August 13, 2022 - Saturday




Ollie has been going through a terrible phase lately. It has grown from being a preference for mom to being an outright rejection of dad. I'm not talking about a minor thing. This is like, Ben isn't EVER allowed to care for her in any capacity. On top of that, he can't play with her or talk to her either. He says he loves her and she says, "Me no love you." He says bye and she just turns her head and looks the other way. He's constantly trying to do things to remind her that they had a really fun relationship just a month or two ago and she just ignores him or screams at him. It's been hard for me to have all of the responsibility for Ollie again (not Ben's fault!!) and it's been hard to watch Ben's feelings being crushed, but it's been INCREDIBLY hard for Ben. She is SO MEAN to him. SO freaking mean. It's just been going on and on and on and he's feeling worse and worse and worse. I can't leave her with the sitter, or at Oasis, or even with Ben, without a complete meltdown: screaming like she's being murdered, tearing away from anyone who tries to hold her back, running towards the door I left out of, clawing at it, banging on it, trying to escape from it. How am I going to take her to school in a couple of weeks? It's so expensive. 😩 If she won't go, it's going to be such a waste of money. Mom x4 and still, no experience with this. Each kid just brings new challenges to face and I have no idea how to handle this properly!

Life goes on, though, and this weekend we decided to camp in the backyard to practice for camping next month. We set everything up and had a really nice day. We ended up taking the kids to the carnival down the street for a bit too. It was pretty cool and cloudy. I couldn't have asked for better weather for a day outside! Jonas actually hung out with his friend Nathan there. We ran into them, but he wasn't really *with* us. So weird to have a kid this old! When we got back, we sang karaoke, grilled dinner, and had s'mores around the fire. Nighttime went much better than I expected. The kids all fell asleep and stayed asleep all night long. It rained for hours and hours and the tent didn't leak. Hooray! Ben slept pretty well and I slept relatively badly. But since I've been sleeping so horribly lately anyway, it didn't feel much worse. 








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