There might be a silver lining at the end of the tunnel........

But it's sure as hell obscured by all the crap they and life tend to throw at you in the meantime.

Kids are great, I love mine more than the air I breath.  However, they are surely out to get me.  I'm seriously convinced.  Once we get in the car, the kids that were just behaving as angels turn into bickering old people in the back.  It's as if one cannot hear the other, more like perfecting the art of ignoring them, and the other then becomes irate, and for a kid under ten that's sad, and either hits or screams.  This in turn makes me lose my mind completely, more and more every day and any time we get in the car.  And just before all the hair on my head turns completely gray and thins out entirely, they return to being their perfect beautiful selves and leave me heaving with confusion and anger.

How does this happen?  I ask myself more or less every time.  My son has gotten so good at pushing my buttons I don't even know what to do with myself, the hunter has officially become the hunted.  He's got me in his sights and there's not a dam thing I can do about it but hope and pray that I live long enough to see his children do the same shit to him as he's done to me.

Now my daughter on the other hand, she's an angel of course, with only a few minor flaws.  One of which is being a night owl, which is great, but when your four year old comes stomping into your room at 1 am, saying she's not tired and she's bored, you tend to lose your mind.  Not only does she run like a thundering heard of buffalo through our hallway, but she slams the door open in such a fashion that leaves my heart racing thinking that someone is bashing my door in to come and get me.  That's her gift, getting my heart rate to marathon level, and then thundering back to bed without saying two words.

I know I cannot be the only parent going through this.  I know people who have more kids than me, who knows how, and when I hear that their kids are in bed by seven or eight, I want to rush over and ring the doorbell obnoxiously until the whole house is awake.  It's unreal.  I know others that have kids the same as I do, more often than not great kids, but when it's their turn, they're leaving their parents in mass hysteria.

Everyday I pray to have the endurance and the ability to deal with them and handle their stuff.  I'm going to look back at these times and hope that I remember the good times and push deeper the times I wanted to tear my head off when their in one of their moods.