My inflexibility

I think one of the things that I work on most is learning to bend the inner me. I feel like 5 kids has made me extremely flexible--too flexible if you ask some. I have learned to let a lot of things go that I wouldn't have even a few years back. I realize messes happen a lot. I can't keep every room clean ever. Someone always inevitably gets sick on an important day. My naps are often curtailed by a foot pounding on a shared wall. And you know what--I'm usually okay. I deal with it. I rebound faster. I'm rather proud of myself 75% of the time.

But there is that nagging percentage that still eats away at me. Usually it rears its ugly head at dinnertime, which for me is the absolute worst hour of everyday. The kids immediately seize up and go stiff whenever they see a plate full of anything other than tacos. The babies refuse to eat most of the time if I don't spoon feed them. Timmy has recently developed a habit of gagging himself and running to the trash can to spit out whatever dinner I prepared. And the other girls poke at the meal with such scorn that I just want to run upstairs and eat my plate of food alone, which I never get to do. And mind you...most of my dinners take me over an hour to prepare, so dealing with this on an almost daily basis has made me a bit inflexible.

I turn into a wide-eyed monster when I look around the table and see the various faces or hear the noises coming from the trash can. Do they not know how long it took me to come up with the meal let alone make it? Of course they do; I've only repeated it to them 100 times. But it doesn't matter. Dinnertime is always the same. I hate it.

I am also wildly inflexible about giving up my workout time. It is, perhaps, the only time I give myself each day. And you should know that unless I'm running outside alone (which doesn't happen frequently in the winter), my exercise routine is generally interrupted 5-10 times each day to help a child wipe their bottom, spell a word, fix the tv, do someone's hair, etc. And I've learned to roll with the little interruptions. Just today I managed to do a complete leg workout while craning my neck to see Elle's memory book so I could help her write "memos" next to the picture. And later I sang nursery rhymes to Timmy while trying to finish my 2 mile run on the treadmill. And those things didn't really bother me, but if a child does something that makes me have to miss my entire workout, I am a bit of a bear. It's not a pretty sight.

And while I'm on this subject of revealing all my inflexible muscles, I should also say I have a weak spot for any mention of family. I feel immediately defensive and my senses sharpen when someone mentions something about my family. Last night Tim and I got into a disagreement (mostly due to miscommunication) about family. I'd like to throw the blame to PMS but I couldn't believe how quickly my blood boiled. I felt unable to even say our evening prayer. I just rolled over and took several deep breaths to calm my body down. We never talked about it. We just laid there in bed--as two grown adults--knocking our separate feet together and pretending not to know the other one was still awake and feeling just as awkward. But somehow we fell asleep, and we've managed to muddle our way through today even though there is something still strange in the air, and I keep telling myself to let it go, but the mind doesn't always do what we tell it to.

And lastly, I'm very inflexible when it comes to family pictures. I'm a nut job. It's the truth. We may get one good family, but it comes at the expense of many tears and scowls.

So there you have it. I'm not all that flexible. I have so much to work on. I need so much time; I hope I have it.