Aimless Post

Just feeling the desire to write just for the sake of getting thoughts out of my head.  Not too sure the direction that this post will take, so I apologize in advance for the tangential nature of it.

Life is generally pretty good right now but there are definitely some aspects of it that are challenging.  Parenting Mara is tough at times.  She's very smart, very verbal and very strong-willed.  She has a mind of her own and it's very hard to get her to come away from an idea when she's fixated on it.  Unfortunately, this shows itself in behaviors that are often dangerous, such as running into the parking lot, trying to climb down cement stairs on her own or investigating the dogs' buttholes while they're eating.  (It's a bad idea to investigate dogs' buttholes at any time, but it's an even worse idea when they're eating!)

She also has a TON of energy.  Which is great, because that can be really fun.  But sometimes when I'm tired and just not feeling good, I just want her to take a NAP ALREADY.  And some days, like yesterday and today for example, she just won't.  And that's really hard because for one thing, I get zero mental or physical breaks when she doesn't nap (on the days when she's not at preschool that is) and for another thing, when she doesn't nap she turns into a SuperCrab.  So that's fun. 

Not.

As I mentioned before, she's very verbal for a child her age.  And this can present in some really humorous ways.  Case in point, yesterday I was on the phone with my mom and Mara and the dogs were running around doing stuff.  I had just had Frank (new puppy, almost 9 weeks old) outside for nearly 10 minutes trying to get him to potty and he just would not.  So I brought him back in where he was gallivanting around the house with Mara and Abby, having a grand old time.
 After a minute, Mara came running up to me saying, "oh god, oh god, oh god.  Wipes.  Wipes."  
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
"Wipes, wipes," she said again, pointing to the living room... where Frank had peed.

LOL!  I had to laugh about that one.

Speaking of Frank, bless his little heart, he is the cutest thing ever.  He is just so clumsy!  He's got these giant paws that he trips over, these huge ears that flap all over the place when he runs, and a little tail about 2 inches long that wags like crazy when he's excited, which is basically all the time.  I love him!  He's doing okay with the potty training.  He's not as quick a study as Abby was, but he's a bit faster than Jax.  Bless Jax.. I miss that goofy guy.

Mara has a cold... again.  Swear to God... I cannot even handle this.  When she's sick she sleeps like shit, which means we ALL sleep like shit.  And we were already sleeping like shit because Frank has to go out to potty twice in the night and I always have to get up by 6:00am in order to get everything squared away before my classes in the morning.  And speaking of classes, I've taught 7 classes in 5 days this past week.  Plus running base miles 2 of the 5 days.  And that's after teaching 8 classes in 7 days last week.  I am POOPED.