancy. Dean's work continued to stay secure which in turn makes the family feel financially secure. We focused on having fun together as a family. We took a ski trip in mid-April, and Rylan learned to ski. We took a long road trip in the fall through the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. It was actually a good road trip and we great fun visiting the beach, New Orleans and points along the Mississippi River. Then Colin got mobile, and road trips are no longer fun. I don't think we are going to plan on doing one this coming year. Maybe just something close, within the state of Colorado. We also got the kids enrolled in Ken-po Karate this November. Jordan and Rylan have earned their white belts so far. I have zero familiarity with Karate, but I am really happy that the kids are taking to it so well. I think the mind-and-body link of Karate will serve them well throughout their lives.

The toughest defeat this year has been how much schooling has been side-lined. I lay out plans and have the best intentions, but all is lost within a very short time. The enemy seems to be a lack of a predictable schedule for the better part of a year. That is such a mainstay to surviving in a household with two individuals with ADHD. Jordan has made minimal progress with regulating himself - he is less apt to completely lose self-control has he could do in the past, but there is next to no change in his ability to remember to stick to a process. We continue to have to give single-step directions because he can't manage anything beyond that. Even with daily checklists posted in a prominent place for him to follow through with - he does not refer to them. Ever. Niether do I - which is why the failure is mostly mine, not his. At the beginning of the school year, I had made the decision to go to a year-round schedule. Three weeks on, one week off. Of course the 6 week OK summer visit totally messes up that plan, but I did it anyway. The idea was to schedule all appts during that week that we had off, because appts. always mess up the day. It worked for the first two weeks. Then we lost it... Jordan started seeing a psychiatrist, got on a very good medication routine, but it required several appts in Loveland. Then we got him into counseling. In Loveland. Colin had SEVERAL Dr. appts due to failure-to-thrive issues. Then we started Karate - 5X/Week trips to Loveland. The last time we had a 'normal' school day was October. Maybe we should move to Loveland?? My last move was to change up a little how we go about schooling in order to minimize gaps in conceptual knowledge. Bring in a little Core Knowledge, take on the next chunk of history in CTM...a fair chunk of $$$ was plopped down to purchase what we needed, yet it remains untouched. Again - failure.....

So there is the rehash, review and redo. I promised myself that I would get the following items accomplished this year (2010)
* create a family closet (a post explaining the process is forth-coming) DONE
* create a master 52 week cleaning schedule (completed through week 13)
* create a master 52 week recipe/menu/shopping list plan (completed 2 weeks worth)
* create a master daily schedule for each child so that I can make sure I am meeting the daily minimum of their educational needs. This is constantly a work in progress. I abandoned the daily schedule that I had created in the past for Jordan because he could never complete it. There was too much and he just couldn't stay on task. Now that we have reached an optimal balance of medication and counseling, I think we can revise this and make it work.

That is the motto for the upcoming year: Revise and make it work.

Happy New Year!