Mama is tired.

Parenting is hard. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa, I know. It's wonderful and great and fun and life-changing, but it's also hard and tiring and heart-breaking. You know, since I have exactly 1 child, I'm total authority on the subject, right? This morning Ethan started crying at like 6 a.m. We brought him in bed with us (mistake) and I finally got up with him at around 6:45. I really would've liked to stay in bed for another 30 minutes or so. That would've been very, very nice. He had a nightmare diaper, complete with earth-tone colored poo (silty clay?) and highly offensive stank. He felt a little warm to me and his cheeks were flushed, so I gave him a dose of children's Motrin. He fussed over what to eat for breakfast. He wanted a waffle, then a quesadilla, then cereal, then a cereal bar, then peanut butter on graham crackers, then NO waffle, NO quesadilla, NO CEREAL NOPEANUTBUTTERNOGRAHAMCRACKERSGETTHEMOFFMYHIGHCHAIRNOW! So I decided to make him some whole-wheat pancakes, to which he happily agreed. I groggily mixed the batter, substituting cinnamon applesauce for the oil, and added it to the skillet in sleepy blobs. While they were cooking I wondered, why don't I cook breakfast more often? Why don't I cook more in general? I always wanted to be the kind of mom to prepare home-cooked meals every night. And I am clearly NOT that mom. I slid 2 pancakes onto Ethan's Winnie the Pooh plate, spread a little Smart Balance spread on them and poured on the syrup. I carefully cut each pancake into little squares, retrieved a kid fork from the drawer and stumbled over to his highchair. "Um, no pancake... I wanna waffle! Or quesadilla!" he exclaimed. THIS. This is exactly why I don't go to great lengths to prepare meals anymore. I brushed the pancakes into the trash with a sigh.

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4 weeks to go until my last day of work. 5 weeks until we're on the road! I can't tell you how excited I am to throw away half of our crap. Looking around I can name more than a handful of things we will NOT be taking with us back to Texas. Our house is tiny. Eensy weensy. So if we throw/give away half our stuff, packing up the other half should be a snap. My new mantra for life in Texas will be less is more. I want to simplify and downsize. Also, we have (counts on fingers) 5 televisions. How'd THAT happen?

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Bwa, hahaha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! (insert crazed laugh) I just finished cooking up the rest of the pancakes for Drew and myself, along with some turkey bacon, and OF COURSE the second I sit down with my plate, Ethan toddles over and says "Pancakes? I want pancakes!" He's on his second one now. Yeah, I was tempted to dig the two rejected pancakes out of the trash to feed him, but I didn't. Good mommy.