Super mom....not quite.

This single parent season of my life is no cake walk. Some days I feel so strong and know with certainty that I can conquer the day and be an awesome mom. But lately that has not been the case. I am worn out and Ryan won't really be back in our lives until sometime around July 10th or so. He comes and goes, but when he's here it's mainly to sleep, eat and get some clean clothes. Ryan's work relocated this past winter and he has an hour commute (one way), so it just doesn't make sense for him to come home every night when he is working a 15 or 18 hour day. So we are missing him BIG TIME. McKenna sobbed when he left for work yesterday.

Will's been dealing with croup the last few nights and McKenna has terrible growing pains at night whenever she's had a day with lots of activity (Anyone have a kid with this problemo?? Ryan had them terribly as a child). So I'm not getting much sleep and you know how the end of the school year can be....I went on a field trip on Friday and helped out with Field day today...whew....I'm ready for summer.

Okay, this sounds like whining doesn't it. Well, I actually sat down to blog about something great that happened tonight. Christian & McKenna broke the hinges off our gate that blocks off the stairs. (Clearly this is not the good part). It was their fault. They disobeyed my instructions about not climbing over the gate, etc. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a gate that fits a banister without having to drill holes into it?? I created this gate contraption when we lived at our old house. I can NOT just go buy another one. The one I created cost a pretty penny by the time I was done buying this and that for it. So when the kids broke it, I was ticked. I lost my mommy cool, I was mad (especially since Will immediately took off climbing the stairs .... his favorite thing on earth) and they felt awful. We have two gates that are the same and they broke the hardware that came with one of them and I know we had hardware for the other one, but that was 6 years and one move ago. I had no idea where it was. If I could find those missing parts, I might be able to fix it. So at bedtime in my mean mommy voice I told them that they should pray about it.

Don't you know I walked through the pouring rain out to the shed and there were the missing hinges .... right there in the FIRST drawer I opened. I headed back inside, up to Christian's room and asked him if he had prayed about those hinges. He said he had prayed about it and I put the hinge in his hand.

Thank you Lord that when I'm having a tough night, you answered the prayers of a six year old and a four year old to prove to them that you are faithful. I think I needed the reminder too.