My mother and I were dying to see a movie and although I thought that Pulp Fiction was a brilliant film, I was not in the mood for the violence in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Instead we went to see The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Time is something that I have not been able to grasp onto lately. The children are growing like weeds and even though I long ago gave up on trying to get the recommended eight hours of restorative sleep, I still do not have enough time in my day to accomplish everything I would like to.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I wrote about joining Eric Bullock’s boot camp and now tomorrow is my last day. I did it! I got up at 4:45am and went to boot camp five days a week for one month. Ok, maybe I missed one day but that was just because I broke my toe the day before. My new strength got the best of me as I zealously tried to make a goal while playing football barefoot with the boys, minor setback.

So what can I report from my experience? Well, I know that my family enjoys my elevated mood level as do I and I am loving my new strength. My daily tasks have gotten so much easier for me and I am less tired.

As I ran through the ranch fields the other day I felt as though I could have run forever with the morning sun warming up my body. I listened to the song “Hallelujah”, by Rufus Wainwright, and tears came to my eyes. Life was good.

Yoga helps me to recharge my spirituality and brings peace to my hectic life but I have enjoyed mixing my training up a bit with the daily strength and conditioning classes. I have learned that through a healthy diet and proper cross training I am much more tolerant and present with my children.

Just the other day I took Axel and Tucker to our favorite park that looks like the field in  the PBS show Teletubbies. We played football and explored the man made tunnels for hours.

As we sat in the middle of a tunnel Tucker asked if we were really in Teletubby world and Axel and I smiled at each other with our  secret. I suddenly felt sad that I had wasted so many precious moments with my boys by being too fed up and tired to play with them. I happily soaked up their love.

As my last week of boot camp comes to an end I wonder if I will miss this new schedule of waking up before the crack of dawn.  I have no doubt that I will enjoy the extra sleep but I will most definitely miss the consistent training.

It has been very rewarding for me to mix up my life a bit and commit to a goal and now I feel prepared to take it to the next level. I am excited to see where all of this will take me and I look forward to letting you in on all the secrets…except for the photos.

I have been missing my children even though I see them every day. They want me to make money but do not like it when I am holed up in my office writing. They want their mommy back and I need them as well. I have watched them become needy, sullen and more mischievous because they are not getting my full attention. Axel is slowly turning inward and living more and more in his own dream world and Brevitt follows me around the house talking to me as I do my chores.

Yesterday, I put everything down and focused on my little Tucker. We sat at the breakfast table with the sun pouring in and watched all the beautiful birds outside. This conversation ensued:

Tucker: “Mommy, who lives in the treehouses? I mean bbbird houses? Are the bluebirds still there?”

Mommy: “No, the swallows have moved in”

Tucker (wide eyed & teary): “They swallowed the blue birds?”

Mommy: “No, the birds that moved in are called swallows.”

Tucker: “So…I’m going to look in the bird house and the birds are going to hit me in the face!”

Mommy: “How are they going to hit you?”

Tucker (with arms out like airplane wings): “With their wings and than I’m going to fly in the sky with them.”

Mommy: “Do you know that you are my little Owl?”

Tucker: “No I’m not, I’m Tucker. Owls have dirty feet.”

We went up to Aspen and played soccer in a field. How nice it was to have the sun on our faces as we wrestled each other to get the ball. Every few minutes I would tackle him to the ground and play Brevitt’s favorite game with him where I ask, “What Day is it Today?” Knowing that he will get a raspberry on his belly he names a fruit. Whichever fruit he says determines where the raspberry will be applied. When he replies, “No day” than the game is over.

Somebody mentioned to Tucker that people die when they reach 100 years old. We had to tenderly answer all of his questions as his eyes filled with tears. This has led to at least one question a day about death. I see him thinking with his head cocked to one side and then he will say something like, “When we die the sand will still be at the beach.”

I am very straightforward with my children and try to go into depth about any topic that they are interested in. We are their teachers after all and the deeper I can explain things the more they will understand life. The topic of death always stumps me. How does one tell a four year old that life does not go on forever and that we all die at some point? The other difficult topic is marriage. When Axel first learned that children leave their parents for college and than get married and live with their own family he cried and cried for days and told me that he wanted to marry me so that he would never have to leave me.

Tucker rarely gets to watch TV but is somehow obsessed with Teletubbies. At any given moment he will start the Teletubby laugh and his brothers will join in. Inevitably, the laughter will escalate into unstoppable giggles. While skiing the other day Tucker spotted Tinky Winky on skis and he was elated. When we got down from skiing we sat on a bench next to a teenager with green hair. Tucker excitedly asked if he was a Teletubby, thankfully he didn’t ask if he was Tinky Winky. Brevitt and Axel loved that even though they were thoroughly mortified.

They all get confused by time never really knowing what day it is. Tucker asks, “When is it going to be tomorrow? I know, after all the other days it will be tomorrow.” He also gets confused with age and size, “When I was big I’m going to be smaller.” Half the time none of us know what he is talking about although his brothers are usually more clued in then his parents.

He is growing up but he still gets his words confused. He woke up the other morning and asked if we were going to “Fantosco” (Costco) or he tells me to be careful because his art piece is “Very Fragical.” He has just learned about rhyming and excitedly states that “O rhymes with no and X-Games rhymes with the F-word” (we were all stumped by that one). We are just waiting for him to say, “Tucker rhymes with……”

We all think that he is going to be our little comedian but currently we are not allowed to laugh when he is funny or he will cross his arms angrily, stick his tongue out and become very naughty. When he was eating a strawberry he said, “Look it has a butt crack.”

My friend Stephanie has a stunning little girl named Lindsey and she and Tucker have become the best of friends. After a play date Tucker walks around the house singing “I feel wonderful as can be.” I think she is his first crush and boy does he get silly around her. She tells her mommy that he is, oh so very chatty!

It is so difficult to try to feed one’s creative side and raise a family. I am determined to better juggle my time between my family and my writing so that everybody is happy. After all, if I don’t tune in I am missing great material. They work together and somehow I must find that balance.

Yesterday after four hours of sleep I woke up ready to kill and eat anybody who crossed my path. Unfortunately for me it had snowed nine inches the night before and Wade was chomping at the bit to plunge into the untracked powder. His plan was to ski in the morning and than hook up with the boys and I at the mountain at lunchtime. He ignored that my hair was larger than usual and that my fangs were extracted. I wanted to scream to him, “Don’t leave me alone with the boys! Can’t you see that it is that time of the month annnnnd it’s a full moon? I’m not capable of handling this day”.  Instead I growled goodbye. He took the cue fleeing as fast as he could before I could become a heaving lump of disgrace at his feet.

When Brevitt’s friend was dropped off  later in the morning, I poked my head out of my office. “Don’t worry”, I assured the dad, “I will get out of my pajama’s, get my head out of these boxes of photographs and love letters from all of my ex-boyfriends and take the boys skiing”. He looked at me incredulously, unaware that I had become a Blogger and was deeply immersed in writing my story of “ALL MY X’S”.

I somehow gathered myself together and loaded up the boys and all of our equipment into Vini-Man. Tucker, who I believe is still biologically connected to my moods, was being extremely sensitive and needy. If I looked at him cross-eyed he would melt into a puddle and tell me that he needed a hug. He ran off as I wrestled with all of the equipment that kept bonking me on the head. I let out a string of unacceptable expletives and miserably began my search for him. I found him lying on his back in his freshly washed ski clothes, in the middle of a mud puddle. He had overheard me ranting and repeated my words back to me verbatim. I hoped that the surrounding families did not turn me in to social services.

I finally managed to get the boys all into the ski line when I realized that my ski ticket was no longer valid. Too late, the boys were already on the lift. I turned around and in disbelief saw Wade quietly standing there watching the whole debacle. “You’re on” I said and walked away. Wade was refreshed and ready to take on anything that I threw his way. I plugged in my ipod and skinned up the mountain. Slowly my complex beastly layers melted away.

An hour and a half later I returned to the family. They recognized me as their beloved mother and wife sans fur on the back of my hands. Wade knew not to bring up my bad behavior and I apologized for being psycho mom. The boys forgave me and climbed into my lap.

Tonight, I will try my best to get a good night’s sleep and not let the moon reak havoc on my temperate again. Hopefully, I will not wake up to a pile of bones laying next to me and human hair between my teeth.

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