Exhausted.

This picture perfectly sums up how I feel right now.  I am exhausted.  Exhausted to the bone.  This homeschooling thing has been unbelievably difficult this school year due to juggling a very active 11/2 year old while trying to teach a 1st and 3rd grader who need lots and lots of help.  In addition to this consuming the first half of my day, we are now involved with afternoon activities every day Monday through Thursday and every other Friday.  So, we now have very busy evenings again complete with an activity, dinner, dishes, and bedtime.  By the time my head hits the pillow every night, I absolute crash.  In addition, Emmett does not sleep very well most nights and so I am woken up for several pacifier plug-ins and rockings in the recliner chair that cause me to wake up in the morning feeling very unrested and tired.  On top of all of this, I am still trying to do everything that I normally did to run a household that I used to do when I was at home for 6.5 hours a day with just one child.  I have really dropped very little from my life and the combination of all of the above have left me feeling totally drained and exhausted by this past Saturday when Emmett was woken up an hour into his nap due to the roofers nailing felt paper to the roof directly above his bedroom.  I tiredly left the project I was working on in the kitchen to go to his bedroom to rock him for a few minutes in the recliner in order to calm him down before I took him downstairs for his afternoon snack.  Much to my surprise, a few minutes later, Emmett fell back asleep.  After realizing that I would need to hold him for several minutes to get him to fall into a deep enough sleep to transfer him back to his crib, I decided to pull out the footrest of the recliner and just close my eyes.  Before I knew it, I had totally fallen asleep with my baby in my arms and didn't wake up until almost an hour later when the last roofer pulled out of our driveway in his loud, Diesel truck.  It was such a shock as I rarely ever take naps during the day and, when I do, it is a planned thing.  However, it was just the energy booster that I needed to get through the second half of busy Halloween evening.  As unflattering as this picture is that Ron took of me, I decided that I just had to include it in my blog as it perfectly sums up how I feel at this time in my life--exhausted and drained with two knee injuries that never seem to fully heal (as demonstrated by the knee brace on my right knee).  I am so grateful to be alive and to be a mom at this time in my life, but most days, I wonder if I will survive this pandemic due to the extra stresses and strains that it has put upon me.