decompression

Today was one of those hyperventilateicantdothis sort of days. On my list of frets today:

e is so behind developmentally, and I can't find much time in a day to work with him on improving.
E will be three in a couple of months and I haven't even begun potty training him.
I'm not sure how I will sustain I's education at home.
Our porch roof leaks.
The gutters are falling off.
Our bathroom is still only 3/4 finished.
A thousand other house projects are not yet even begun.
My house is a disaster. Perpetually.
I can't seem to find a new routine that works and DOESN'T involve me getting up at 5am.
The laundry is breeding. I swear.
There is a teetering pile of stuff on my desk--somewhere in there are some medical bills and my property taxes. I must find those.
I & E are constantly at each other's throats. 
e's ambiguously full fontanel
Et cetera, et cetera.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has these sorts of days. Much of this stuff doesn't matter at all, all of it doesn't matter as much as it felt like it did today, and each thing needs to be taken bit by bit. Not all at once. Insert metaphors here about eating a whale, building Rome....etc.

So. Deep breath. Good things:

I built a pretty sweet (if I do say so myself) barn out of cardboard and popsicle sticks that we'll use in our unit on farms next month for our first go at kindergarten. There is a great Montessori approach to teaching grammar for young children involving farms. We're going to give that a try. I'm excited about it. (Yes, I know that's nerdy.)

We made rainbows out of Froot Loops today. E ate more than he glued (and maybe ate a little glue too), but we all learned neat stuff. The kids were excited about having sugary cereal for a snack. I usually try to avoid fluorescent food. I was going to have I practice counting by 5s with the Froot Loops, but they were eaten too quickly.

I have been noticing e pushing more with his feet lately.

No one in our immediate family is currently hospitalized.

And some funny things happened at the end of the day:

Goose made E some soup in our toy kitchen. She served it to him. He tried it. She asked him how it was. 'Fine,' he said. She heaved a big, offended sigh. 'It's better than fine!!' she declared.

E was having a hard afternoon--one of those cryabouteverything sorts of days (I could relate)--he was insisting that I put juice in his milk cup (which still had milk in it). I explained it would be yucky to mix milk and juice together. Goose (still in the toy kitchen) said very patiently to me, "Mom, you should let your children try new things."

During family home evening we were learning about the proverb "A soft answer turneth away wrath" (we may or may not have a problem with that here...) and we were playing a game where we would read about different scenarios and try to think of 'soft answer' ways of responding. One of them was "Your brother or sister throws a book at you" (which may or may not have happened today...twice). "What should you do if that happens?" I asked. "Duck." Was Goose's response.

T-minus 8.5 hours till it all begins again!