frustrating

I want to be a good mom.  I want my kids to be happy and healthy at all times.  I know I don't always make the best choices, but I'm trying.  Sometimes it's happiness over propriety or a bit of experimentation.  With my two- pretty much everything's an experiment for now.  (I got some looks for letting Gracie taste a snow cone yesterday.  She liked it.  Josiah had already been given sweet tea by her age...)

But just trying to keep them happy is hard.  Josiah goes off on moods where nothing works, and I just have to throw my hands up and walk away or try and try again with new approaches to the problem.  And when he's not feeling well, he has trouble expressing what's bothering him.  Not just for illnesses, but pretty much anything.  He falls back on quotes or makes up really convoluted 'reasons' for things.  He's extremely loopy today, and I'm not certain why.  It could be that we took a different vehicle to school, a change in the 'normal' schedule today, Saturday's BBQ, the last week of school... or any number of seemingly innocuous things.  I spend so much time each day trying to figure out how he got to some conclusion he's made.

Then there's Grace.  She wants to tell me everything.  But at 7 months, well... it's just trying.  Right now, I know something's not right.  She's having a hard time during her meals and has hardly slept more than an hour and a half at a time in the past several weeks.  (Yes, that means Mama's had even less.)  When she started trying to pull of one of her ears, we thought maybe that was the problem.  Nope.  There's a little fluid in the other ear, but no infection.  I got the new experience of having to take a...sample... then took it over to the dr this morning.  Nope, nothing there.  So what now?  What do they think it is?  "I don't know- maybe just the teeth."  So we get to just stick it out.  Listening to her scream while she tries to eat... it's frustrating, to say the least.  For both of us.

I'm doing ok considering how little sleep I've gotten- except for occasionally standing and staring at something for several minutes trying to figure out what on earth I was supposed to be doing.  At least a week from today I won't have to be driving much at all for a while.