MyColdCoffee.com"I don’t have a problem with caffeine. I have a problem without caffeine!" -Author Unknown

Never listening to my husband again!  Having kids close together so they go through their phases close to each other is not a good idea at all, honey!  Good thing we are not having any more kids!  Oh my goodness, so my son is about to be three and my daughter is about to be five!  What I am about to be faced with is going to be insane!  A five year old who likes everything done her way and a three year old who wants to do everything by himself and have all the attention!  WOW!  Not ready for a five and three year old!

When my husband and I started talking about having our second child, I told him I was not ready for another little one.  Our daughter was still battling reflux and not sleeping through the night and the thought of having two little kids waking up constantly during the night just didn’t appeal to me!  But, he prevailed and now we have our wonderful son.  But, neither child sleeps through the night and both have gone through the hell known as reflux!  Whether it’s a nightmare or a wet diaper, they are up and down all night long!  I told you honey!!!!

Our daughter was horrid during her three’s!  I have tried to suppress those memories of her during that year!  Now, I’m faced with our son going through that phase!  Oh, man….maybe he’ll be better!  All I can do is try to be as understanding as possible, take deep long breathes, and spend plenty of time out of confined spaces!  Right now, he’s in the jumping phase!  Anything this boy can climb on, he is going to jump off of with amazing air time!  He has never had a fear of anything and that scares me!

Our soon-to-be 5 year old, is a whole other story!  I have no idea what I am going to do!  She already talks like a grown-up and tries to act like one too!  She already wants to put on make-up whenever she leaves the house.  Oh, she has a little boyfriend!  Yes, she is four and already she has a crush on a six year old!  When we tell her we are going over to his house, she has to plan and coordinate her outfits, she has to paint her nails to match her outfit, and she has to wear her hair down!  We are going to be in so much trouble when she is a teenager!

No matter when we had a second child, there would always be a phase they are going through.  Kids move from one bad phase onto the next phase that’s going to drive me crazy!  And, even though they drive me crazy sometimes and our house is always a mess and always chaotic, I love my children and my husband with all my heart and wouldn’t change a single moment with them.  My husband and our kids are without a doubt the best thing that has ever happened to me!

I have no idea what the government officials in Richmond are thinking, cutting the most important programs and giving that money to programs we can do without!  Right now in Virginia, the government has cut funding for programs such as mental health and education.

We received a letter from my daughter’s school the other day.  It basically was informing us that the school would be facing a $5 million deficit next school year.  They wanted parental input regarding which programs would be cut next year.  Now, that is sad!  Then I heard on the news that the government was cutting funding to mental health institutions.  Why are they picking on the people that need the help the most, the ones that cannot help themselves?

Education should be the very last program to face budget cuts.  They are already working with very little and now they have to find a miracle to keep our children educated.  Teachers are going without a pay raise again this year.  Most teachers in the current school system have never seen a pay increase, not even cost of living increase.  I understand the economy is difficult right now, but teachers are the single most important people on the planet.  They are responsible for educating the future leaders of this country.  Teachers have to work in cramped trailers and overcrowded classrooms with very little to no money to help them.  Our teachers have to ask parent’s for supplies for the classroom because there is no money for paper towels!  How sad for our children.  We may not fully understand the impact these cuts will have on our children and their education, but there will definitely be negative consequences.

Speaking of sad, cutting from mental health programs?  Come on!  What are the government officials doing in Richmond?!   They are going to cut funding to mental health facilities which house mentally ill patients who cannot take care of themselves and whose family can no longer help them.  What are they supposed to do?  The mental health program provides aid to parent’s who can no longer take care of their special needs children or the parent’s have passed away. The program provides vital care for those individuals who cannot help themselves, how can the government just take that funding away from them and still sleep at night?

I know the government is a complicated system, but I’m sorry, there is nothing complicated about keeping funding for the programs that are actually needed by individuals who cannot help themselves.  I just cannot understand what the officials in Richmond are thinking.  Do they not know someone who has benefited from one of these programs?  Have they really been out of the education system that long that they forget how important these programs are to the people they represent?  I believe all the elected officials need to take a week and actually go back to school!  They need to sit in a classroom and see how the teachers struggle to educate the students in an overcrowded classroom, with little or no money, and with old or out dated classroom material.  They also need to visit the mental health facilities that will be affected by the budget cuts and talk to parents and patients about the impact these programs have had and the potential devastating affects the cuts will have on their lives.  The officials need to be made aware of what they are cutting and the horrible impact the budget cuts will have on everyone!

My kids are driving me crazy!  I’m seriously losing my mind!  I mean after child birth twice and all the sleepless nights….there’s really not a lot of sanity left anyway!  I’m tired of the screaming, fighting, and yelling.  The constant nagging and whining is enough to make the rest of my brown hair grey! It doesn’t even matter what time of the day it is…my kids wake up whining!  I am so sick of all the nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong…I love my children with all my heart and I would lay down my life for them without hesitation!  Just please stop the insanity.  And, one more thing….I hate it when other mom’s tell you that it will get better!  They are so lying because it really doesn’t….they move on to something else that’s driving you nuts.  It’s the circle of insanity!  I swear, no one ever told me before I got pregnant about all the sleepless nights, the whining, the nagging, the biting, the hitting, the fighting, the yelling, the screaming, the pulling out your hair because you can’t have a single moment to potty without a kid coming in the bathroom yelling about something!  It’s never ending!

This is by far the hardest job I have ever had.  I have never worked so hard and been so exhausted at the end of the day…and you know what?  My day never ends because the kids still need me in the middle of the night.  I’m a mom 24/7.

Is the coffee ready yet?  That’s pretty much the first words out of my mouth every morning.  It’s hard having kids that don’t sleep.  We have a four and two year old that both have trouble sleeping through the night.  The four year old always wants to climb into our bed to fall back asleep and when you’ve been up three times already with the two year old, it’s very easy to just give in and have her climb in and fall immediately to sleep.  The two year old wakes up several times during the night and you have to rock him for about 45 minutes to get him asleep well enough to lay him down and get out of the room without him noticing that you have left him.  But, now that’s changed and he wants to sleep in Mommy’s bed.  It’s crazy with him because he doesn’t have separation anxiety until night time.  He does great when I leave him with a sitter or at mother’s day out, but don’t think for a minute he will be happy sleeping without being rocked and sung to sleep with a nice warm cup of chocolate milk.  Yeah, chocolate milk!  The only way I was able to pull him off breast milk!  We tried everything from soy milk to goat’s milk, and it always ended up with a cup flying across the room!  But getting back to the sleep issue!

Both children have the same bedtime ritual every night.  Nothing usually changes unless we are out of town.  But, we settle them down with clean up time, and then it’s a long bath, followed by at least seven books.  We brush teeth and settle down into bed. We say prayers and then I sing softly to them every night.  My daughter, the four year old, usually falls asleep first.  So, when she falls asleep I take my son, the two year old, to his room and rock and sing him until he is asleep.  If I try to lay either one of them down without singing to them and making sure they are asleep first, they will not go to sleep.  Not to mention the screaming and fits that proceeds.  The doctors told us to let them cry it out!  YEAH RIGHT!  That does not work with my kids.  They don’t give up that easily!  The two year old will cry to the point of vomiting and not being able to breathe.  My daughter will scream and cry and run out of her room, stomping and refusing to lie down in the bed!  They can both do this for hours!  It’s insane!

So, every morning I wake up with at least one child if not both in the bed with me!  This is after only four to five hours of sleep and not consecutive either! Did I mention they don’t nap?!  So, I need strong coffee to help me survive the day.  Most of the time I get a few sips in before it’s freezing cold!  It’s a luxury to drink hot coffee.  When I do get an opportunity to have an entire cup of hot coffee, I count my blessings and just relish in the moment because that’s all I have…a moment then its complete chaos!