A Little Better, A Little Worse

Written in my journal on Sunday October 16, 2011


Today was better in some ways and worse in others. I did bath time one child at a time. We spent most of that time with Josh calling the other 3 back into the living room and me telling them at the same time to go back to Daddy. But it was nice to have the one-on-one time; there wasn't the fighting for space in the tub, and I think I got each of them cleaner this way. 


For lunch I managed to burn soggy grilled cheese sandwiches. The kids did not seem to be familiar with cheese. After that, I washed laundry by hand with Josh entertaining the kids outside. By the time I was done, I was dripping with sweat and my knuckles were almost raw. We decided that going forward, I would wash the underwear by hand as it is the most expensive to have done and physically the easiest to wash. And we will pay to have the rest done.


Dinner was a mess. They delivered to our room even though we didn't want that. The kids got food everywhere. It is difficult to not get mad when you just worked so hard to clean their clothes and the apartment was just cleaned by the staff and any tiny crumb gets attacked by an army of ants. Oh, and when you know that you don't have a clean change of clothes for them. We were frustrated, with them, with each other, and probably with ourselves. We are both so very exhausted. Unfortunately this really unnerved the kids. This all came after us working all day to enforce some rules/standards after days of not having any.