*sigh* This week has been rough. Just dealing with life and three kids and the changes... You'd think it would get easier with time, but as a mom from Gwen's gymnastics class remarked, "Elsa's about 3 weeks? So the hard part is just starting" is correct. She's been mostly sleeping up until now. She's starting to be awake more and while that's great, its also requiring more of my attention and care and that is a challenge. Yesterday I wanted to make myself an espresso. I started the process at 8am. Due to a variety of problems, issues and needs the coffee did not get made until 11:30am. If it was not one child it was another, and then another, and then I had to nurse AGAIN.

On Tuesday, Gwen had another "show off" day at gymnastics and I took a few pictures. The quality is horrendous because the lighting in the gym is quite strange and the camera struggles to take pictures.

Hopping through the hoops


Somersault


Balancing


Got a little cocky and started kicking her legs really high. Good thing teacher was there to catch!


Flipping on the bar


Ta-da!


You know, earlier today I had lots of funny things that I wanted to blog about. Funny things the kids had been saying and such. *poof* Its all gone. I really need to carry a notebook and jot down these thoughts because nothing stays in my head for more than a few minutes.

Oh, today we went to Target to pick up a few things and the kids were doing great and I was much pleased. Except right after we paid and were this close to walking out the door, Ethan spotted the cookies in the the food court area and started insisting that he wanted one. I did my normal thing which is to kind of ignore the insistence and go park the limo (i.e. the cart which is like 50 feet long that my kids insist I drive when we go to Target) back in the cart area. I glance back and see that Ethan has thrown himself on the floor and is crying that he wants a cookie. I grab my three bags, the baby's carseat and tell Gwen to follow me and when I look up again there is a Target employee talking to Ethan. Now I'm thinking, "Oh great, I'm gonna get a lecture or something about letting my kid cry on the floor", but actually all she said to me was, "Uh, he's bleeding!". Wonderful. Turns out that during his little dramatic fall he hit his lip.

When Ethan heard the word "bleeding", his eyes get really big and he majorly freaks out. He gets up and runs to me, blood streaming everywhere, giant tears on his face. Everyone entering the store now stops and stares because there is a bloody faced child crying loudly and it looks much much worse than it is. I'm standing there rather speechless because my arms are completely full and I'm not sure what to do. So nice TargetLady takes us all to the bathroom and gets us settled so I can clean him up. Of course, as I'm wiping away all the blood, he says, "Can I have a cookie please??". I'm like, "HECK NO", but I say it nicely so that the people staring at us in the bathroom wouldn't think me a mean mommy for telling my injured son he couldn't have a cookie. Little did they know that the stupid cookies started the whole thing!

I'm sure this is some right of passage. First blood-inducing tantrum in a store or whatever. Luckily, Ethan wasn't too fond of how it all went either and told me quite firmly that he would NOT do that again. Good boy. Lets hope that lesson sticks.