what did you do this week?

sometimes i want to punch my life in the face.

well, not my life as much as the frustrating things that complicate my life. 

with four children, there always seem to be complications. this week, for example, ellee started tee-ball and while i am thrilled for her because she loves it, i'm gonna go ahead and be real real honest with you. sitting outside at a random park for 3 hours a week watching 5 year olds throw dirt, pick grass, and run for the outhouse is not my idea of a good time. the moments when ellee is actually hitting the ball or grabbing it out of the dirt are great, but the other 97% of the time is pretty rough. tonight, i decided that if ellee could go the whole season without getting hit by some random child swinging a wildly out of control bat, that i would be happy with our experience regardless of my mosquito bite count. obviously, i'm very hopeful.

so on top of finding myself sitting at a ball field (although it's really just a field with grass and mosquitos) two nights a week, i have recently been dealing with some super fun health issues of my very own. no bat to the head or anything, but for the last year or so, i have been having more and more pain in my ol' joints and finally decided i had better get my rear into a rheumatologist before they have to wheel me in. long story short, i have been diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis and that being the case, i find myself taking some very shit-just-got-real medications in an effort to get me up and running again (obviously i am using the term 'running' very loosely here.) ugh. and double ugh for arthritis at 34 years old. trying to keep perspective though, i do consider myself super fortunate to have great doctors and powerful medicines that are all working to make me better. i'll be fine, no worries, blah blah blah.

anywho, back to the busy week at hand.

picture me all tired and rickety (you know, i DO have arthritis) and exhausted after watching an hour and a half of near catastrophes on the tee-ball field, when sophie runs up to me minutes before bedtime to alert me that she has lost her gazillionth tooth. she was pumped and so i took an immediate mental note not to forget to fulfill my tooth fairy duties.

obviously, i quickly forgot my mental note.

when she appeared before me at 6am the next morning, the first words out of her mouth were 'mom, the tooth fairy didn't come!' you can only imagine what the first words out of my mouth were. (you don't know me.) long story short (again), i ended up telling her that there was no tooth fairy that i had forgotten to put the money under her pillow. gasp. i know. IT WAS EARLY. i couldn't think and it was over before i knew it. in my defense, sophie has been asking about the non-legit nature of said tooth fairy for months, and her response was 'yeah, i kind of thought so.'

in the moments following my heart to heart with sophie where i basically had to confess to lying to her about a teeth-stealing fairy, i knew that she would be ok when she asked if she would still get money when she lost her teeth. what i didn't know, however, is if she could keep a secret. after all, at 7, sophie has 3 little siblings who have never lost a single tooth between them. rest assured, my stress lasted all of 6 seconds before she had run down stairs ahead of me and instantly spilled the beans to ellee. NOOOO!!

now ellee's crying hard. sophie's all 'wha?, who?, me?' and casey is playing trucks in the corner. and i hadn't even peed yet.

what followed included punishments, endless discussion about what it is to make a good decision (which don't seem to ever end), shame (on my part), regret (all me), sadness, constant reminders about what a secret is, and a lot more regret and sadness about moments with ellee that will just never happen.

i understand that in a big picture kind of way, this is no big deal, but it's a reminder that my kids are growing up and even i can't make it slow down. sometimes things just happen. kids grow up more than you wanted in a single moment. and all you can do is move forward.

so now it's thursday and i've tackled, knocked down, and punched in the face the following issues: tee-ball, arthritis, and the tooth fairy. next on my list is summer boredom. you moms know what i'm talking about. about 6 days into summer break my kids start talking smack about being bored. this year, i'm heading it off on the curb. i spent the better part of an entire day researching affordable summer activities for my posse and i gotta say, i'm pretty excited to get the party started. they'll be busy with VBS (X3! what what!), smart-kid camp for sophie, soccer for the big girls, tee-ball for ellee, a michigan trip, summer festivals, and the state fair. looks like we'll keep moving, but in true shannon fashion, i left plenty of empty weeks for lounging too. take THAT summer boredom. punch to the face.

so that's it. a week filled with predictable moments, challenges, and some heart break thrown in for fun. we have a lot on our plates here and i don't pretend that every day is perfect. with me as the mom, that's an impossibility. but it's good, and we're blessed, and my kids went to bed happy tonight. and life moves on to another week. for me to punch in the face.

this is why we love tee-ball. because SHE loves tee-ball. how adorable is that face?!