What I Wore + Musical Mondays + What Happened??

Mass yesterday was...wow.  I don't even know how to describe it.  To start off, I misplaced this month's Magnificat, so we didn't read the readings together on the way to Mass as we usually do.  But that doesn't account for the craziness that followed.  Generally we have a bag of books about the Saints/Bible and some coloring books that we bring and the girls are pretty chill and read and color quietly for the most part.  I won't lie and say there are never disturbances, since our two year old hasn't quite figured out what we mean when we say to "whisper", but they are mostly pretty quiet and don't cause huge disruption.  Yesterday I felt like they had the wiggles.  And they all wanted to cuddle with me.  I am nearly 39 weeks along with #4 so cuddling with even one of them is a difficult at this point, but all of them were vying for my attention and lap (neither of which was really available since I was trying to pay attention to Mass and my belly is enormous).  And they fought over everything.  They all wanted to look at the same things or take something that someone else already had.  And our 2 year old just wanted to run around the church smiling, dancing, laughing, and getting attention from an adoring crowd, I think because she left the pew a few times and made a little scene in the aisle, laughing and talking before I could whisk her away for "a talk" in the crying room.

It was humiliating.  I often have moments where I want to shrink into a hole with the kids.  It's normal.  They do things here and there and test my patience.  I get it.  But sometimes they do it so much and so constantly that all the moments become a big, blaring experience, and all you can imagine is that the entire church is judging you for the horrible, no-good, very bad behavior of your small ones.  Did I mention I'm 39 weeks pregnant?  So when the kids behave a bit like hooligans, I feel even more judged because well, it rather seems I can't even control the ones already out of the womb.  What am I doing with another cooking in there?

Yes, I totally lost it.  During the last song, I stood there, silently crying, looking straight ahead, hoping that no one was watching.  I was a mess.  And I really never fully recovered yesterday.  My whole day was a bit of a funk.  We had some fun, and I wasn't crying and yelling at everyone all day or anything, but I was off, and I did spend a lot of time fuming and pulling apart from the hubby and kids because I was just DOWN.  So there's my confession.  I'm not telling you this so you can feel sorry for me.  If you have kids, you have been humiliated--in little spurts and in big ones too, so you have probably been right where I was.  But I believe in being honest, and every day of motherhood is not a fun trip to the park filled with sweet giggles and giddy laughter and hugs.  Some days it's mostly miserable and you just pray that bedtime comes quickly because you don't really have it completely together, and you need some time to yourself to just cry some more and tell God you are sorry for being so lame.

I didn't even get a picture of the Advent-appropriate-purple outfit I wore to Mass.  It was a pretty purple flowered empire waist dress with black accents, styled over black leggings and worn with sandals and a fancy necklace with lots of pearls, and it was pretty darn cute considering I'm largely preggo, but yeah, no pic.  Instead, I'll share the outfit I wore on Friday....because I did actually get some pictures of that.

      

What I Wore: 

Gray empire waist dress: Ross

Navy and pink leopard print scarf: Ross

Navy leggings: nomorerack.com

Gray boots: gift from the hubby

And because it's the Feast of the Immaculate Conception I thought I'd share a lesser known Marian song that I love, love, love.  We had this song at our wedding, and I sang it to our oldest very often in the wee hours of the night while I rocked her back to sleep as a little baby.  We didn't sing it much for several years, but fairly recently I taught it to the girls and now they can sing it, and we sing it at bedtime every night.  I will get a video of them singing it and share it soon, because it's precious, but here is a lovely version of it from youtube.

                            

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