Do you ever sometimes feel like you are trapped in that book "If you give a Mouse a Cookie"? You know, it's like "If you give an exhausted mother a cup of coffee after her two year old gets her up before 6 a.m. again, she's probably going to remember that she needs to wash a load of diapers because we are almost out of clean ones. As she heads up the stairs to get the diapers she will probably notice that there is a folded basket of clean clothes at the top of the stairs which she needs to put away before someone decides to unload it by throwing it all down the staircase. When she goes into the boys room to put away clothes she will notice that their water cups from last night are still out, and she will probably decide to take them downstairs right away before she forgets to wash them. On the way to the kitchen she will notice that Eleanor is now awake and crying, so she will put down the cups in the living room and go directly upstairs to get the baby. When picking up Eleanor she will notice that their is cat puke on the floor, so she will go right downstairs to get paper towels and cleaning spray. On the way down the stairs she will notice that Eleanor's diaper has leaked so she will turn immediately around and go right back up the stairs to change it. In the middle of changing the diaper she will notice that she also needs to change her shirt now thanks to the leaking diaper. On the way to get a new shirt she will hear an argument start downstairs, followed by screaming, followed by "Hammie bit me!" and "Fraser hit me!" She will immediately grab the baby and go downstairs to put both boys in timeout. While she is downstairs thinking that her children are exhausting she will remember that she was drinking a cup of coffee. She will then wander around the house for 20 minutes trying to figure out where she left it. When she finally finds it in the bathroom (how did it get there?) she will try to sit down to drink it. When she sits down she will remember that she needs to put the diapers in the wash." The end result of this story is that after 11 or 12 hours of running around and trying to do 20,000 things, I will have accomplished precisely none of those things, and when my very sweet husband comes home and innocently asks in a friendly tone "So, what did you guys do today?" I will probably want to scratch his eyes out like an angry, wet cat.

To further illustrate my point, I actually uploaded these photos last week with the intention of writing about how nice it is that we could all be outside in the warm weather, even if there was still more than a foot of snow on the ground. Since that time all the snow in the picture of the boys has melted (some of the snow behind Eleanor in the photo is still there), we had a ton of rain, we had beautiful weather in the 60's and now it is in the 40s and the wood stove is cranking again. It would be funny really, if it weren't my life.

I've also been meaning to update the blog since telling my parents a particularly funny story about the boys. So here it is mom, you can stop reminding me now... A few weeks ago the boys were on the couch pretending it was a train that they were driving together. for some reason they were also pretending that there was a bunch of food on the little end table in front of them. Now keep in mind this is imaginary food, not play food. Not plastic or wooden food, but imaginary food. So, things were going along well until (and I'm not sure who started it) they started to fight because one or the other was hogging the imaginary food. The fight escalated into a smacking, punching match, which, predictably, escalated into Hammie biting Fraser. Fraser was crying hysterically and grabbing his arm, which was not funny. What was funny was that as I attempted to console Fraser Hammie leaned over the couch and started shoveling all the "remaining" imaginary food into this mouth. Fraser noticed this and started screaming hysterically that Hammie was stealing the food. This was Imaginary food people. I tried explaining to Fraser that he could just pretend their was more food there, but he was too far gone into llama drama to even hear me, and even as I put Hammie into time out for biting he has this completely evil grin on his face. I used to say "there isn't anything they can't fight over" but I never before realized just how true that is.

In other news, it a damn good thing we aren't trying to sell our house right now. The man who lived in the house across the street from us passed away and left his house to some family member (a cousin maybe) who has another house in town. The cousin and her husband have been working to clean out the house (quite a process, from the look of things) so there has been a giant dumpster parked on their lawn for weeks. Now one of the shutters is hanging halfway off and, despite the fact that I know the cousin has been by several times and you cannot possibly miss seeing the lopsided shutter, it still remains in its precarious state. The house next door to us was foreclosed on last month, and as the snow melts you can see just how bad their lawn now looks. It is in desperate need of some spring cleaning, but since it appears the bank currently owns the house, I don't anticipate that will be happening anytime soon. Just one more thing I have no control over whatsoever which still manages to stress me out.

On a more positive note, Andy and I have signed up to participate in the Relay for Life in June. It's a great cause, of course, but it is also shaping up to be a great motivator to get us back on the exercise bandwagon. We decided to try to walk 13 miles (half marathon distance) the day of the relay, so we found a walking-half-marathon training schedule online and have already stuck to it for a week. That may not sound like much, but considering how hectic life is these days, I'm pretty damn proud of us. We went of the track at the local community college on Sunday and walked 4 miles with the kids in the strollers (most of the time, Hammie was ejected for one lap because he wouldn't stop hitting Fraser). I really do feel noticeably better and I am finally back down to the weight I was when I go pregnant with Eleanor (which still means I would need to lose another 10 pounds to get to the weight I was when I got pregnant with Fraser, but I am choosing to focus on the small victories for now.)

Well, Eleanor is shrieking in her highest possible pitch, which I think means 'Get me out of this damn jumparoo mommy' so off I go, which reminds me, I need to hang that load of diapers up to dry now...