It's days like today...

...where I love and hate my children. Yes, I just went there. No, I don't really hate them, but it sure feels hard to love, or even LIKE them somedays. Days like today when the house is a wreck, as usual, and I'm trying really hard to clean it (rather, I'm trying to make my kids clean it), where I have so much work coming out of my ears that I don't-sanely-know how to hold on. It's days like today where I have a sick baby, and my only sanity (my daughter) is gone getting sparkle toes, and I would much rather be with her than here. It's days like today where it take four hours, yes 4, to get one child to get dishes into the dishwasher, and the other child to pick up the couch pillows from the floor and simply put them back onto the couch. It's days like today where I've decided rather than eating with my children, I've taken my leftover red beans and rice and hidden away at my computer to browse blogs for lunch, hoping that I'll have just fifteen minutes where I don't have to deal with the screaming that is coming out of their mouths. It's days like today where that's not going to happen. And when I had a teaspoon full of clear Claritin syrup sitting on the counter waiting for a child to take (who has severe allergies), and I hear my DS2 screaming, then DS1 comes in to tell on him, and I sigh. And then he tells me that DS2 just spilled the Claritin all over the place, to which I am not surprised since he spills something EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. And to try and keep calm, it's days like today where I tell DS1 that it's okay, DS2 will just need to clean it up. And then DS1 leaves my room, calling after DS2 and tell him, "You need to clean up that oil spill..." and it's days like today that make that actually funny. It's days like today that make me grateful for the children I have.

Where are the shoes?

Does your ADD/ADHD child misplace or lose things? With my oldest it has always been a variety of things: jackets, pencils, backpacks, homework...his brain ;-) . But my 5 year old has one thing that he misplaces/loses, and I think it drives me even more batty than everything my oldest lost put together. It is ALWAYS his shoes. Every time (yes, really) we need to leave we are scrambling around looking for shoes. Oh, I should try to compensate for this, you say? I do. I start getting the kids ready an hour before we need to go anywhere, and somehow it always still comes down to those darn shoes. Some we have yet to find! I look everywhere...the shoe closet (duh, why would they be there?), his room, the bathroom, under the couches, under chairs, every room in the house, outside the doors, in front of the trampoline. The thing that kills me is sometimes one will be in the bathroom, while the other is buried in a pile of dirt, or in the oven (okay, not really). But still...I need a tracking GPS device just for my five year old's shoes.