Dinner

I've been working a lot at the under-construction-house. Up until yesterday, my sister had been here for the last two weeks. With her at my house to watch the kids, I would leave every morning at about 7 or 8 and work until 5, 6, or 7 with twenty minute breaks here and there to go home and nurse Rose.

I'm still working at the house, but without Karlee here, I'm getting significantly less accomplished. Today I went to the house with all four children, their bikes, a pack of bubbles, some balloons, lots of food, cookies, and Capri Suns. I was hoping to get four cabinets done. Since I average 2 per hour, uninterrupted, I felt like this was a totally achievable goal. Two hours. Doable. And yet, not. It was a massive failure. (You could see that coming, right?)

Rose needed to be fed (twice). Claire stubbed her toe and bled all over the clean but as yet unsealed stone floors. Weston took off his shoes and got stickers (burrs?) in his feet and so had to be retrieved and carried back to the house and comforted. Rose was hot and bored and began screaming her lungs tired from her baby carrier. The neighbor kids wanted our kids to come play with them (which required me meeting their grandparents, of course). Grace fell off her bike and scraped her elbow and hip. And then my drill died. I got exactly one cabinet assembled. Count it--yes, ONE.

It's hard convincing the kids that I'm doing this for them--that this exhausting parental neglect will actually result in bedrooms and a yard to play in and a kitchen big enough for them to help me cook in.

Perspective. They don't have it. And so I feel guilty for being Worst Mother of Summer 2013. I haven't made dinner in two weeks. Haven't folded laundry. Haven't even gone grocery shopping in a month. A. Month. People.

So today, I'm scouring for something to make for dinner without having to drag four munchkins through Walmart. And all I can come up with is bread machine white bread with honey butter. And green beans. I am not kidding. This is what I feed my children.

Turns out that my kids have never eaten so much of one of my dinners as they did tonight. Can't really decide whether that's because I'm starving them or because they actually liked it. But they did fight over the last of the green beans. And so in my current life-season of haggardness and insanity, I am totally counting tonight's measly snack as a hands down motherhood success. Yay for me. Maybe tomorrow I'll defrost some chicken or something.