*It's the only day of the week your children choose to sleep in and you must wake ALL 5 up from deep slumbers. WHY?!!
*I wake up with a headache.
*It takes two of you to sit on the youngest child in order to dress him because of his kicking and flailing.
*Two children must be carried out to the car like footballs because they are having major temper tantrums and refusing to walk by themselves.
*I am intermittently "shhhh-ing" Robert (who is yelling) as we load into the car to leave so as not to alert the neighbors to possible abuse at the Flynn home.
*There are threats of bodily harm before entering church. (I won't say to whom OR from whom)
*We take our seats in the far reaches of the cultural hall in an attempt to spare ourselves any more loss of dignity from misbehaving children.
*Robert (who is usually the mature one) grabs the youngest 10 minutes into the meeting and opts to walk the halls instead of having to listen to the very dry sacrament speakers.
*The other 4 children, who I am left with because Robert has fled will not stop playing, fighting, touching each other, etc. so I have to get out my "super-secret pinchers."
*I add myself to the kids' rotation cycle of taking turns getting a drink of water and going to the restroom during the meeting in order to make the time pass more quickly.
*During a wonderful and spiritual lesson in Relief Society on repentance, my mind wanders back and forth between how I wish I had the time to repent, and how I couldn't believe everyone in that room had had sex at one time or another. I know, I'm evil.
*After church, not having the strength to fight with children who don't want to have quiet time in their rooms, I opt to lock them all out of the house for 2 hours in order to get some peace and quiet.
*It ends up being ROBERT who gets in trouble for continually entering my room and interrupting my alone time.
*When the kids ask for dinner, I say "You need to eat again?!" It's definitely a cold cereal night.
*Trying to salvage part of the day, I suggest we take the kids to the park. Even I am surprised to hear myself say, "Daddy and I are going to lay on our blanket and watch you play, but please don't ask us to participate."
*We get home from the park and immediately put a movie on for the kids which is against Sunday rules, but we don't care.
*The kids all put themselves to bed without the usual nightly rituals because Robert and I are so exhausted and sick of parenting.
Just when I thought Sunday was a TOTAL waste and Robert and I just weren't cut out for parenting, I saw this:
I don't know if you can see this very well, but every week Hunter has to account for reading minutes. He put that the book he had read last week was the Book of Mormon and under "literature genre", he wrote "TRUE." And that made Sunday all worth it.
4 comments:
Oh Sandra that made me truthfully laugh out loud and I could relate to every single one of them. And then I got a big lump in my throat at the end. Thank heavens for those moments that make the others seem slightly more bearable.
PS-Our Sunday must have been very similar to yours because as I climbed into bed last night I said to Mike, why didn't we ever seriously discuss the alternative choices and life we could have had. We had no clue what we were getting into with this five children parenting thing?!!
Sounds like our Sunday, except one of our boys punched his brother in the face and gave him a bloody lip. I love your post. It inspires me to write about our terrible day.
Your post made me remember what our Sundays used to be like. It is such a huge effort to get them dressed,etc, but it IS worth it. You new family portrait is gorgeous especially of you and Maddie
My Sundays are always wretched and I don't have kids. Is this a problem? Might as well call it the weekly day of fighting over at our house. ;)
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