Are we in the trenches?

Or are we in the dumps? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Joss has had good days and bad, good nights and bad, but it seems that no matter which it's been, the parents are not getting up and taking care of the kiddies in the morning. Today, for example, I was able to keep him asleep until 10:00am, and hence I slept until 10:00am when a deeprooted need for coffee cake roused us both from bed. I found a strange brew in a cardboard cup in the bathroom. It was army green and had peanuts floating around on top. I didn't check to see if it was meant to be consumed or painted with. I sloshed through jungles of Legos and two boys in pajamas with acute cases of bedhead. The kitchen was covered with utensils and cups and milk and jam, with a smattering of peanuts and more mysterious green liquid all over everything.
I tried to do the laundry, but when I opened the washer, the load of fleece blankets was all covered in something weird. It was the earthly remains of a beloved Pokemon card. So after consoling its owner, I cleared it off and started the load again. I made the coffee cake and found out that no one had eaten breakfast. We ate at 11:00 (I'm not normally a fan of the late schedule of church, but it is sure working in my favor right now). I tried to move the laundry ahead and found that this time, I'd run the load with a diaper in it, so everything was covered in those weird little gelatinous clumps from the diaper. Third time was the charm.
Everyone else walked to church, but I couldn't get a move in with Joss between his screaming, feeding and messing his pants. We made it to church ten minutes late for Sunday School, and managed 12 minutes before we had to leave, which is 12 minutes more than I saw last week.

All of this is against a backdrop of remodeling. Our back fence has been down since late April, and though there is a lot of amenable walking back and forth on the property line, so far we are no closer to actually getting something else up (though there are now 16 ten foot posts lying on our back patio).

Then Rob ripped out the bathroom last week. The smelly bathroom (the kids'), not the ugly bathroom (ours). He found that some of the plywood has been reduced to granola, which at least explains the smell. And he found out that cast iron does actually break. This is grand news, because he's been trying to figure out how to remove a 60" tub from a 60" room. Now that he's busted the end off, it's only 56" or so. But the cast iron is also doing another number on Rob's back. He's laying on the bed right now, sandwiched between the heating pad and Joss, who only deigns to sleep with someone today.

Rob didn't want to, but he decided yesterday to cancel his trip to Boston for a conference at Harvard. He's sad about it. I'm sorry too, though it will be easier having him around this circus.