I thought it was supposed to get easier!

Nathan is away again. I really shouldn't whinge because he hasn't had much travel this year and usually I cope really well. But this time he is away for longer and it is winter which means caged animals in our house! It ends up being a vicious circle here because they have plenty of sporting activities. Tuesday and Thursdays are tae kwon do, Wednesdays are footy training and Saturday brings two game of football. But when Nathan is away it is really hard to get them to everything and still make healthy meals. It ends up being one or the other so last week we had tae kwon do on Tuesday and Maccas and no tae kwon do on Thursday and 8 different types of veggies (including brussel sprouts which they love!) And whilst this sounds like an awesome compromise to me the boys don't agree! In fact Matthew believes Maccas is a well rounded meal, Mondays should be for hip hop dance lessons and Fridays for swimming lessons but he sticks to rest on the sabbath!
Even still its not our cracking schedule that gets on top of me when Nathan is away and its not even the boys fighting because the very rarely do! It is the stupidity! Those boys are seriously like speak no evil, see no evil and hear no evil! They are all in cahoots together and when Nathan is away it is three against one! And it's no surprise that the ring leader is Ben and boy can he whip his brothers into a stupidity frenzy!
After years of trying to protect them and telling them a bazillion gazillion times "if you do that someone will get hurt!' and the someone getting hurt anyway. I now have changed tact to "If you all get hurt doing stupid stuff don't come crying to me!" It still doesn't work because sure enough before too long some one is crying (usually Ryan!) and some one is apologising or running away (it is always one of the two and dependant on the severity of the injury!)
So whilst i have moved on from whinging about how hard it is to bath a baby, feed a toddler and contain a slightly bigger toddler while Nathan is away I am still whinging! The challenges have changed but they are still challenging! What gets me through is thinking about those who have it harder than I do. I have a friend who's husband is a pilot and he is always away, my sister survived her husband being away overseas and as my Mum and Nan say they both did it and survived! So I will just crawl back into my box and put the hospital on speed dial for the next stupid accident that occurs during a game of pillow wrestling! Only one more day to go until my amazing partner in all this insanity returns!