I am losing my mind a little bit. Things have just been incredibly busy. More like Greg has been incredibly busy and I'm doing the solo parent thing a lot more than planned and therefor I have been losing my patience quicker and quicker as the weeks pass.

Brighton just doesn't sleep on his own. He does pretty good in the day but just refuses to go down at night. It is the WORST. He'll go through these good spurts and then bad, back and forth and I'm left baffled as to what to do. Then I realized . . . I am so inconsistent with him. Like, if it is possible for me to sleep in, I will. I'll let Scarlet watch a movie and just keep on sleeping an hour passed our usual wake time. Especially lately and it has been lately that things have been especially awful. So it has made me wonder if I am the culprit to all the madness.

For weeks, possibly a couple months the thoughts of "you need to wake up at 6am" have been coming to my mind along with "this will solve everything". But I just couldn't face it. But here I am, scrambling to get ANYTHING done and I have been thinking about it all day. Things have GOT to get more consistent around here.

And then it came to me . . . 6am. It just keeps coming to my mind. Over and over again. So I half heartedly decide, "Ok, I'm going to do it. It's coming to my mind for a reason." But I'm worried I'm not going to do it, just like I haven't the last 2 months. But the more it sets in and the day passes I realize, I just have no other options. It's 6am peace or chaos and me losing my mind. I know I will get used to waking up early.

There are so many reasons logically this will work out better. Assuming he can go a 4 hour stretch for feeds, then he and Scarlet will nap at noon together, giving me some time to myself and they'll also go down for the night at the same time, which will give Greg and me some time. I pretty much haven't gotten either for weeks, plus Greg's been busy every night for weeks! It's been the worst! This way, even if Greg is out of town or SOMETHING's going awry, I'll hopefully have SOME time to decompress.

Oh man, dare I say it? I think the kids are finally asleep? Put Scarlet down at 7:45 and Brighton at 8:30 and both have been screaming off and on, mostly on until 9:45? Yeah, it's been a pretty tense night. I want to stay up and feel like a person and not a stressed out Mom, but if I do then I won't wake up in the morning.

Things aren't HORRIBLE, it's just been a lot rougher than normal and I've been stretched a little thin. But I've had little breaks here and there. Like my amazing home teacher who brought his wife to chat with me while he cleaned my kitchen. He even got on his knees and scrubbed my floor. Talk about amazing. His wife did this for me 2 months ago when Greg went out of town. And she had a 5 week old baby. There are so many good people in my ward. I wish I was one of them.

We are leaving for Bishkek in 4 months. It is just insane. It's right around the corner. We have been buying up winter clothes like crazy. Big coats, wool socks, fleece EVERYTHING, on and on and on. It's been sooooo cold here- cold as in 30 degrees is considered a warm day and every time we go outside we say, "Oh man, it's gonna be worse in Bishkek! How will we survive?!"

Greg injured his shoulder and we've had a friend working on him twice a week and it's improved SO MUCH, but it's still not completely recovered. I feel bad for complaining, because he's the one in pain, but it's been the WORST. I'm so SICK of the time we have together being spent on MASSAGES while I'm trying to deal with the kids after dealing with them all day long.

I am SLOWLY losing weight. I've just been working out and not being a pig and it seems to be working. It makes me glad that I'll EVENTUALLY get where I want to be. I have a feeling it will be just like last time. I'll finally reach my goal and then try to get pregnant that very month and hardly get to enjoy it. I feel really thin until I go to church and then I feel like a fat cow. These are the women I see at church. My VT ran 3 miles the day she gave birth. Another friend ran 5 miles only 2 weeks after she gave birth- so yeah- they are CRAZY thin. Like size 2 thin. Then there's my other friend who's 2 sizes SMALLER than she was before she got pregnant. And she had her baby 6 weeks AFTER I had mine. I am DEFINITELY not smaller than I was. I STILL have a gut. At home, I think I look awesome, but it is really hard to feel that way when I am surrounded by such flat stomachs.

Greg is my supporter and says, "They're OBSESSED with working out!" or "she's only had one baby, you've had two" or "she's 7 years younger than you, it's not as hard for her to lose weight" and then it makes me feel a little better.

Oh yeah, amongst all this we had a mouse feeding off of a sock full of rice in our bathroom cupboard for who knows how long. DISGUSTING. I'm starting to think I'll always be getting a mouse for my birthday as I got one on my LAST birthday. By the way- I turned 31 this month. It's official, I'm in my 30's. And I feel it. I have so crossed over into this new stage of my life. It's fine. It's just different.

We avoided cleaning up the mouse cupboard because we were lazy or busy and just let it fester for a few days, so we just sort of shut the door and pretended like we didn't have a bathroom and our OTHER toilet broke. You had to turn the water off and then on for it to flush. So going to the bathroom became such a pain.

All of this was within a couple weeks along with sickness, 3 home teaching visits, subbing to teach 5 year olds in primary and Greg getting home an hour late from work almost everyday. Oh yes, and Scarlet getting her blood drawn. That is always fantastic.

Wow, what a complainer I've been in this post. Hopefully next week I'll post how we're on an AWESOME schedule and I LOVE waking up at 6 am and I get 8 hours of sleep every single night! Ha, yeah right. I guess you never know.