The Patience Cycle

I think my blog is really feeling mono-thematic lately (the theme being "My Kids are Making me Crazy,") and that is sad. But what can I do? I am stuck in a cycle I call "The Patience Cycle." You see a while back, I prayed for Heavenly Father to help me learn to be more patient. A quick word of advice: Never do that! God has a funny sense of humor about that kind of thing. If you pray for patience, He has a tendency to give you plenty of opportunities to practice it. It's absolutely true. As a mother of five, the two youngest being monkeys and rascals of the highest order, I kind of felt like I'd already had enough situations in which to practice patience! Unfortunately, I fall short every darn day!

Clayton's favorite game right now is "Flood the Kitchen." He literally does this many times a day. You may say to me "Renae, where are you when your child is climbing into the sink and doing these dastardly things?"

To you I say "Many a different places including right there taking him right back out of the sink, only to have him repeatedly climb back up again and again - and I can't get a thing done for pulling him out of the sink. Besides, any parent will tell you that you just can't attach a one year old to your hip or follow him around constantly and expect to ever get anything accomplished. It's totally impractical."

Anyway, the only solution that I've come up with to the "Flood the Kitchen" game is to turn off the water supply to the kitchen sink. The problem with that is that I frequently need to use the water in the kitchen sink. Oh well, it won't be forever. I just hope my cabinet and floor under the sink don't totally rot out before he gets past this stage.

On another similar note, Clayton has also recently discovered the joy of cracking raw eggs. I caught him at it twice yesterday. The second time was particularly bad / ironic / amusing, so I'll tell you about that one. Bruce's grandmother called him yesterday and offered to give him some eggs fresh from her friend's farm. Bruce was all happy about having a dozen and a half "farm fresh eggs" and made a point to open the cartons and show everybody in the family the cool multicolored eggs. In fact he even mentioned that eggs and hash browns sounded like a good thing to have for dinner. Alas, alas, Bruce and I were talking in the other room when we heard the sound of eggs cracking coming from the kitchen. In we both run to find that Justice and Clayton had broken all but one of the new cool eggs. Fortunately, Justice had enough sense to get a big bowl out and crack most of them into it. So Bruce got his wish after all, we had scrambled eggs for dinner last night.

Oddly enough, even though I know that praying for patience is a risky business, I find myself praying for patience enough just to get through another day. It's a cycle. I hope I learn my lesson soon. Huh, that sounds like a REALLY bad thing to ask for. I think I'll just keep that wish to myself!

On a just-so-you-know kind of note, even though my kids tend to drive me up the wall, and I feel like screaming half of the time, and even though I just had to go stop Clayton from playing his other favorite game "Pull Everything Out Of the Cabinet and Dump Cereal All Over the Kitchen" for the second time since starting this post ... despite all of that, I love my little monkeys with all my heart and I thank God EVERYDAY for them and for their health. Clayton just climbed up on the back of my chair and leaned his head around me and said his favorite word "Hellooo" in my face, with a CUTE little smile. Now he's snuggling in my lap. He is a sweetie after all! *contented sigh*