I should havejust stayed in bed...

Okay, this is going to be a whining and complaining entry, so you may want to just skip to the bottom and look at the pictures. Anyway, yesterday started off okay, and got progressively worse until, well, right now.

I think I told you about our movie mishaps - we took the girls to see a movie that turned out to be scary, and so we tried another movie and it turned out to be "boring," according to Andrea. So we went to the park, where we played for a few minutes before a huge thunder/hail storm blew through. Then there was the trip to the library, the lame kids' meal coupons for Sizzler, and the 45 minute drive home that cause Greg and Eric to have to reschedule their dentist appointments. So for dinner, I thought I would help by making oven-roasted potatoes, which I have done successfully at home many times. Not so this time. I won't go into the many ways they were a disaster, but they were. I don't know how you can mess up potatoes. I mean, really.

SO Melinda saw that I was struggling a bit to make it through the day in one piece, so she asked mom if she could take me out after the kids went down. Sounds great. The kids even went down without a fuss. We went to see Wall-E at Greg's recommendation. It was...not good. It was okay and it had funny parts, but it was weird, and the beginning was creepy, and it had a very trendy 'save the earth' moral to it (which you know annoys me to no end), and I half expected Al Gore to appear at the end of it and lecture us in that conceitedly humble way of his.

So the movie was a bust, but we got home, and the kids were asleep, and so I got ready for a good night's sleep. I went to bed at midnught. At 12:30, Natalie came into my room, climbed into bed with me, and started talking. Afraid that she would wake up Ethan, I took her back into her room and laid down on the floor next to her. I was waiting for her to fall asleep so that I could go back into my room. She didn't go to sleep until 4:30. Ethan woke up at 2:30, and thanks to Natalie, he thought it was time to play.

I brought them both into my room, turned on the light, laid down on the floor, and let them play. At one point, Natalie left the room 'to check on everybody.' She came back about 10 minutes later to announce that everyone was 'o-tay.' Another time, she stepped on my toe and it really hurt, so she went downstairs and got me a curious george bandaid, applied it to my foot. Very sweet. I think she knew that was upset, because she periodically would apologize to me and offer to rub my back and sing me songs. I also started crying at one point, and she said, "I will say a prayer for you, Mommy." Then, "Well, just a little one." Then, "How 'bout you do it, Mommy." Thanks for the thought, Natalie.

I finally got Ethan to sleep at 4:30, at which point I turned off the light in my room, and Natalie and I fell asleep until 7:30.

I'm in a bad mood today.

I need to go tend to Ethan right now, but I will post some pictures later. I love you and miss you desparately :)