Amy J. Bennett

Extraordinary Faith for Everyday Life

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Mommying is hard

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This evening has been rough.  The girls came home completely sugared up and that means INSANE.  I have stuck to my guns on the no sugar this week..usually only one thing out of the day they have gotten.  So today when they got filled up with Sprite, tea and jelly beans they could barely contain themselves.  Which meant I could barely contain myself.  I think a few times you might have seen steam coming out of my ears.  I tried to take them to the grocery store and Lexi wouldn’t get in the cart so she was hanging off the side and then when she wanted down, she ran 3 aisles away from me.  Then when we got to the check-out she knocked some displays over.  Oh, and forgot to mention the display she knocked over in the bacon.  I was about to lose my mind just after those 5 little minutes.  And then they asked for a cookie!  I think not!

When we get home they don’t eat well and won’t listen.  I put them to bed early partly because we have church and partly because I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I tell Lexi if they continue to play in bed like they usually do, she’s going to have to sleep in her room/playroom in a sleeping bag.  She’s so wild in bed I follow through with it.  They both calm down and I let Lexi back with Emma and they finally go to sleep after a few trips out to the kitchen to see me and/or get a tissue.

And then all the mommy guilt hits me.  I wasn’t patient enough, I wasn’t strict enough, I was too strict, how could I not enjoy my children, why was I spending time making casserole for Sunday School when I didn’t even cook for my family all day, would I be a bad mother if I insisted no one give them sugar?  Round and round I’ve gone all evening.   And it’s just, I don’t know.  This mommying thing is hard, ya’ll.

Potty Training is a Magic Trick – Warning lots of potty talk

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Yes, I’m beginning to believe potty training is a magic trick, an illusion of the mind where it appears to work for everyone else and yet when I try said illusioin at my house, it is nothing but a failure, full of dirty panties, wet beds, too many wipes, stressed kids and a disappointed and almost angry mother.

Potty training went so well a few months ago.  Emma finally had given up going #2 and was completely trained while Lexi quickly caught on to peeing in the potty yet found that pooping in the same place was unacceptable and continued to do so in her panties.  Fine.  I could clean panties if that’s the only thing I had to do.

But now, Emma has wet the bed two nights in the past week and has suddenly went #2 in her panties again.  I know it was partly my fault for getting lax on her um, laxative but still.  If the girl has to go, she’s old enough to make it to the potty.

So between cleaning Lexi’s panties and Emma’s several times a day and then Emma wetting the bed last night again at 2:30 and causing me to sleep on the couch for most of the night because they were all sent to my bed with Scott, I’m not a happy camper about this whole potty training thing.

I’M JUST TOO BUSY

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Last night was great no doubt.  D&M and Heather were over for the big season premiere.  I blogged my little fingers off and everyone was great and helped me out if I missed something.  My stats are way up and I hope it continues to increase.  But I’m still not making squat off of it but my Internet friend Allison is helping me out.  When there’s not much return, it’s just not worth my time away from my family.  And believe me, it’s taking so much time.  And there’s so much more I could do with it. 

And then there’s regular work and church and the kids and the 90 days thing and blogging and couponing and other stuff I want to do and I’M JUST TOO BUSY.  I don’t know what, if anything, I’m going to do about it.  Right now I’m just frustrated and really don’t want to give anything up.  Bleh.

What is with our school principals?

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I have to rant for a minute.  Two incidents recently have got me questioning what goes on in our schools lately.

The first was with our pastor.  He goes to eat lunch with his middle school aged child every week.  One of her friends who had visited their house multiple times began swearing at his daughter repeatedly at school.  On one of his visits, he sat down with the girl and asked her not to swear anymore and that he would have a conversation with her father.  Well, the girl got mad and went and told the principal.  A few days later then principal called our pastor and his wife into his office and told him he could not ask anyone to quit swearing and he may be asked to quit eating lunch with his daughter.  Like, what the…why is it a pastor can not tell a middle schooler not to swear?  It should have been the girl’s parents sat down in that office and given a talkin to for swearing AND disrespecting an elder and pastor to boot.

Tonight I just found out that one of Scott’s best childhood friends who is a police officer that works as a school resource officer was asked to leave the school.  He walked in on a high school kid writing on the bathroom wall and tried to convince him to leave.  The kid started yelling, telling him to F off and then swung at Scott’s friend who then took him to the ground and handcuffed him.  The kid’s friends then come in and start to try to fight Scott’s friend and then he gets his Tazor out threatening to taze them.  The principal walks in and tries to blame it all on him and asks for him to be reassigned.  OK, exactly what is he supposed to do with a bunch of high school kids trying to beat him up and why is it that they have a resource officer if they don’t want him to handle situations in the way he was trained?

These were at different schools but it sure seems like parents and authority figures have a lot less pull with principals than the students do these days.  Am I overreacting? Are these isolated incidents?  I don’t have kids in school so I don’t know what it’s like since about 10 years ago.

Sunday School Teacher Vents

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I have to say Sunday mornings have been quite draining for me lately.  I work hard to make Sunday School good.  I feel especially pressured since there is no youth pastor.  I want something consistent, something exciting, something deep, something they like coming to.

But there is one girl in my class who just doesn’t get it.  She professes to be a Christian and yet seems intent on bucking the system.  She’s so needy emotionally it’s not funny so she does everything imaginable to put all the attention on herself.  She comes in late, leaves early, makes mean comments to the other kids, gets angry easily, throws papers down, pouts.  And really, most of that happened just this morning.  I don’t even get mad at her, I just get so let down.  I feel like my words are bouncing off a brick wall never to be seen again.  Some of the kids will comment if a week is good like today but then there’s that one.  The one who wasn’t listening and could have cared less.  She’s so wrapped up in her world that she doesn’t care to respect me or the class or even her peers.

At the end of class, I just have this disappointed look on my face and slowly gather all my belongings and really just want to lay down and pout instead of heading up to choir to sing.  It’s just so emotionally draining.  To give myself…all the way to my core to try to help someone else just for them to basically laugh at it.  It hurts some I guess.  But really it just makes me sad.  Some for me but mostly for her.  All I can think about ironically is the verse from Sunday School today…

Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

But as for me,

2 Timothy 4:5 But you, keep your head…endure hardship, do the work…discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Target Complaint

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I heart Target.  Seriously.  I can’t remember the last time I was at Wally World and I’m perfectly fine with that.  But today I was very unhappy with them.  The girls got several gifts for the birthday that were exact duplicates for what they already have and then a few that were too old for them.  So I decided to take some stuff back.  This was during the potty training excursion today so I thought I would use the money to pay for all that stuff.  I had over $40 in toys to take back.  But get this.  The lady tells me since I had no receipt, the rule is that you can only use your driver’s license two times and each visit can only be up to $20.  Well, apparently I have used up my limit this year and they wouldn’t let me take back a single thing.

Fabulous.

And two of those toys are exclusive to Target and they’re the ones we have exact duplicates of.

I don’t understand the reasoning for these rules and I don’t like them.  If it’s obvious the stuff was bought at Target, they should take it back.  No matter what.

So now I don’t know what to do with my stuff.  My choices at this point are donate them to one of our families this year for the angel tree, sell on ebay, sell at work or re-gift this year to someone that wasn’t at the birthday party which will be hard since just about everyone we give gifts to were there.

So that is strike 1 against Target and it’s a big one.  Sorry, Tar-jay.  I still heart you.

And this would be a great opportunity to tell you Jaynee is giving away a gift card from there.  So go comment and good luck.  I think 😉

Better Day

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I can tell today will be a better day.  Last night I decided to record The Bachelor, take some Unisom and go to bed.  Since Lexi had gone to sleep at 7:30 last night on the way home from Target she was up around 6:30 this morning.  Thankfully she just laid in bed with me and didn’t want up to play.  But we did end up getting out of bed earlier than yesterday and since I had taken a bath last night, I was able to actually get my hair, make-up and clean clothes on–no that does not happen every day.  I even put heels on with my jeans just so I felt "done".  I hate when experts are right but it’s true that Mom needs to take care of herself before she can take care of anyone else.  I just feel better this morning simply from getting up a little earlier and getting ready.

I was walking around the house today and thinking about all I did yesterday–without speaking to a single adult face to face and without a shower or clean clothes on.  No wonder I had a bad day…

  • Cooked all three meals plus provided snacks
  • Changed out the dishwasher
  • Washed ALL of my pots and pans
  • Cleaned the entire play room.  And it was A MESS
  • Wrote two paid posts plus my regular posts
  • Worked 6 hours
  • Drove the kids to and from school
  • Went to CVS and Walgreens
  • Ran errands with the kids to the bank, grocery store and cleaners
  • Went to Target and got Lexi’s Halloween costume
  • Gave Emma a bath
  • Did a Beth Moore bible study
  • Took a shower – yes, this counts as a task

Yes, I know, wah, wah, me.  I’m a Mommy and ALL mommys have a long list of things they do every day.  That doesn’t make it easy…

But enough complaining.  Today will be better.

Catching up

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This week has been intensely insane.

Monday was our first bible study.  I felt very prepared when I was there and it went very smoothly.  All the girls and leaders seemed to have good reviews afterwards.  There is one girl who has, uh, issues and it might be interesting to see how that plays out. 

So Tuesday I had something to do but I can’t think of what I did.  Wednesday was the Parents dinner for the youth so I spent the whole afternoon and evening at the church.  Thursday we did grocery shopping and went to Cracker Barrel with Mom and Dad before Mom and Heather left for Colorado.  And Friday.  Oh lovely Friday.  I worked that morning and then left for work at 3:45 to do an implementation.  I didn’t get home at 11:15 that night.  Then sporadically worked until 5 on Saturday.  In between, I went to see E in the hospital nursery and cleaned the house.  Sunday was church and I took a nap in between church.  I was up again at 6 this morning working when my pager went off multiple times.  We have one more job today that runs at 5 that I need to verify.  Hopefully it will not interfere with bible study tonight. 

I feel a little less prepared for tonight’s bible study than last week.  I’ve just been so busy with work that I haven’t had much time to prepare.  I barely got through Sunday School on Sunday.  Scott was there so he could help fill in some gaps a little.  Or at least make me feel like I wasn’t a dork trying to teach by myself.

Pretty much, I’m exhausted.  And we’re not nearly done with stuff at work.  Bible study is another 6 weeks and of course Sunday School is the entire church year.  I was thinking about entering some stuff in a Consignment sale this weekend but I just don’t want to add anything to my list of stuff to do.  I really love studying for bible study and Sunday school and working on the youth group’s web site.  If that’s all I had to do (except of course raising two children) and not have to work professionally, I think I would be set.  Except of course those little things called bills.  Oh well, here I go complaining again about such a wonderful job I have and I don’t want to, I just am feeling a little overwhelmed right now.