Brr...in need of a warm up soon!

This frigid cold weather is making my family a little edgy. Not edgy in the sense where we're at each others throats, but for the lack of a better word we're just a little 'off'. It happens every winter, though. We prefer to stay snuggled in our nice warm house rather than venture out into the cold. Being cooped up in the house doing quiet activities such as reading, coloring, playing babies, cooking and the girls' favorite, watching TV, however, requires little or no physical activity at all. This leaves me with lots of tears and many hours of rubbing backs until my kids, who aren't really tired fall asleep somewhere between the hours of 9 and 10pm.

Last night Adam was able to come home early from work, just in time to help with our bedtime routine. I had the girls bathed, lotioned up, put in pajamas and teeth and hair brushed (and that was the easy part). Adam helped me tuck them in and rub their backs for over an hour before he forced me to take Alexa to our bed and he'd stay with Lillian. They would just NOT go to sleep. Lillian was playing games and rolling around all over the place. Alexa said she was trying to sleep, but couldn't because of all the noise Lillian was making. So, we separated them. Lillian started wailing at the top of her lungs, because unlike her loving, caring, nurturing mother who babies her too much, Daddy is sterner and means business. This is not a bad thing mind you, it's exactly what Lillian needs, or she'll walk all over us. Run, more like it. Alexa and I could hear her screams from the room next door, so of course, Alexa still couldn't sleep. She was using every excuse she could get to stay up with Mommy and Daddy. I was exhausted, so I wasn't going to give in. I lay right there with her and talked for awhile. She talked steady..saying something like this:

Mommy, I was thinking about this today; Grandma Linda doesn't have a doorbell on her house and Grandma Diane does, but it's broken, you can only see the strings (wires)...Mommy, When Matthew gives high-fives at school, he hits really hard and he even punched his sister Allison really hard in the back and he said that he can do it again if he wants to...and today when we were watching our movie after lunch, Sophia was sitting on my lap, but she kept moving around and I told her "Sophia, you need to sit still or you can't sit on my lap, ok" and she still kept sitting on my lap. Ms. Tracy always wants us to do our worksheets, but we didn't have pencils and she said we had to go find one, but I couldn't so that's why I just started to play with Alexis. But Alexis, sometimes she is really mean, she copy cats me and Yazzy laughs like this...HA HA HA HAAAAAAAHAAAHHAA, really loud. Mom, is Lillian going to ever stop crying? Mom, I want Papa...where is Chip?

I finally told her she needed to stop talking and we could continue the conversation tomorrow, it was late and she needed to get some rest. I look back on it now and think I could just listen to her voice and hear her talk all day, but at the time, when I know she needs to get to bed and I am running thru the list of things I need to get done in my head, I just lose my patience. I just need it to be at least 60 degrees out and sunny, so my kids can play outside, ride bike, go to the park, chase Chip around the yard and play with the neighbors, and then when it's time to go to bed, they actually want to.

Lillian eventually fell asleep and so did I, curled up next to Alexa.