I may have mentioned before that I don’t deal with stress well. At all. Not even a little bit.

The kids are getting a little tired of being together all day every day and school is still two weeks away. The girls now have separate rooms and Kaylie is of the opinion that she can go into Liliana’s room whenever she wants and touch anything that she wants, but if Liliana goes into her room then ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE and I hear “MOM! LILIANA’S IN MY ROOM!” I ask her if she goes into Liliana’s room without asking. “Yes.” Then why can’t Liliana go into your room without asking? “I don’t know.”

It’s been raining a lot here which means that outside time has been at an all-time low for summer. We have a bigger place here than we did in Regina, but still being cooped up inside most of the summer has made us have a bit of cabin fever.

When Liliana stopped napping, I still made her spend her “nap” time in her room as “quiet time”. Since moving here, quiet time has been anything but quiet. She needs her closet opened. She needs her music back on. She needs a drink. She needs to go pee for the 482nd time and I don’t feel like cleaning up an accident when I don’t believe her the one time she actually has to go.

Liliana will NOT. STOP. YELLING. Kaylie will NOT. STOP. PUSHING. HER. BUTTONS. Even when button-pushing is not going on, Liliana will still find some reason to make the entire neighborhood hear how hard her life is because someone didn’t say “you’re welcome” after she said “thank you”.

I’m going a little nutso.

I’m ready for the routine of fall. I’m ready for Kaylie to be back at school. I’m ready to enjoy my three one-kid weekdays that I don’t work. I’m ready for my anxiety level to be a little lower.

The girls and I took off to the park after dinner this evening.

They needed outdoor time and I needed start-my-new-book time.

It was more short-lived than we would have liked because during a game of hide-and-seek with some other park kids, Kaylie fell off the highest point of the play structure. She’s alright, just a couple scrapes and bruises. On the way home, Liliana kept staying, “It’s alright Kaylie. We’ll take care of you.” That kid sure screams a lot, but she’s also very sensitive and hates to see others hurting. When Kaylie was crying, Liliana started to cry and yelled at Kaylie to STOP CRYING.

I’m going to be glad when this day is over.

We didn’t have time on Monday to hit the beach by the camp, so we made sure to hit it today after we got Kaylie.

I got my tattoo touched up two weeks ago and kind of realized I wasn’t supposed to be submerging it after it was already submerged. Whoops. Oh well. It felt SO GOOD to have my feet in a lake again. It’s a rare time when I miss Terrace, but being in that lake made me miss Lakelse pretty bad.

While bathing Liliana, Noah called me in to show me that she’d been sunburned. I didn’t believe it because I’d lathered her in sunscreen. Apparently I missed a spot. Parenting fail. Whoops. Poor sensitive-skinned kid. I don’t worry about sunscreen so much with Kaylie’s dark Portuguese skin, but the younger one’s a different story.

I got a bunch more photos, even though we only spent an hour at the beach. I wish we had more time there, but I wanted to make it back to Saskatoon in time for Liliana to be in bed on time. More photos to come. You’d understand my exhaustion (and therefore laziness) if you’ve ever spent 10 hours in a confined space with one Liliana Wilson Pony.

Unfortunately, I had Liliana with me, and she did NOT take to the fact that she wasn’t allowed to join in the class. She screamed every time I tried to sit her on the “snow ball chair” or any of the other chairs and would not stay in the viewing area. We left about a bazillion times because of her screaming. I felt horrible for the other parents, but I wanted to watch Kaylie dance. After about 5 minutes (yes, she had a bazillion tantrums in 5 minutes) I gave up. We left the room and I convinced Liliana to run up and down the hall while I stood at the door and watched. Every once in a while she would come to the door and tell me that she was going to sit on the snow ball chair, so I followed her in while she ran right by the snow ball chair and right into the middle of the class. I’d pull her out again while she screamed bloody murder.

I was fuming. Noah had met me at Kaylie’s ballet class with her, while I showed up with Liliana after picking her up from daycare after work. Noah left right away to get some dinner before heading to work 1/2 an hour later. I was angry at Liliana for screaming and for not being able to stay still AT ALL and I was angry at Noah for not taking Liliana with him so that I could watch in peace (we live only a block and a half away from Kaylie’s ballet). It didn’t help when a girl Liliana’s age walked in with her mom and sat still on the snow ball chair and watched the class while Liliana screamed and tantrumed in the hallway.

Liliana and I ended up sitting outside the building by the end because I couldn’t get her to stop screaming. I was almost at the point where I would have handed her to the next person I saw and told her to have a nice life.

The good news is that I did get a couple blurry cell phone photos of Kaylie’s ballet class.