Oh, shut up! You're so annoying.

We don't say shut up at our house, but that's my favorite line from the first Madagascar movie. It makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it. King Julian is totally undone by Mort's constant badgering and that's his last ditch effort to get some peace and quiet.

For the past three weeks, I've felt like King Julian with 4 little Morts living in my house. I can't count how many times I've quoted King Julian in my head. The constant needing, constant touching, constant fighting over everything from who gets Wii remote number one to who's the smartest finally got the best of me. Christmas break was exhausting and some days down right Jack and Diet Coke worthy. But this morning, I kissed two of the four Morts goodbye at 7:33 and suddenly the world seems a little brighter.

I really do love my kids. There are moments where I'm so proud of them and catch glimpses of the hard work of parenting paying off. Moments when my kids stick up for a brother or sister to a bullying friend, or they play with the boy who is the class outcast. And I probably laugh harder with my kids than with anyone else. But, honestly, there are days where I just don't know if I can take hearing one more "Mom! Where's my.....Mom! can you get me.....Mom! Why does my butt have a crack?" Ugh, it just never stops.

Last week, I had just sent Jerod an email telling him that I didn't think I was cut out to be a mom of four. I was overwhelmed by all the demands, the talking, the laundry, the meals, the fannies to wipe. I hit send and stared at the computer with tears rolling down my face and I said a quick prayer that God would give me the grace to get through yet another day.

What I had missed while I was typing was that Jeb and Collins had begun to fight over a little Bakugan toy. Jeb had it first and Collins wanted it in a bad way....and with Collins, what baby wants baby gets. It was just a little "mine, no mine" tussle when I first looked over but it got ugly quickly. As I stared at the drama and tried to figure out what to do, two things went through my head...one, I just don't have the energy to handle this again...I'm just going to let them give each other their own consequences and two, letting this one go should at least be really entertaining.

Sure enough, Jeb and Collins end up wrestling on the floor over the Bakugan and at one point I'm 99% sure Jeb had Collins in a choke hold. And when the WWE wrestling is over, Jeb comes away with the Bakugan and starts to walk over to me to tell me all about the terrible brawl that just took place on the kitchen floor. Tears are streaming down his face and I can tell he's totally traumatized. Collins had disappeared, but I figured she just fled the scene. I was wrong. In pure Collins form, the next thing I know, she's rounding the corner, eyes wide and wild and her arm cocked back with a tennis racket in her hand. She's headed straight for Jeb, and poor buddy has no idea what's coming. She starts whacking him in the back and in her rage she hits herself in the forehead. Now they're both whaling and what's even worse is I couldn't do anything to help because their terrible mother is laughing so hard she can't even through her tears to comfort them. They just stared at me like I was crazy and eventually walked away to go play.

Jerod called right as all this all was ending. He had gotten my email and was calling to check up on me. I answered, but still couldn't really talk because I was laughing so hard. He asked how I was doing. I told him that after this good laugh I thought I was going to make it. He told me I was emotionally unstable. I laughed even more at that. Maybe I am, but I hung up and thanked God for giving me grace for the day even if it had to come through a good slug fest between two determined toddlers.