Stressed!

Just had to update you. I know, I know, I've been teh suxxorz with blogging, but I swear I've been soooooooo busy ...

1) Evil Genius Husband stepped on a huge nail in the barnyard and has been out of commission for ages. It's been so bad that I've been having to open it up every day and drain the CRAP out of the wound. Ya know ... eeeeewww.
I would have taken pics for you, but, yark city. Really.

The good news is that he's on the mend ("I got better!") and just in time to return to work yesterday. Not that he was excited about that. Run over to his blog and encourage him to share.


I've also been having to do ALL of the chores, all of the off-farm running about, plus the babies, and the household, wifey, laundry-cooking-cleaning stuff (plus working on my stores, natch, and my new Squidoo lens).


2) Fiver is teething, transitioning into his crib (in the room with Boy and Bulk) for naps, and getting weaned off of his one night-time bottle. Fun stuff!


3) The new pup, Roy, is doing well, getting huge (his front paws are a big as my wooden cooking spoons!), getting crate trained, and generally being a red, fluffy terror. Pics soon!


4) Boy is starting school for the first time next Thursday. He is v. excited and i am a wreck. We had our first experience with the school yesterday. I'm sure to fire up this blog with ongoing comments. Last night was a nightmare of inefficiency.

5) I survived a mini family reunion in which The Brood went into an in-ground pool for the first time ever.

It's a wee bit maddening how some folks don't comprehend the logistics of having 5 children under the age of 6 and often view your nervousness as a laughable overreaction.

They have one child or two children who are often spaced apart by 2 or more years or are older and they simply cannot understand why I'm so paranoid about common things like: paddling in the surf, crossing a busy road, or going into a pool.

Well, picture it. We're at the seaside. Only counting mine, there are 4 children, none of whom can swim, all capable of walking right out into the ocean. Or wandering up the beach. Or back over the dunes out into the road.

Next time you go to a petting zoo or a farm, pick out four chickens and see how long you can keep an eye on all four as they wander in every direction, LOL!

The swimming thing is particularly stressful for me. You cannot just explain to a four-year-old that the pool has a sharp drop-off and she will go in over her head and be unable to breathe. If she's never been in water deeper than a bathtub before she will not comprehend.

Add to the mix a three-year-old and a two-year-old, both eager to be in the water (and my five month old inside the house where there were people I didn't know) and my stress levels were stratospheric.*

All in all it was a wonderful time, though, really. The babes had a ball and now that they've been in the pool and 'get' what's going on, I feel much more comfortable about doing it again. Incidentally, of the women there with kids, no one attempted to parent my children (though one got in a few grandmotherly zings in my direction, lol).

I question whether this was incidental, a matter of personalities, or whether they really DID do things but I was either too distracted or more forgiving because most of these people were related to my children (of the 3 other moms, two are blood relatives of my kids and one is the mother of a blood relative. In the other situation, only two of the four were any relation.)

Speaking of something that might possibly be my perception, let me ask you this: the only two kids close in age to mine were a boy and a girl, both a few years older than Boy. Both seemed to be very physical in playing with my kids. The girl, quite literally, carried THCTD around and sat her almost the entire time on her lap like a great doll. THCTD was perfectly happy (though, clearly somewhat confused) because she's a touchy-feely-lovey sort.

Boy, however, was nonplussed and at one point really upset by how rough the other boy was. The child kept grabbing Boy and shoving him, running up to him, running into him, etc. He knocked him down (accidentally) at least twice that I saw.

The child wasn't being ugly at all, he was just really exuberant. My kids are pretty physical - the boys and the girls -, tearing about the house, wrestling and playing, (but grabbing and shoving are absolutely verboten), so I chalked it up to this kid being so much bigger than Boy. All of mine are close to the same size and so, better matched.

Opinions?

*I am not, by the way, overly worried that one of my children will drown. Despite not being seen in swimwear in over 10 years, I am a superb swimmer and have no compunction whatsoever about going into water fully clothed, with all the grace of a breaching humpback cow, if one of my calves goes under.