St. Patrick's Day, and.... let's just pretend this post is only about St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day was spent with just the girls, since our boys are still in Utah celebrating Ryan's return and sleeping way too little for my liking, and although I'd like to say we celebrated with some cute green decorations or little leprechaun traps or hunts or morning surprises or something clever like I momentarily thought would be nice to do, let's just be honest and say that, for me, holidays are about the food. Always.

{At least one of us caught a leprechaun!}

So, here's a recap of all the green things we ate yesterday. I know you were dying to know.

 (And by "WE," of course I mean Kate and I, since it turns out Brooklyn doesn't like her food to be green.)

Breakfast: Green french toast (It really is green. Just trust me.)

Lunch: Green smoothies, with spinach & kale [recipe]

Dinner: "Green eggs and ham" (spinach & ham omelets... I guess they don't really look green. I decided it was time to lay off the food coloring! My girls were confused because "That's not what they look like in the book!") The broccoli was Kate's idea. My child wants to eat broccoli for St. Patrick's Day? Um, SURE!

During our movie night: Thin mint ice cream... Which we discovered was not actually green. It's just regular ice cream with thin mint cookies. So, our "St. Patrick's Day" excuse was foiled and we were really just eating ice cream.

So today we made green mint chocolate chip cookies

(These really are green, too. You're gonna have to just take my word for it. Brooklyn wanted to make them red and threw a big tantrum, but I thought mint and red might be too much for my head. Plus we were out of red anyway. So Kate & I won and they are green.)

TODAY.... was an interesting one. You all know how I already have all the secrets to perfect parenting and I do everything flawlessly and never make mistakes and consequently my children are perfect. Right?

Yes.

Wellllll.... in case you ever suspected otherwise... let me just confirm that you were right. Sometimes I have feared that my tantruming children are crazy enough to require a psychologist, but today I realized that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and it is actually ME who desperately requires a psychologist. The groundwork for today was laid when (a) I let the girls stay up way too late last night for our "movie night" - the one that involved non-green ice cream, (b) we all had to go to church early, for a series of obligations that would have been mortifyingly impossible for me to attend to had I made a certain embarrassing discovery a little earlier than I actually did, (but that's another story for another time - actually, one that will never appear on my blog. So far, the only people who know are my mother, my husband, and my friend down the street. If you really want to know, you can ask and I'll decide how close of friends we are), and (c) I took a nap today. A gloriously long one that left me groggy and disoriented and, unfortunately, grouchy. And we all know that it is a no-no to DARE to take a nap when you are the only responsible adult in a house that contains children under 6.

Now that the scene is set, here's how it all went down. I vaguely remember being awakened at some point by Brooklyn who had snipped the heel strap on her flip-flops with my kitchen scissors and wanted me to remove both straps. So in a delirium, I did, not bothering to ask questions. Later the girls joined me in the kitchen to bake bread, when I noticed some horrifying colorful marks on Brooklyn's dress. Similar marks on Kate's. I instantly knew exactly what had happened. I've fought those marks before and my hands still bear the scars from being soaked in Shout. Troy has also ruined SO. MANY. CLOTHES this way.

*Side story* Once my sister called me, when her husband was in Marine training, asking me if I knew of something more permanent than a Sharpie. He was spending unnecessary amounts of time every night re-Sharpie-ing (I have a degree in English that came with a license to make up my own words at will. Just take my word for it and stay with me here) his name onto all his uniforms and gear. Because he discovered, and I agree, that Sharpies aren't really that permanent! I didn't know what to suggest, though, and the need has since passed anyway. But now I can say I have found the MOST PERMANENT MARKING MATERIAL on the planet, and it is Expo dry erase markers.

I use them myself for my planner, and the girls have their own *WASHABLE* (repeat, washable - come on, guys, I'm not a total idiot) dry-erase markers. But NO! When Mom's asleep, there ARE NO RULES! I realized all in one instant that they had gotten ALL my non-washable markers out of my drawer to write on their bedroom window. This is usually permitted with supervision (and washable markers), so I can see where they figured they were just bending the rules. Anyway, that was the long part of the story. Let's shorten it here. I just lost it. It was the final straw for me and I freaked out at them, yelling about how I can't afford to buy them new clothes every time they want to color with markers and WHY CAN'T THEY just follow my rules the first time??? Then I discovered that they had demolished their bedroom, and oh look, my kitchen scissors on the floor. (The ones I'd just used to cut Brooklyn's flip flop straps while mostly sleeping.) They belong in the knife block. Yikes. So I added, "DON'T TOUCH THE KNIFE BLOCK, EVER!" to my long list of impossible rules. And while my girls sobbed and I railed (let me insert here that it's 75 degrees so all my windows are open. I guess my neighbors were merciful and didn't call child services), I realized how much that last comment of mine sounded like Rapunzel's mother in Tangled. You know, the evil, manipulative, self-centered hag? Yeah. Her.

But here's the thing. I just can't explain myself. And when I try, or even try to apologize, it turns into a defense of my actions, which then somehow turns around into "I wouldn't act this way if YOU GUYS didn't act that way," etc. Forget being the bigger person, or, heaven forbid, the ADULT, and behaving accordingly. Sometimes I'm the one acting like a 2-year-old. We were reading the scriptures later tonight, and Kate was reading and I was explaining the meanings of the hard words. Here's the verse:

 18 Now they did not sin ignorantly, for they knew the will of God concerning them, for it had been taught unto them; therefore they did wilfully rebel against God.

 Me: "'Ignorantly' - that's when you don't know what you're doing. They were NOT sinning ignorantly, so they knew that what they were doing was wrong! 'They did wilfully rebel' - they did it on purpose! They knew it was wrong but they did it anyway."
Kate: "What? That's not good! Why did they do it if they knew it was wrong???"
Me: "I don't know. They KNOW it's not okay and that they shouldn't do it, but they do it anyway. Kind of like... when I get mad and yell at you, or when you break the rules... We know we shouldn't but we just do it. Sometimes we can't help ourselves."

So that's it then. I'm human. I'm not making an excuse - I mean that I am being that "natural man" that we are meant to put off and to fight to keep from being. That's the hard part.  Well really, ALL OF IT is the hard part. My two favorite little sayings that I need to cutely stencil onto a hand-distressed piece of wood and put up somewhere around my house (or more realistically, write on a Post-it note. But hey, I can dream, can't I?) are these:

"I can do hard things"

and

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle"

Because guess what. Life is hard. And even when it's not dramatically, tragically, incredibly hard, it's still just less hard. For everyone, no exceptions. And it has to be that way, or we can't get any stronger, or wiser, or better. It's like when my girls do exercise videos with me (stop laughing and try to stay focused) and Brooklyn says, "My legs are tired!" or "My arms hurt!" and Kate says, "Brooklyn, you're SUPPOSED to get tired! That's why it's called exercise!" Of course it's not easy! Of course it kind of hurts!

But I firmly believe it is 100% worth it.

Maybe even 200%.

Congratulations on getting to the end of this novel of self-reflection. I didn't really expect anyone to read it... it's more my own journalistic musings. This is just cheaper than a psychologist. If you did read, you win a prize. Come to my house and I will give you a green mint chocolate chip cookie. Or a scoop of not-green thin mint ice cream, if you can make it here within the next 12 hours.