My good friends planned this weekend for me to bring the kids down and let their teens hang out with my kids while we went and had a girls’ day. We did pedicures, lunch, lounged by the lake, went for a walk, had dinner, and did some more walking. It was so thoughtful and gave my kids something to look forward to, which really helped them this week. Bev is doing better. Her crying isn’t every night and the grounding exercise is really helping. With Harvey it just depends on the day, and Max and Mav seem to be about the same. I feel like I’ve been doing pretty well over all with everything. It’s been busy and at times stressful, but I haven’t felt too down for too long. I probably did too much this week though, because I am really worn out. My therapist asked me to keep a log of my feelings. I realized at about day three that I was just feeling “tired.” I am probably expecting more out of myself than I need to do– getting projects done that had been on my list for a long time and didn’t necessarily need to be done right away, but those feel good to knock out… but I am also feeling soooo tired. Which is probably why I’m feeling kind of down today. Down and ornery with the kids. Which I don’t want because they have enough to deal with– they don’t need an ornery mom. But they were worn out too and didn’t get much sleep this weekend so there was a lot of whining on their part and some fighting… and even a biting incident…. so I know it’s not just me, but as a mom, it’s hard to be strong all the time. I gave myself a time-out this week. It gave me enough pause to figure out what I needed to do to address the issue my kids had caused. We talked, reset, and moved forward. I’m learning a lot, but sometimes growing pains aren’t fun.