Gettin' Messy

I feel I owe my fellow mommies an apology, as I have been doing you all a disservice.  I guess one of the advantages of having a blog is the ability to self-screen.  Is my living room messy?  Crop it out of the picture.  Did my kid(s) meltdown in the middle of the 'fun' picnic Thanksgiving on the beach?  You won't know if I don't tell you. (Did I just tell you?) It's so easy to make my life look like homemade gingerbread and sweetly singing husbands.  But the gingerbread cookies were originally gingerbread men- they fell apart, so turned into circles.  And the husband?  Well, ok, that part was legit.
What I'm trying to say is my life IS messy- I promise.  It's a big messy mashup of good intentions and half chewed banana- and you know what they say about good intentions.
Today, in fact, was messy.

Today is Monday.
Tomorrow is an Anatomy exam (for which I have not studied nearly enough), Wednesday is my Sociology Powerpoint due date (which I haven't finished), Thursday is my lab portion of the Anatomy exam (read above studying tactic), and Friday is my due-date for mailing the one-hundred sewn gifts to family for Christmas (wanna wager a guess on how many are done?) as well as my Sociology final exam.
Today is Monday, and this is my upcoming week.
Today I awoke to Asher screaming.  This is normal- he wakes up grumpy most every day.  We all go downstairs to get breakfast- but Asher is screaming so loudly that I get a headache, give up on cooking, and give the kids yogurt.  I hold him while he sips his yogurt pouch, and check my Facebook UH email.  He aims his pouch at the computer and squeezes.  Messy.
I set him down while I try to clean it up, and he screams.  He screams and grabs a block and hits his sister over the head with it.  They both cry, and I start my period.  Like, literally... (TMI, I know.  Oh well. )  Messy.
Asher screams and hits his way through breakfast, and we try to play for a bit before nap.  He takes a poo.  He gets Hulk-mad while I'm trying to change him and starts hitting and kicking and twisting.  Poo is everywhere.  I am begging my one year old to help mommy, he is screaming at me, and my daughter is telling me over and over that the dirty diaper is on the laundry.  The clean laundry.  It takes awhile for that to click in for me.  Messy.
It is FINALLY his naptime.  I put him to bed, and half crumple onto my bed, taking a moment to breathe.  I am still wearing (just) my robe, I'm not sure I've cleaned all the poo from my nails, and my head is pounding.  I just need a minute.  In comes Kenzie.  She jumps up on the bed and begins bouncing on her knees next to my head.  On top of my hair.  It's pulling my hair off my scalp and hurts like a mother and I've asked her to stop 3 times and I finally push her off.  Where she loses her balance at the side of the bed and falls backwards, head first.
Time stops.
I race to her, and, once assured that she's not paralyzed, I start crying.  Like "something snapped inside me" kind of crying.  And my little girl is patting me on the head, saying "it's ok Mommy.  It didn't hurt!  I'm ok!"  Which really didn't help the tears.  ...Messy.
I get myself under control and we go downstairs, where I immediately smell burnt metal.  The dishwasher, it turns out, is broken.  So during the one precious hour that my son is sleeping, instead of studying or power-pointing or sewing, I now have to wash the dishes, by hand.  At least the poo is now clean?
It's soon time to take my daughter to school, and Asher screams the way there.  Kenzie and I sing "The Wheels on the Bus" like mad women, but it doesn't help.  The kid is too far gone by this point.  Until we get to her class, where he is a smiling angel, saying "hi" with a big grin to every lovely lady who passes by.  "He's such a happy boy!" they all say.  Grumble grumble grumble.
But don't worry.  He's soon in the car again and screaming.

I try feeding him bites of quesadilla in between wails.  It's tricky to do this while driving, as his carseat is behind mine and rear-facing still. One particular stretch back there left me with a lap full of my own burrito.  It was hot and saucy.  And, yes, quite messy.
We get to the store, and he's still being a little butt.  The only thing that keeps him happy is pushing the cart.  But he WAILS if I stop it to grab an item I need, so I have to race around grabbing things and racing back to keep him from knocking the cart into every vulnerable ankle in the place.

We survive shopping.  We pick sissy up and scream and cry our way home, where I attempt to put Asher down for another nap.
After a few minutes I give in and go back upstairs to pick him up.
I can smell the poo from the door.