harness the wind

if the winds of fortune are temporarily blowing against you, remember that you can harness them and make them carry you toward your definite purpose, through the use of your imagination.- napoleon hill

and the winds were blowing strong at my house this past saturday. most days i do pretty well. not saturday. saturday had me in tears...a few times. before 8 AM that day... ryder bit sky for sitting in his seat sky wouldn't stop whining ryder wouldn't stop throwing fits (the jumping up and down, drive-you-crazy kind of fits) the little ones wouldn't stop arguing i spilled my cup of coffee everywhere i stepped in a pile of dog crap i kept thinking about having to mow the lawn that should have been mowed the previous week the house was a mess and the laundry seemed to have learned to procreate on its own.

while being a temporary single mom, i surely had temporarily lost control of my household and my kids. thank goodness that a birthday party was in the plans and my friend had offered to take my little ones there, with her kids (have i mentioned how much i cherish my friends). so the little ones left and kiele and i spent time together working on the yard. believe it or not, we actually enjoyed it. she and i. alone. sharing time and working as a team, to cover the chores that steve previously claimed as his. and by the time the little ones returned, after a full day of playing with friends, everyone was back to normal--well-behaved and happy.

i can't really explain what had happened saturday morning. i typically pride myself in having well-behaved kids and i was at a loss as to why they were behaving so badly that morning. but my thought is that it's part of the adjustment of daddy being gone. we had skyped with steve friday evening and maybe that factored into the little ones acting out saturday morning. maybe they were sad? or angry? angry that daddy is gone and they don't have the words to express their feelings. or maybe they were just testing? i don't know. i just don't know.

the military tries to prepare us for the deployment with meetings, presentations, pamphlets, resources, etc. but i'm not sure anyone ever fully could. especially the kids. seven months without daddy is simply damn difficult...and no one can prepare a three and five year old for that. no matter how hard i or anyone else tries.

sunday was a better day.