My blogging hiatus, partially explained

So some of you might have noticed that I haven't posted very consistently for a few months now. I've been considering why I haven't, since I didn't make a decision one day to up and stop. Partly I just didn't for awhile, and then inertia took over, and I kept not posting. But partly it is some ambiguity I've been feeling about the purpose of this blog. See, I'm not especially inclined to post my deepest trials and dark parts of my soul on, you know, the internet. Which leaves the happier parts of my life, of which there are many, to write about. (And we all know you don't really come to read about me, you want more cute boys! You just put up with my ramblings as the price of admission.) So mostly I write cute little things that the boys do, and the fun stuff our family does, and some thoughts I have about books I've read or whatever. But this is, of course, only part of the story, and sometimes it is such a small part that it sort of got to bothering me. Take this picture, for instance:

A few weeks ago the boys and I went to Balboa Park for free museum Tuesday. We had a snack by the fountain, and went through the Natural History museum where Joseph was fascinated by a dinosaur skeleton and some stuffed birds, and through the Railroad Museum where Joseph loves watching the model trains chug by and Caleb loves climbing up and down the little viewing platforms. It was a nice morning. But then Joseph didn't nap, and was completely out of control all afternoon, and things got more and more frustrating and annoying, and by late afternoon I totally snapped and literally ran screaming into my room so I wouldn't hit or say something horrible to my children and slammed the door and cried hysterically for a few minutes, and then felt much better. (Actually, after a few minutes Joseph came into my room and looked at me sympathetically and said that sometimes he feels frustrated too, which was so sweet it cancelled out a lot of his other annoyingness that day.) But this clearly was not one of the high points of my mothering. And that night I just couldn't stomach writing a cute anecdote about the day, because even though we had a nice morning, we had such an awful afternoon. But do you really want to read about these low points? How about if they happen just about every day for awhile? And even if you did, I'm not really sure I want to write about them, like, every day, because they can be pretty sad for me. Being a mother, at least of small children, is often just completely demoralizing. A few weeks removed a story can almost seem funny, like a few weeks ago I was sick and felt rotten and exhausted all day, so finally the boys seemed to be contentedly playing and not even aware of me, so I thought maybe I'd just lay down for a few minutes with no one the wiser. Twenty minutes later I walk out to the boys pulling all the water jugs out from under the sink (not allowed, but not too bad.) Then I turn the corner and it was like walking into a movie set. A whole package of goldfish (the snack crackers, not real goldfish like one friend thought) were scattered and crushed all over the carpet, the phone was hanging off the hook, apples and pears were smashed and smeared all over the kitchen floor, DVDs (borrowed) were strewn about in the mess, a mop was broken in the living room, the clothes drying rack was stretched out like a ladder up to the counter, and Joseph casually said, "Caleb fell off the stove." (!!!!!!!) I mean, the mess was overwhelming and depressing, but worse was the cold, hard reality that these were my children that I was somehow turning into complete terrors. It is sort of funny, but still not that funny to me, you know?

So anyway, the long and short of it is that it's been a tough couple of months kid-wise. A lot of days I cried a lot, and I didn't really feel like posting about it. But the last while's been better, so maybe it was just a difficult phase. Actually, lately Joseph's been taking naps more often, which is the answer to everything. Why he stopped taking naps for awhile is beyond me, but he's started again. Well, that was probably more than you wanted to know... Maybe not, since I know a lot of people who read this love us all a lot. But maybe it is more than I want to post on the internet, but I think I will anyway.