I love my kids, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes they can just drive me insane. Like pull my hair out, crying in a corner kind of crazy. I like to think I have a lot of patience, but sometimes my little monthly visitor makes patience next to impossible for this mamma. It began early this morning, like before 7am early. Yes, I know for most families this would be considered sleeping in, but for us, that’s early. Gav woke up first and then woke up his brother. Ok. That’s fine, I asked them to keep it down for a little bit and let me wake up. I could hear my neighbor snoring so I knew I had to keep them quiet, no reason for us all to wake up too early on a Saturday. The quiet lasted for about 15 minutes before they got out their large trucks and began driving them everywhere in their room. It sounded like a real truck was driving around in there for all the noise they were making. Finally I got up because they just weren’t keeping it down so I brought them into the living room and made them breakfast. It was going good, they ate, they left to play in their room nicely…or so I thought.
They were destroying their room. Destroying. And the more I told them to clean, the messier it got. Here’s a little background info, we have been teaching the boys to clean up after themselves since they were very young. They have always had to clean their room and put their toys where they belong, and they know that the mess they make is their responsibility to clean. 95% of the time they play with something, put it back and get something else out because they don’t like to clean (I mean what boy does???). The other 5% of the time they cover every spare inch of their floor with toys, bedding, clothes, whatever they can get their little hands on. And WE always end up having to clean it up because at that point they need help.
I decided today I wasn’t having it. So I told them that if they want mommy to make them lunch and do things for them, they need to listen to me and help out. ALL they have to do is clean their room. It is almost 4:30pm and their room is no cleaner than it was at noon when I told them to start cleaning. Instead of beating my head against the wall and letting frustration get the best of me, I grabbed some fabric and set out to make myself a new mug rug.
I bought this Chevron print as a remnant a while ago at M&L Fabrics and thought it would be perfect to use on my mug rug. As soon as I started this project my stress and frustration slipped away. The kids were calm-not cleaning yet, but calm possibly because I was calm. So I kept sewing. And sewing. And asking the boys to clean. Of course every time I told them to clean so they could eat lunch they said “Ok mama!” And went to their room to continue making a mess. Yep. And so now I have a pretty new mug rug and I managed to keep my sanity.
Of course then I had to make some coffee so I could use it. Who am I kidding, I NEED that second pot of coffee. No nap and it’s getting close to the time when I have to make dinner and the kids STILL have not cleaned their room. I’m not a monster though, I did give them half a sandwich each to inspire them to clean. Have they cleaned since then? Nope. I know we are headed for a bumpy next couple of hours, crankiness is already starting to set in for both boys, no nap can do that to a kid. Maybe that just means I’ll have 2 mug rugs by the end of the day.
Tags: chevron, hand quilting, motherhood, mug rug, sewing
