my craptastic re-entry to the blog

Today was unusually rough. River woke at 6:30am and though it was nice that he just hopped into bed with us (instead of us having to drag ourselves out before sunrise on a Sunday morning), it was still too early to get going.

We started out productively with a trip to a diner and Home Depot, then got right to work on projects around the house. I'm not sure what gave me a bug up my ass to paint the brick supports in the basement TODAY but that's what I wanted to do. Once I got started on that (and Thom worked on the yard, somewhat successfully entertaining River at the same time), I decided we might as well paint an accent wall too. Five coats of velvet red later and that damn wall still isn't covered.

Between the weeding, painting, laundry, raking, and cleaning up River did not get a lot of attention today. I know he's not used to entertaining himself for more than ten minutes at a time, but is it too much to ask for one day where I am not his personal trained monkey? Because of the extraordinary neglect he was feeling he started lashing out like a crazy person, turning every little thing into a battle.

He refused lunch, then cried for twenty minutes at naptime when I told him, sorry, the pizza was in daddy's belly, he missed that train. He dropped chips on the floor and laughed at the mess, spit (not spilled, SPIT) milk on the phone then the couch, banged on his daddy's computer, then mine, and generally fought every move we made from dinner to bedtime. It was like he was aiming for the time-out record of the world.

By the time we got to bath Thom and I were snapping at each other, River was delirious with exhaustion, and I couldn't face reading stories to him without breaking down in tears. Not a pretty picture. I know pregnancy has a lot to do with the extreme emotional reaction, but it's not everything.

I need a sitter and some time for myself. I need to take it a little easy. I need to do something that has nothing to do with the house, the child, the pets, the shopping, or the car. Mostly, right now, I need to go to bed and press Reset on this day.