I was browsing through Tweets today for a bit when I ran across a link someone had posted to what was presumably a blog post. It was entitled, “Do you apologize to your kids?” I didn’t follow the link because I wanted to write my own thoughts on the subject without any other input.
My answer is yes, I do apologize to my kids. I’m sure there are plenty of parents out there who think that it shows weakness to tell their kids they’re sorry, but I believe it’s just the opposite. Parents need to worry less about appearing weak and more about being a good example for their kids. Decent, compassionate human beings apologize when they hurt someone or otherwise wrong them.
If I yell at my kids or lose my temper for no good reason, I apologize. I say, “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you when I shouldn’t have. I’m feeling really crabby right now and everything is getting on my nerves, but that’s still no excuse to yell,” or something to that effect. In one short lesson I’m teaching them that A. it’s good and necessary to apologize when appropriate; B. even though we all feel irritable sometimes, that doesn’t give us the right to treat anyone with any less respect than they should be treated; and C. I’m human too and I mess up on occasion (well, more than that, but they don’t need to hear a list of all my transgressions).
I do not, however, apologize when I yell at them because they aren’t listening or when I discipline them because they chose to misbehave. Those things are just part of parenting and apologies aren’t necessary. I’m talking about saying I’m sorry because I acted in a way I wouldn’t approve of them acting. It may be easy to think, “Well, I’m the adult, I shouldn’t have to apologize,” but it’s not about us being the authority figures; again, it’s about us being good examples of how a person should behave. When we mess up, it’s our responsibility to teach our kids how to rectify the situation as much as possible.
How about you? Do you apologize to your kids?
*originally posted at Parenting By Trial and Error
I posted this on our own website as:
Se7en Survive a Newborn
I thought while #8 is just two weeks old - still young enough for it all to be very fresh in my mind, I would give you some of my survival secrets… yes it is survival, no they are not secrets!!! Most baby books tackle survival from a first time mom’s perspective… but since most folk have “two point something” children then there should be quite a market for folk to know what to do with their other kids when a newborn arrives… I wrote about the jump from one kidlet to two previously Se7en Things People Ask Me About Siblings… And quite honestly it is two or more…
I think the most important thing you can do for any newborn is to have hours and hours to sit around and admire it, hold it and love it… You have months to think about how you are going to achieve this - unless you are one of those urban legends that only discovers that they are pregnant at 38 weeks and I have yet to meet one of those!!!
Most books and articles will say “Just lower your standards” trust me when a visitor arrives and you have eight kids and you haven’t cleaned the bathroom in two weeks they won’t be telling you to lower your standards… No I don’t lower my standards but I do lower my expectations - I expect to do less and my “To Do List” after nine months of nesting is pretty much reduced to nothing but the most basic chores.
- Keeping On Track: If you take nothing else from this post then take this!!! When you have a new baby your brain is all over the place and you can be too. You get up and go to the fridge for a drink and put two dishes in the dishwasher but then remember you should return a phone call, as you dial you think you will collect the post on the way to the post box you collect in half of yesterday’s laundry. Which reminds you to put todays laundry on and so you go and gather it in the bathroom but put the caps back on the toothpaste instead and then your newborn wakes up and in the 30 minutes you had to do chores you have achieved absolutely NOTHING and you have been very busy doing NOTHING and you are now totally exhausted.Here it is: Finish one thing before you start the next. It is better to just have the load of dishes in the dishwasher than some dishes in the dishwasher, a table half wiped and the laundry half in the washer… it is just as much work to half do every task as to do half the tasks properly. I reduce my tasks and do them till they done… if the table isn’t clear then I don’t pack the dishwasher and so on… retrain that wandering brain!!!
- Keeping Rested:This is the most important of all, without rest you are a prisoner of war - the lack of sleep war. You are most unlikely to have a baby who sleeps through the night. Be grateful! If you have lots of big siblings “helping” in the day time then the night time is perfect for spending some alone time with your little one. Usually we are uninterrupted at two in the morning, it is peaceful and lovely and I am grateful for that time together. I certainly wasn’t pregnant for all those months so that he would sleep all the time - I like spending time with him!!!So when do I rest… well when our baby sleeps I always (!) without fail have a little nap!!! Right now he sleeps and eats and wants to be held and sleeps and eats etc… every other sleep he has I sleep too. That’s it I just can’t go any longer and survive. I know it and I do it!!!
Otherwise, I have to watch other folk’s sleep as well!!! In the last month of pregnancy bed times slide as I am just too tired to get all these little ones to bed… but I am back, as are bedtimes, and they know it!!! I no longer have the fatigue of pregnancy to deal with. I have found that while the fatigue of pregnancy kills me I can cope with the fatigue of lack of sleep a whole lot better.
- Keeping Fed: Now rest might be my priority but food is everybody else in the families priority!!! When our newborn wakes up at the crack of dawn I put breakfast ready. When he has his morning nap I get lunch ready… as soon as he sleeps after lunch I get as much of supper ready as I can… This is why: When your baby is inside of you, you gently rock it… and then sit during meals and collapse into bed, so whenever you are busy your baby is lulled to sleep and whenever you normally sleep it is ready to play… There is nothing worse than bounding children needing a meal and your newborn wide awake looking for food at the same time - you know they can take hours to nurse… I try and prepare as much as I can in advance and shift our meal times slightly earlier. Earlier mealtimes means that no-one is starving and therefore impossible and if a disaster happens then we can resolve it and still be on track.We have been really blessed with meals this time round and it has been wonderful!!! Never before in all our babies have we been overwhelmed like this!!! It has been fabulous. Usually folk look at me and they say: “You wouldn’t like a meal would you?” and you know they are thinking: “How on earth do I feed ten people!!!” Really most of our people are tiny still and only eat like quarter people!!! So we aren’t catering for ten, five at the most but certainly not yet ten of us!!! Needless to say that we are so very grateful for thoughtful friends but I feel terrible that they think they should provide a meal, even a packet of biscuits goes a long way when a meal does run late. And a packet of rolls or a batch of muffins is really just as heavenly as an entire meal!!!
- Keeping Clean: I can shower in about 3 minutes flat - that’s all it takes… 3 minutes and the first three minute gap I find in a day I take for a shower, while I am there I do my teeth and charge the kids toothbrushes for after breakfast. Yes I have to say this because you would be surprised how many people ask: “When do you find time to clean your teeth?” Now when I had one child a baby bath took at least an hour… what on earth was I doing!!! Now while the se7en have breakfast #8 has a bath… really just a nappy change with a dunk in the sink and fresh clothes - 10 minutes tops. The trick is being prepared when I change a nappy or change his clothes I am not finished until I have everything absolutely ready for the next time around… A fresh little nappy and a fresh set of clothes are good and ready for him so there is no scramble before I change him… we are just ready.As for housecleaning, well break it down into really small bits… smaller than that! It takes about two minutes to sweep our kitchen but maybe 30 minutes to sweep the whole house… I keep the kitchen swept. It takes about four minutes tops to wipe the bathroom. Once a day when I am in there helping a little person I will quickly wipe/mop everything down and honestly that’s all it takes - as long as things are neat folk will assume it’s clean… well I am hoping anyway!
- Keeping Tidy: We usually have a couple of visitors around the time of a newborn and for them I want our house to be welcoming. I don’t want to say come and look at our little blessing and all the chaos we live in. Normally we don’t live in chaos but with a newborn I need things to run smoother than normal. The trouble is you will spend hours sitting and nursing and your kids will spend those same hours unpacking their treasures!!! But I have nine months to organize/orchestrate things. I make sure that during all that nesting time everything has a place… and if it doesn’t then out it goes - it is a time to be ruthless.Now I can say tidy up we have ten minutes and boom most of the house is back where it belongs. I never said our house was immaculately clean - but it appears to be tidy!!! Cleared surfaces, books on shelves and toys away. Other chores get done, like laundry and so on, because they are part of our rhythm… At the end of the day when I check all the laundry is folded and returned to its owner then I put the goodies out that they need for bedtime… little people need their jammies out and I charge toothbrushes again for bed-time… because I know as soon as I sit down for bedtime (rest!!!) #8 will awaken ready for action and all those two second bed time tasks will suddenly be totally unachievable!!!
- Keeping Friendly: It is a big temptation to just say no to guests, when a friend asks if they can pop over and visit… I often just want to say no-thank-you, but actually that’s mean!!! They want to meet your new baby, most guests come and go. Also visitors are fun for the whole family and are part of the celebration, let them come and just adapt your rhythm. The ones that linger longer or are extremely high maintenance are part of life as well… we all have had those, accept them as part of your trial in life - endure it and move on… really it is sometimes better to get somethings over with and then you won’t spend your days dreading them.Meanwhile, thank-you’s need to be said… I avoid the phone like the plague, luckily ours hasn’t been working for months!!! Phone-calls disrupt and take forever and when you should have been doing a quick task you have done a phone call and nothing! Thank-you letters are your friend, they take as long as you like and I keep them really short! Trust me on this: folk want a photo and to hear that you appreciated their gift… a sentence or two and it really takes a minute… I keep thank-you cards at my computer and every time I sit down I fill one in - don’t let them build up because you will just get overwhelmed… also the longer you leave it the higher the recipients expectations of a thank-you become… trust me get them out. Remember nobody wants an epistle on your childhood or your birth story… just trust me here!!! If you want to write that then start a blog about it!!!
- Keeping it Fun: The last thing I want my kids to remember about newborns is all their mother did was sleep and ignore them. I have to keep it fun…and that is easy with a bit of preplanning. No elaborate outings, crafts, games and such like… but simple pleasures that we don’t normally do: bubbles and face-paints, heaps of stories on the couch, initially stories while nursing is hard because newborns need a two handed mother and undivided attention to nurse - trust me on this… but I allocate someone the job of page turner and we are off!!! My kids also obsess over a particular toy (dare I say LEGO) so anything else is pretty much packed away and out of sight… It is really fun for them if I bring out the cars or animals and have a theme day - no extra work for me, but a change is as good as a holiday I believe!!!
Here is a secret: I know I am not up to much for the first twelve weeks, my newborn needs me and shall have me. So I very carefully plan to do nothing much for the first twelve weeks and I know some of you are saying twelve weeks - gasp that’s a long time, yup it takes me twelve weeks to get my rhythm back. I know I have done it before!!! I never say as much out loud, but anything over the bare minimum in that time - like blogging for instance - is actually overachieving, way beyond my personal expectations!
That’s us - surviving our little newborn in the most delightful way. Only at two weeks he is uncrumpling, his legs are uncrumpling, his face is uncrumpling and listen to me here: newborn is so quick and fleeting, just enjoy it…
I popped this post onto the Works For Me Wednesday Site - go and have a look there for all sorts of tips on absolutely anything.
We know we can’t do everything, so why do we try?
More importantly, why do we constantly beat ourselves up for not being able to do it all? I know there are countless times a week when I mentally berate myself for not getting X, Y and Z done. Am I alone here or is this pretty typical?
It seems like guilt is just second nature for many of us, particularly females. For me personally though, I think guilt is, sadly, one of my closest companions. Am I taking on more than I can handle? Trying to do so many things that none of them gets done very well?
Probably.
So what, if anything, can I do about this? Cut some stuff out? Start saying “no” more often? Set alarms for myself?
I haven’t figured out the solution yet.
In the meantime, I would love to find just one woman who is happy with the way she balances her life and feels relatively no guilt or regret and learn her secret. Does such a person exist? Everyone I know is over-taxed, over-scheduled, over-worked and on their way to a slow burnout.
Juggling work, family, friends, leisure time and other commitments is exhausting. I realize it’s just part of life, but there’s got to be an easier way to balance everything. My life feels very out of balance right now.
I am responsible for four school-age children during the week, making sure that everyone gets on the bus in the morning, has their homework done, takes a shower, eats good food, gets to bed at a decent time, possesses clean clothing, gets delivered and picked up from their activities and receives some semblance of personal attention in the few hours we have between school and bed time. I’m also trying to grow a business during an extremely slow economic time, which sucks up most of my extra hours with all the marketing, writing and researching.
Along with that, I do book keeping for the family business, advertising and proofreading for a scholarly journal, blog most week days, and try to maintain a humongous old farm house with 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, as well as a several-acre yard. Between those things, my church activities, a bit of down time here and a couple tax-return activities, including an audit, I’m having a hard time pulling it all off. It seems like I’m working almost all the time, if I’m not making meals for the kids, helping them with their homework, going to volleyball games or running errands. Even on weekends, when the kids are often at their dad’s house, I am crazy-busy.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this as I’m sure the guilt-ridden juggling act is standard for many of us. How do you cope? Do you have any special tools (Merry Maids, a planner, a weekly baby-sitter)? When you feel your life becoming unbalanced, how do you take inventory and decide what has to go?
Discuss!
*** Cross-posted on Parenting By Trial and Error.
This afternoon is the beginning of the end. Or maybe just the beginning.
Usually our schedules all overlap to some degree, but other times, they collide.
Today is one such day.
This afternoon is the Ice Cream Social and Meet Your Teacher day at the elementary school where my three youngest attend school. Now, one could argue that more folks might be able to attend if it was not in the middle of the afternoon and instead, well, after work. But I digress. It’s been this way since the beginning of time, and we will be there. With $8,500 worth of school supplies, ready to go.
At just about the time that I am splitting apart into one mom who can simultaneously meet three teachers in three different classrooms (it’s one of my many superpowers), the whistle will blow and the kickoff will take place at my son’s very first ever high school football game. I’ll be there, but not for the kickoff. He had better not do anything spectacular or life threatening in my absence or he is in SO much trouble.
Lastly, less you think I’m getting off easy today, my sixteen year old has her first conference meet of the season. Her swim season last year was riddled with injuries and she’s worked very hard to get back in shape and healthy again. Today’s is a meet that I should be at.
So what’s a mom to do?
I’m very blessed to have a husband who gets to the kids events as much as possible. But the fact is, my work schedule is far more forgiving and flexible than his is. So … we’ll do the best that we can. I suspect that by the time the girls and I get to the football field Rob will already be there on the sideline cheering the team on. And I have a hunch that I’ll hear all about my daughter’s swim meet - the good, the bad and all the teenage female drama - when she gets home and starts ransacking the kitchen for something to eat (which, unfortunately, reminds me that I have nothing planned for dinner).
We’re significantly out numbered here, Rob and I. How do we do it all? With great difficulty, most of the time. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.
(originally posted at http://losingmycrackers.blogspot.com/)
I’ve added something new to my diet this week — green smoothies. You see, all of my family members really like Naked juice (even my non fruit and veggie eater) but at $3.99 a bottle, well seriously, do you think I can afford that? So in my ongoing quest to easily and affordably get healthy food into our diet, I’ve begun making green smoothies.
My first attempt was successful. The end result was a blender full of thick green … stuff … that looked and smelled like smooshed up kiwis (it was actually 2 bananas, an orange, a whole lot of fresh spinach and about 2 cups of water). All but two of my family members tried it and they all liked it well enough to have more.
Years ago, I worked at Byerly’s restaurant. A few of my coworkers, when bored, would experiment with making various concoctions of “blender salad.” Who knew just how ahead of their time they really were?
My latest green smoothie attempt, unfortunately, will go in the record book as “combinations to avoid.” It all sounded good as I was putting it in the blender … bananas, blueberries, a peach and romaine lettuce. In fact, several of the suggested combinations of fruit/greens listed romaine lettuce. Let me tell you … it was the color of mud. Plenty of tasty things are the color of mud - meatloaf, chocolate, iced coffee even. Cold, sweet (and thick) romaine lettuce tasting smoothie that is the color of mud … not so tasty.
After moping for a few days, I’m ready to try again. I have lettuce, chard, beet greens and spinach in the garden ready to be picked, and a bunch of fruit in the refrigerator all waiting to be made into more blender salads green smoothies.
1. On weekends or other free mornings, your kids inevitably wake up at an unearthly hour, making it difficult, if not impossible, depending on their age, for you to catch a few extra zzs.
2. Conversely, on school mornings or when they have to get up by a certain time, your kids are sure to be groggy and crabby as you drag them out of their beds.
3. Your child rarely gets sick, but as soon as you have an important meeting or event, she’s down for the count.
4. Though he’s been constipated for days, your baby has an outfit-destroying blow-out as soon as you’re in public.
5. Similarly, your preschooler, who swore up and down she absolutely did not have to go to the bathroom before you left the house, declares that she’s going to wet her pants while you’re in the middle of checking out at the store.
6. Even though you look to make sure the kids are busy before you make that important phone call, they track you down like mosquitoes to warm blood and demand your immediate attention just as you’ve finished saying, “hello.”
7. The toy that your child hasn’t so much as glanced at in months is suddenly being mourned as his “favorite” the day after you pitch it.
8. Everyone is busy and content; however, as soon as you close the bathroom door, they’re frantically pounding, in dire need of your assistance.
9. The new toy you painstakingly picked out for your daughter’s first Christmas is infinitely less interesting than the box in which it was packaged.
10. The tissues you carefully and pointedly placed in your son’s pocket to combat his runny nose will invariably be replaced by a much faster and handier alternative — his sleeve.
Got any to add? We’d love to hear ‘em!
Sarah is the mom of four lovely and precocious kids, fraternal twin girls and two boys, and a freelance writer. She’s excited for summer vacation to start because the lack of tight scheduling is much more conducive to her scatterbrained nature, as are the late hours.
* This entry is cross-posted at Parenting By Trial and Error.
Otherwise Titled: Now You Know Why I Don’t Do Holiday Photo Cards.
When I got a call from the NYTimes last Tuesday asking whether I’d be willing to have my family photographed for a story they’d interviewed me for about larger-than-average families, I had a moment of hesitation. After all, they’d need the picture within a day, in the middle of the week, competing with basketball practices and homework and job schedules and the like.
“It would be a huge hassle to pull this off,” I said to a group of my friends. “Do you think I should do it?”
I was also a little worried about how the photo would turn out. See, we usually can’t make it through a photo session without something like this happening:
Or this:
But when I asked my friends whether I should do the shoot in spite of the hassle and my kids’ proclivity toward goofing off whenever a camera comes out, the reply was pretty much: Um, duh. It’s the New York Times, you idiot. Need you even ask?
So I started working out the details. For one thing, we are currently in a commuter family arrangement, meaning my husband works in the city during the week (and stays in his own little bachelor pad at night), while the kids and I homestead a couple hours away. His day doesn’t end until 6:00 or 6:30, sometimes later, and that’s Central time…meaning there’s no way he could make it home to meet a photographer until 9:30 or 10:00 Eastern time.
It seemed easier for the kids and I to drive to Chicago and meet him. But then where would we take the picture? Certainly his small, cramped, and decidedly cluttered apartment wouldn’t do. (It’s sort of a holding place for a lot of the stuff we haven’t decided what to do with yet). So we arranged to borrow an apartment from our friends Jeff and Lisa. (Lisa’s mother would like you to know that she made the sofa pillows scattered through the picture). Luckily they are neat people with good taste.
But that still left re-arranging my Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning schedule. My 35-week prenatal visit had to be moved up a day; a day in which I had no time to spare, but somehow managed to squeeze in getting weighed and blood-pressure-cuffed and Dopplered and palpated and all that.) Tuesday night was makeover central. My two oldest boys desperately needed haircuts, having been trying (and mostly failing) at growing that “cool, floppy Jonas Brothers ‘do” that is all the range among older kids right now. But having been burned by walk-in haircut joints before, I was too afraid to risk it, so my sister-in-law took up the scissors herself. (She’s untrained, but her hands are much steadier than mine…I apparently flunked cutting in Kindergarten). Neither the boys nor I cried at the results, so I’d say her efforts were a success.
On Wednesday I agonized over–and finally packed up–two outfits for each of us, threw every bit of hair product and makeup I own into a bag, and grabbed my children (plus my brother, who coincidentally needed a ride to Chicago that day), and we hit the road. Three hours later, we were scrambling to get scrubbed, dressed, brushed and pressed into something resembling presentable-ness. Finally, the photographer arrived…and fifteen minutes later, it was all over. She was cool as a cucumber dealing with our group, but I felt like I could sleep for about a year when it was all over.
There’s still the question of WHY my boys look so sweet in the Times photo. I believe it’s due to the chorus of threats that came their way just prior to the shoot.
“Now, what are we NOT going to do while the photographer is here?” I’d prompted. They broke into a chorus of unacceptables:
“Make bunny ears?”
“Stick out tongues.”
“Jump on the sofas!”
“Screw around.”
“Act like animals!”
“Make you embarrassed to admit you are our mother?” (That came from the eldest. To be clear, I have never actually said they made me embarrassed to be their mother, but I may have implied it at one point or another along the way.)
“Good, good,” I praised. “Now what ARE we going to do while the photographer is here?”
Another chorus:
“Behave ourselves!”
“Sit quietly.”
“Smile and look at the camera?”
“Do whatever she says.”
“Act like real human beings!”
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” I exclaimed. “Now, what’s going to happen if we DON’T behave ourselves?”
Blank stares.
“Um…what?” ventured one son.
“I haven’t even decided yet,” I said, my voice dropping into a low and serious range. “But it’ll be bad.”
My desperate threat worked a little too well. In the picture, I’m actually pleading the kids to show some signs of life. “Quit looking so GOOD! Slouch or something!” I pleaded, but it was no use: they remained sitting straight as pins, hands folded in laps, serene (and somewhat dim-looking) smiles plastered on their faces. I half-wished one of them would throw up a set of bunny ears, just to be normal. But no such luck. As it turns out, readers of the New York Times will end up under the false impression that my oldest sons made parenthood so easy (or creepy?) that I couldn’t wait to have two more. (Notice that my younger two aren’t nearly as cooperative, with Owen looking in the wrong direction, and William practically shooting laser beams out of his eyes at the photographer. Trust me, that’s a lot more normal in our house.)
That was just a few days ago, and the article is already done, (the print version appears in Feb 8’s Sunday Styles section). Somewhere along the line I misplaced the bag with all of my makeup and hair product in it, so I’ve been walking around looking much less attractive ever since. And due to my post-photo exhaustion, my kids went off to school on Friday with bedhead and wrinkled clothes. So no matter what readers far away may think of my nice, neat-looking boys? Everyone who sees this photo that knows me in real life–or who’s suffered through a photo shoot with my usually wise-cracking boys–will know the true story.
And honestly, that’s OK with me. I’ve realized that I like them better when they’re real (and I think from now on, we will send that holiday photo card, no matter how goofy it turns out.)
Meagan Francis is the author of Table for Eight: Raising a Large Family in a Small-Family World. She also writes about life with her four (soon to be five) kids at her website.
Monday evening I sat down to write a post filled with whining, complaining, b****ing, and a whole bunch of woe is me’s. But something happened and I didn’t get to finish it. Tuesday, I sat down again to finish the drama post but I really couldn’t find it in me to do so. So instead I went and sat down to watch T.V. with my man. This morning, Wednesday, I woke up to a sunny, though freezing, day. The kids made me laugh this morning and I realize I am past my Monday and today is a new day.This got me to thinking about life with children and maybe just life in general. You see, I “love” being a mom, but some days I don’t “like” it. Some days just seem so hard to get through, full of drama and chaos (the bad kind) and just energy draining. Some mornings it is hard enough just to pull myself out of bed let alone be the mother that I need to be or the person that I want to be.
Some days you decided to pull everything out of the fridge, we are talking shelves and food and drawers and you see butter that fell on the light and melted and then re hardened as it traveled its way down the back wall. And right when you are ready to dig in and get it clean, maybe, I don’t know, you hear the baby. The one that you put down 10 minutes ago and has decided not to take a nap.
You know days like that, days that are filled with things like that, ALL DAY. Those days that make you wonder why you do this.
But then there are the days where you get out of bed and even before breakfast is over, your kids make you laugh, they smile at you and they tell you I Love You (even the 11 year old boy). The days where the baby actually takes a nap and you get a chance to sit at the computer for an hour in the quiet. Where the baby wakes up and announces “Hi” as you walk in the room. Or the 5 year old wants to make Valentines with you. Where you look at your almost teen-age daughter and think “Oh my, I had a part in that.”
You know days like that, days that are filled with things like that, ALL DAY. Those days that make you wonder why you do anything but this.
And that’s why instead of the pity party post you were going to get on Monday. I will just say, thank you. Thank you for all the days, it certainly keeps things interesting!
’til next time
Jillienne
*cross posted from www.imminent-chaos.blogspot.com
I created a photo album of my recent “day off” - a day off from work and from homeschooling. Prepare to be dazzled, really. It’s an exciting life I lead — enjoy!
When I thought about what to write for my “A Day in the Life” post this week, I decided not to break down everything that happens in my day to day world. Because mostly, my days are fairly repetitive, with the odd drama, or hallmark moment thrown in.
Instead, I thought that I would share the reasons that I keep going day to day. Because it isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t always fun, and on more occasions than I can count I do wonder what the heck I am doing. I think about these things a lot right now as we embark on yet another journey to child #6.
And it boils down to this, I could have more money, more free time, a less demanding schedule, less gray hair (I think), or time to sit down on a Sunday morning a do the crossword puzzle in bed. I could have stopped at the standard 2 or 3 kids. But I don’t and I didn’t, instead I have a 10 month old baby who wakes up in the morning jabbering to herself, who grins the biggest grin just for me when I go and pick her up, a 12 and 10 year old that I have taught to be self-sufficient enough to take care of their needs in the morning. A 5 and 7 year old that make me laugh but have absolutely no idea how to get themselves ready. I get big fat open mouth kisses everyday from my 10 month old and have a 7 year old son who thinks that I walk on water. I have a 12 year old who still wants to share her day with me and loves her baby sister to the moon and back. A 10 year old boy who thinks his dad is a hero. A 5 year old princess that refuses to let me pick her clothes and even looks beautiful in orange, green and pink together.
Which of these things would I give up? These are the real things that my days are made up of. In 50 years when I look back on this time, I will not think I wish I would have had more money, more free time, etc. No, I will remember all of the wonderful moments and the dramas will fade. How lucky I feel to know this now. When the day to days get a little to repetitive, I can imagine myself wrinkled and gray (but still hot) surrounded by everyone I love and forcing them to listen to me “remember” the past. Not for all of the time or money or crossword puzzles out there would I give this up, nope, no way.
Those are my days, everyday, how lucky am I?
Jillienne (www.imminent-chaos.blogspot.com )
