How is everyone’s summer going? I’m four days in and I must say, it’s a rough start.

I was kinda hoping once it started I would be pleasantly surprised. That all my anxiety about watching four boys all day long was just worry. Unfortunately the worry was justified.

As you remember we started the week with Jack and his chipped tooth.

Then the entire week was covered in thunderstorms. Which kept us indoors a lot. One morning we tried the Museum of Science and Industry.

I was scared to try something so big and open with four kids but Jack promised to help. And he did. In fact having four kids was not the problem at the museum. The problem was Ben’s constant tantrums. We visited the tractors, waiting in line for our turn to sit. When we got to the front, all four boys got in. But Ben didn’t want to sit with Sam. Ben only wanted Jack with him. When his request was denied, Ben had a violent, screaming, flailing tantrum that ended in my picking him up while Jack pushed the stroller. I carried him, kicking and screaming to the lunch tables where he refused to eat until he got to ride with Jack only in the tractor.

One of the many tantrums this week.

After the other kids were done with lunch I let Jack take Ben on the tractors. Then Jack picked the trains to see next. Ben said, “Noooooo, it’s lunch time!”

One day we packed up a huge picnic and lots of drinks and headed out to the Morton Arboretum.

We were rained out within an hour. It took longer than that to drive there and back!

We were home early enough to nap the twins. I still had a helper so with only two kids awake and two adults I took an hour off of the kids. I came back to find that Ben had soaked my entire bathroom in dirty toilet water. He was dunking our newly cleaned towels directly in the toilet that he had just peed and pooped in and was flinging it everywhere.

The next day we met up with one of Jack’s school mate for a play date at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

I didn’t realize it was a free day until after we made the plans. The free day made the usually quiet museum a madhouse. Watching all the kids was so stressful I sweat and yelled through the entire museum. The guard reprimanded Ben three separate times, and one time told him he would not be allowed in if he didn’t listen. I was secretly pleased and angry at the guard all at the same time.

Ben spent a large part of this museum visit sitting in a time out. At one point I looked around to see about three angry mothers yelling at him. He was hitting one of their kids. Ben can not keep his hands to himself and often mistakenly perceives the world is out to get him.

Once again I was greeted with the look of disgust from other adults. It is almost a given that I will get these looks when I take Ben anywhere in public.

Tomorrow is Ben’s one-on-one therapy session, and I think I need to talk to the therapist about his elevated bad behaviors. I’m getting to the point where I’m not parenting him, I’m simply surviving him.