Oh, fishing. What a way to unwind. That is something I am going to have to work on. Going alone. Will be weird doing something I love so much and freaked at the same time. Will get there.

Today not so bad even with kids not having school. Was feeling the effects of not taking all my medicine yesterday today. I knew I would. Just very jittery and jumpy for a while with some good afternoon anxiety. And as I was trying to get the girl to go to bed she pops off "you want me to go to bed?" Uhhh yes... Me? Looking at me like I told her to go paint the damn house. Hubs finally said yes you go to bed. Past the bed time so I have no clue what she was thinking.

I was on here about an hour ago and the girl did something stupid. Common sense thing. Anyway the 2 yo ended up with a purple lip because she picked her up by her pant waist band, so of course 2 yo flips over and face in the floor. What in the hell goes through her mind that what she does is a good idea sometimes?

Baby crying in my lap hubs getting the ice pack out and I felt like someone just flipped the room upside down. I have gotten "head rushes" a lot but this was off the charts and so sudden, I swear my brain felt like it did a flip. So panic attack commensed. Hubs talking me through, you have had these you know what they are, blah blah.... But damn it was a good one that just blind sided me. I guess my day had just been a little more of a strain than I thought.

I did cook tonight (yeah) But I was very annoyed with getting in there. It was such a simple meal to prepare but I was getting so confused trying to do it. I mean it was taking real thinking power to comprehend how to make frigging instant rice! But I did it, just a long day.

my day was awful, i guess it was just my turn. been a while. i've been getting to school late for the last 2 wks, just can't get going. no sleep, so tired. we had a test today, so i gave the test and pretty much let them play the rest of the day(I know, i know, bad teacher) while i put my head down on my desk just to try and keep things out of my head.. had to escape the lunchroom, as it seemed extra noisey today. i just wanted to crawl in a hole somewhere and at least pretend to sleep.lol . extra jumpy today, shakey too. i just went off lexapro and am wondering how much of this is from that.

Vieled,

Question... How old is the older girl?

Veiled,

I am hearing your pain. Caught the teenager throwing a little but still quite hard soccer type ball at the toddlers head not so long ago. I am talking directly at his head, right above his eyes. When he was told to stop being so bloody stupid he had the audacity to question me stopping him from doing that "I always throw the ball at his head'........'no you don't champ'. He is a baby for crying out loud. Teenager just can't seem to cope sometimes with the fact that life does not revolve around him but, generally around the smallest common denominator - being the toddler. Like I keep telling him, he chose to come with us and he knew that there was a baby in the house. Tough. He, like everyone else has to make adjustments. Thinks its bad now, wait until there is two of them. A newborn and a toddler. Better yet, like I told him the other night when this little one is one year old there will be two toddlers in the house. Teenagers, I would still like to drop them on another planet or island or at least on their ass occasionally.

13 thinking she is 26... Hormones took over and she has lost her mind. She wasn't always an idiot. Normal teen thing there. Also, battles as she is cocky now that she is bigger than me. She sometimes forgets I am meaner and not beyond cheating.

2 days ago the baby was on the blanket, she was tugging it, innocent enough. The baby was having fun and then she just yanked the hell out of it out from under her and baby flies backwards hitting her head... Another what in the hell are you thinking? Maybe I should be counting pills in my bottles and making sure they are all there... My lord, it is a toddler! And she does it right in front of me. Baby had been in her room playing and her sis and younger big brother in there with her. She comes out crying after I hear a thud, saying she had pushed her off the bed. This week too...

All I know is this little one is getting where she can handle a lot and I really feel sorry for them when she gets a little older. A couple years ago she was mean to her little bro. He never hit back because she was a girl and boys don't hit girls, and boy did he want to. When he was six and her 11 I told her to cut the shit out, she kept kicking him. I told her you are going to be sorry when I tell him he can go right back after you. After seeing a kick in the back that was unwarranted I asked him you want her? He said can I? By the time that mess was done she was locked in a closet screaming for me to make him stop. Hasn't touched him since and I told him back to the old rules. Not a hand laid on each other in 2 years. He was half her age and size. She can be a bit of a bully.

I read somewhere once, that teenagers and toddlers were very similar. Obviously a teenager has had more learning experience but they are going through similar emotional stuff. They have to grow up and become their own person. Separate from their safety net (parents) and learn to think for themselves. It is SCARY. Even if they don't tell you that.

And these days being a teenager is... oh geez, I don't know. How often do we hear about someone shooting up a school. Imagine getting up and going to school and not knowing if you will come home. Their worlds are filled with violence, sex (little girls become mothers, little boys get status from making those babies), and drugs. It is everywhere and they can not get away from it. Even if their home life is all apple pie then their friend down the road is getting hit or abused or is a crack head or a teenage mom. It is on the news, on the internet, in their video games.

I work in a convience store. You would be surprised at the amount of young people who come in trying to buy alcohal or tobacco. Last night this kid came in. He had turned 18 like two hours before and wanted to buy his first legal pack of smokes.

He said he was not a smoker, but that everyone had to start sometime. I told him to come back and tell me that when he is hooked up to an oxygen tank. But he completely did not get it. And he won't until he is hooked.

They still have not developed impulse control which would be why they do stupid things like throwing soccer balls at the heads of their younger siblings or flipping them over and busting their lips on the floor.

And all of the stuff that the parents are going through affects them. A parents PTSD would affect them.

I am not trying to say that they should not be held accountable for their actions. Just that we should all remember that they are big kids not little adults.

Please try to remember how much you love them and that your world would be a much emptier place withhout them in it. Then make sure they know that.

Wow... now that is some food for thought. Thanks Jet for shareing your knowledge and experience...

My teenager just drives us both nutty at times... yet I am already nutty enough... :)

Oh yeah, he's way bigger than me but there is more than one way to skin a cat. He will get his just desserts one day soon too, he's going to gob off to the wrong person and then it will be all over flat on his ass. In fact, I can see him and the toddler going a round or two one day and it will serve him right. I plan on putting the little one into marshal arts when he is a bit older. He also is going to be quite big and I am not into him being a bully or using bullying behaviour just because of his size. I figure the discipline of marshal arts might just balance all of that out. Unfortunately for the teenager, his size and his maturity haven't caught up with each other.......add to that mix a good overdose of testosterone and he's worse than a girl with PMS!!

Thanks for that Jet. Still want to strangle him somedays. I do understand that any of the house issues will affect behaviour.........just a bit harder from a step-parent perspective. Moods are all over the shop and hard to reinforce boundaries that he has never really had before. Your comparision between teenagers and toddlers is so apt, you should see them have a temper tantrum one after the other. If it didn't annoy the hell out of you, you could almost bust your sides laughing at the similarities.

started a rl diary. Is interesting.

Not sleeping, grumpy and taking it out on everyone around me.

Not even the sleepers are working

Other then that, no panic attacks today and I cut my hair (rather the hairdresser cut my hair)