My Mom just picked up the kids and is taking them to my brother's house for the afternoon. They're going to be hanging out with their adorable little cousin, while my Mom babysits everyone. This serves as a very positive distraction and the kids have chosen this over going with me to the vet this afternoon. Thank God for that because I wasn't looking forward to sharing that experience with them. The boys spent the lunchtime hour saying their tearful goodbyes to Lemme. They're assuming this will be the last time they see her and while that is likely to be the case, I could find out today that her symptoms are caused by something else and she'll ultimately be fine. I'm not openly encouraging hope in this situation because…

My life right now ranges from absolutely blessed to totally fucking shitty and there are a few stops in between. It's overwhelming and frustrating but it's also rewarding as well. I'm absolutely blessed because I have my kids, plain and simple. There is no other way to see that and I'm endlessly grateful they are such a huge part of my everyday life. They test me, try my patience and often drive me fucking crazy but they make me a better person. They remind me every minute of every day that the world is bigger than me and it helps a great deal with maintaining perspective. With that out of the way, I need to vent. I'm so overwhelmed by everything and I don't know how to get out from…

It's been a challenging day so far. Emmett's glasses broke over the weekend and his backup glasses were somehow never adjusted to actually fit him properly, so they are painful to wear. He wore them to school and before I even arrived home from walking this morning, the school had called because Emmett was not feeling well and his glasses hurt. I told them that I would be in to pick him up and we'd go get his glasses ordered. We'd also get his backups adjusted so he can wear them until the new ones arrived. I figured it'd be about a week or so. I was not looking forward to a week of Emmett without his glasses. The whole not feeling good thing was combination of things. It was…

Life has sorta been swirling around me for a little while now and I'm losing track of some things. One of those things was that today being the last day of Summer. When the kids wake up in the morning, they will be waking up to the first day of Fall. I'm a big fan of the change of seasons. I had so many plans for this Summer but they've been derailed and that's okay. The kids were having a pretty good morning but began lashing out at each other as the day went on. It wasn't anything crazy but they feed off each other and things will just esculate if not redirected. Since I did all the major running around on Saturday, before they came home, we had the…

I have a very special plan for the day today. My goal is to try and fill the kids day with normalcy. What I mean by that is I want to focus on these guys just being kids today. There's so much going on in their lives right now causing them pain and distress. I can't control that, nor can I take their pain away. All I'm able to do is make sure that they know they're loved, that I'll never leave them and that their only job is to be a kid. Unfortunately, kids in general are subjected to many adult issues and while it's true that kids are resilient, that shouldn't be considered a free pass to force grownup issues on them. It can be difficult to distract…

The kids are really quiet and Emmett's still not feeling well. I think this is all transitional/emotional in nature. On the positive side of things, no one is fighting. The boys and I are spending the day watching DC animated movies in honor of Batman Day. It's been awhile since I've been able to get all three of the kids to watch the same thing at the same time.