Practicing Motherhood

One of my blog friends has been doing a series of posts on her “practices of mothering” the last few months. Last week she invited her readers to join in. At first I thought, I don’t have any practices–at least, none that she hasn’t already talked about.

Then I came up with one. And another. And another. And the more I thought, the more I realized I do have them, they’re just more practical in nature, and less easily summed up in a pithy title. But they’re all aimed toward one ultimate goal: independence. I guess I’d have to call myself a middle of the road kind of free range parent.

I think I will probably address some of these in individual posts, so today I’m just going to share what I came up with. And then…then, I’d like to know what your philosophies are.

  • Telling kids no.
  • Letting them fight their own battles and ask their own questions.
  • Being willing to admit I’m wrong.
  • Moderation: in food, in toys, in TV, and related to that…
  • Giving the gift of family instead of Stuff.
  • Loving touch.
  • Tolerance: Not stopping them from doing things that aren’t wrong, even when it’s annoying.
  • Allowing them to suffer. (I have a lot to say on that subject, so as horrible as it sounds, bear with me. I’m not talking about making them suffer, just allowing it when it happens.)

What all these have in common is this: letting go. As parents, we are often urged  not to “rush” children to grow up. But at the same time, we feel anxious if we don’t have our kids in one sport every season, music lessons and speaking three languages. Most of my music students have more than one extracurricular activity every day. If that’s not pushing kids to carry an adult’s load, I don’t know what is. And I think we feel that instinctively, which is why we end up doing things for them that they should be doing for themselves–to try to offset it. And that’s how we get helicopter parenting.

I want to be the anti-helicopter parent…but still nurture and love them. My goal is for my children to leave–even Julianna, my little girl with the magic chromosome–to fly the nest, to leave me free to do all the things I’ve put off in the service of my children–but to love them so thoroughly and completely that they’re happy to return.

Most days, I think I fall far short. But every once in a while, when I’m loving them so hard my body almost can’t stand the force of it–every once in a while, I’m sure I’ll succeed.

Published in: on January 31, 2012 at 7:49 am  Comments (5)  
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When Sick Moves In

The Kids Are Sick Again

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When sick moves in, you don’t always know it’s happened at first. It’s just a cold, right? Okay, a long and extended cold, a toddler who needs a “tih-oo” every five minutes, but no big deal. An infant who has to have his nose suctioned periodically for a week, then two, then three.

When sick moves in, you load up the kids and go to the doctor on a Thursday to make sure the baby really is just getting virus after virus, and it’s not something that needs treatment…and then, that night, the toddler spends the entire night wailing and screaming, until your nerves are raw and you wonder what you were thinking by having children in the first place, and in the morning there’s crustiness outside his ear and you feel horrible for not recognizing that your child has an ear infection, the first ever in six years of parenthood. And then you think how lucky you are to have avoided it so long, and berate yourself for your shot nerves and hair-trigger temper. And you load up the kids and go to the doctor again…at nap time…with kids and a mommy who haven’t slept well. Nearly hysterical, you call your husband and tell him to COME HOME FROM WORK RIGHT NOW. Which he doesn’t, of course, and by the time he does–early, just not as early as you wanted–everyone’s calmed down and you feel like a total loser for calling at all.

When sick moves in, it’s the cruelest kind of face slap: just as you think you’re finally going to get a good night’s sleep, the toddler’s roommate comes down with a cough bad enough to make you waffle about sending him to school. But he wants to go, you want him to go, and he’s borderline, so you send him. Half an hour after you put the kids down for nap, the school calls and says, “Sorry, come get your kid.” So you lose yet another day’s nap for the sick children, and top it off with two days with four kids in the house and nowhere to go.

When sick moves in, you come face to face with the reality that it’s not the big stuff that gets you, but the minor ones. You tell yourself that this too shall pass, that kids need to get sick, that this will make them healthier when they get older. But the truth is, you want to murder everyone, or at least exile them, or at least find a really deep hole to dive headfirst into. Preferably one where it’s quiet and will allow you to sleep uninterrupted by coughs, screams, and wails, not to mention that cute baby you have to nurse twice a night. And you berate yourself for your poor attitude, because you know other people who really have it bad, and others still who would give up several years of their life to have medical problems so trivial as viruses to deal with, instead of the ones they’ve been given. You snip at your spouse, burn with resentment because s/he sleeps through it/doesn’t do enough/isn’t being sensitive.

And then child number two hops a plane to Ear Infection Hell. Another sleepless night, and the spouse snips at you because he didn’t sleep, and you want to scream, “THIS IS MY LIFE ALL THE TIME, AND YOU’RE ACTING THIS WAY BECAUSE OF ONE NIGHT???” A date night canceled. Doctor visit #3. (Thankfully, Daddy handles that one.) Another round of amoxicillin, and you breathe a deep sigh of relief…until Daddy starts hacking, adding yet another layer to the Reasons Why You Will Never Get A Full Night’s Sleep Again, and you feel guilty and selfish for thinking about that when those you love are suffering.

When sick moves in, the sickos breathe all over the healthy ones: the immuno-compromised child, the newborn, and the caretaker of the whole household. And you start thinking, Oh, no, when is it my turn? So you spend Saturday morning running around with a spray bottle full of vinegar and a rag, wiping down every surface you can think of that might be harboring microorganisms. You develop the worst plugged milk duct you’ve had yet this time around, and all tricks are powerless against it when you have a baby who doesn’t appear sick, but just wants to sleep and nurse back to sleep without really eating.

And then Toddler starts coughing. And wakes up the next morning with a high fever and spots all over his body. And now you know which child it was that had a sensitivity to penicillin. Only it’s Sunday, and your only medical option is a trip to the ER, which seems an overreaction considering how long it took to show up. And Baby decides he doesn’t want to nurse.

When sick moves in, you start perusing the mental calendar and realize  it’s only January. We have two full months of sick season left, and we’ve already been sick for six weeks straight.

Entering week seven, and hoping that I’m telling the end of the story. This has been a very self-indulgent run, so if you’ve made it this far, you should also know that although I’m incredibly sleepy this morning, I’m in a better emotional place simply for having vented it all out. Sometimes that’s what you need most.

Published in: on January 30, 2012 at 7:57 am  Comments (13)  
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Drive-Through Wisdom

Taco Bell

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We were gone all day yesterday, and pretty much all day Saturday. And all day Thursday. And last night, Michael developed a stubborn stuffed up nose that meant I went to bed at 11, got up at 12:20, 2:15, 4:20, 5:35, 6:20 and 7:30.

My gift to myself today is scrapbooking, and a repost on attitude. Which is something I need to be thinking about today. :)

***

Working drive-thru is not a particularly fulfilling experience. In college, “Beavis & Butthead” was all the rage. In my limited and accidental exposure to their crassness, the only thing that I ever thought was funny was their skit about working drive thru, which had me ROTFLMAO, frankly, because they nailed it. When you work drive, you wear an uncomfortable earphone in one ear whose ding literally rattles your eardrum. People pay no attention whatsoever to what you say, and most engines make so much racket that it amounts to an assault on your ear. At least, that was my experience at Taco Bell in the early ’90s.

I couldn’t stand people who mumbled as if they were discussing amongst themselves and then got snippy because I didn’t acknowledge them. I couldn’t stand people who shouted as if I was half a mile away instead of at the other end of a highly sensitive wireless mic. I hated the car noise. I hated opening the window in the cold, and how numb my fingers got. I hated pretty much everything about it. In other words, I had a very bad attitude about Drive.

One day when I was in for the long haul—5-close—I spent the first quarter of an hour clenching my teeth as I rattled off my “Hi-welcome-to-Taco-Bell-may-I-take-your-order” in a sour monotone. And then, a gentle Spirit whispered in my brain, telling me something had to change…and since the customers weren’t going to change, it was up to me. Find one thing to compliment in every person who comes by, it seemed to say. And make it specific, and sincere!

I took a deep breath and opened the window to find…a woman blowing copious amounts of cigarette smoke in my face. God, I said to myself, you have GOT to be kidding. I cast my eyes around and said, “Your hair looks nice.”

The woman’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

It felt ridiculously contrived for a few minutes, until something hot and hard inside my chest began to loosen, like a muscle being massaged. But a couple of hours later, when the supper-hour crush suddenly eased off, and I had a moment for self-analysis, I discovered that I felt buoyant, bubbly—charitable, even. I found that there was something I could sincerely compliment about every customer. And I found myself enjoying work for the first time in weeks.

What I learned that night was that attitude and mood are choices. It’s easier to pin the blame for my lousy outlook on someone else. But the responsibility for making each day a good one is mine and mine alone. Like all the most important lessons in life, this one has to be learned over and over. The details that I choose to focus on or ignore are the ones that determine my mindset.

A lesson to keep in mind this morning.

Published in: on January 16, 2012 at 9:01 am  Comments (4)  
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Resolved, Unresolved

English: New Year's Day postcard. Reads: "...

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There are certain times of the year when the whole blogsophere latches on to the same subject. Every September there’s a rash of sentiment about kids growing up and the back-to-school transition. Every November 1st, we’re treated to photos of Halloween costumes. And for a week in January, the topic is New Year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions get a really bad rap sometimes. A surprising number of bloggers this year are talking about how bad they are. Some refuse to set goals because they’re going fail, and they think it’s pointless. One person even suggested that resolutions are a bad idea because they place our focus on our weaknesses instead of our strengths.

But I think we as a culture look at a new year’s resolution in the wrong way. Sometimes they’re not made to be fulfilled. Some goals will never, ever be fully attained…but if you refuse to aspire, you’ll stagnate instead.

I’ve made resolutions for a couple of decades, and generally I’ve kept them…but not always. Sometimes I go into it knowing I won’t live up to them.

The first goal I set, knowing it was unreachable, was this: If I’m going to bother getting my flute out of the case on any given day, I’m going to practice a full four hours. “That one’s made to be broken,” I wrote, “but the pursuit of it will make me a better musician.”

Actually, I didn’t do half bad on that goal–I hit 4 hours of practicing 80-85% of the time that year. (Before you get stuck on that number, bear in mind I was a flute performance major preparing for grad school auditions. For a music major, practice = study.)

The thing is, self-improvement is a process, not an end point. You can lose the weight, after all, but you still have to maintain it. It’s not like you can check it off the list and go back to the way you did things before.

And that’s also why I disagree with the blogger who thinks we shouldn’t focus on or weaknesses. It’s a laudable thing to try to make oneself a better person, even if we stumble and fall along the way. Something resolved left unresolved, after all, still makes me a better person.

**

I need to apologize to the Write On Edge people…when I set out to write the prompt today, it went a different direction than the prompt was meant to…I debated whether I had any business linking up at all. Hope you’ll excuse me. Usually I try to be very careful to follow exactly. :)

Write on Edge: RemembeRED

Published in: on January 10, 2012 at 8:00 am  Comments (21)  
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Transition #4

I think I’ve been pretty clear that I am not a great housekeeper. Christian’s actually much better at it than I am. For the last ten days while I have languished in the land of pulsox, heart monitors and fluorescent lighting, he was home with the kids, along with people who came to help during the day: my mom, my sister, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends coming in and cleaning like crazy people. I felt a bit guilty, but also a bit smug, knowing that my house was going to be clean when I got home, without any input from me to make it so.

Christian & the kids were at a concert on Saturday night when I walked into my kitchen and stopped dead, staring at the piles of papers waiting to be filed, gifts and school projects no one had had time to sort and put away, and toys—the toys that are supposed to stay in the basement—on every level of the house.
“Oh…my…gosh,” I said.

My mother went upstairs to start folding more laundry. My dad pulled Michael out of his car seat and started goo-goo-eyeing him. I hung up my coat and tore into the mess. It didn’t really look any better when I had to cease and desist for the night, in part because of the extra clutter my homecoming had brought into the house, but I did as much as I could.

What a difference six days can make. Every previous baby homecoming has involved a two-hour drive on a very sore abdomen, every bump causing me to wince and hold my incision. It’s involved the panicky not-feeling-good of engorgement. This time? This time I lit into the household tasks with an energy that amazed even me. All I could think was I had to do as much as I could before the kids came home and I needed to minister to the people in my household instead of the household itself.

I am way more interested in nesting now than I was in the last two weeks of my pregnancy.

Transition is tough every time. Thirty-six hours in, I’m already almost wild; Nicholas looks hurt when I shush him—because he never, ever, EVER shuts up. He just keeps repeating the same things over and over, right in my face while I’m trying to concentrate on making sure Michael is actually nursing and not simply tearing my breasts to shreds without getting anything out of them. Why is it that every baby is a stellar nurser in the hospital and then decides to be a fit-and-start-er upon arrival home? Julianna wants to breathe her runny nose and phlegmy cough on him, and everybody wants to hold him all the time. And ten days of hospital stress and nursing in a cramped corner beneath a vitals monitor that was beeping every minute and a half finally took their toll; I woke yesterday with the crick in my neck to end all cricks. Splitting headache, agonizing pain in my back.

Let’s just say it’s not conducive to house cleaning.

Transition, I whisper to myself. Just keep your cool. This, too, shall pass.

Besides, there’s this to counterbalance it. I just have to discipline my attitude.

Published in: on December 12, 2011 at 10:05 am  Comments (9)  
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Learning To Let Go

Leap of Faith - Krabi ThailandThey say parenting is a long process of letting go. From the moment the umbilical cord is cut, your child sets out on a journey toward independence. And that journey, exhilarating and terrifying for the child, is even tougher on the parent, whose job is to learn to let go when everything within you cries out to protect, to shelter…and to hang on.

I keep wrestling with why the whole “enjoy it” thing evokes such a strong reaction in me…strong enough to spark multiple blog posts!—and it seems every time I puzzle over it, I come back to my mother.

Throughout my childhood, my mother showed an astonishing capacity for letting her children be independent. We lived in the country, ¼ mile from a family of boys close to our age, who had go-cart trails intersecting three wooded properties. We’d play for hours in the woods, swinging on vines across waterfalls, building and climbing treehouses that met no kind of building code—even climbing nails to somebody’s deer hunting stand, which was nothing but a convenient perch in an oak tree, sixty or seventy feet up. When Mom needed us home, she’d stand outside and cup her hands and shout toward the west woods, then the east, since she didn’t know for sure which way we’d gone.

We jumped off big round hay bales. Two was the norm, three terrifying but doable. Once, my feet slipped off the edge of the stack when it was rafter-tall in a barn that can house a combine with room to spare. I hung from the rafters, knowing I couldn’t get back, and the only option was letting go. Which I did.

All that by the age of ten.

As a preteen, I got my first job picking strawberries at the apple orchard. It was about three miles from our house, and my sister and I rode our bicycles there on gravel and county highways without shoulders. Once we had money to spend, we’d ride our bikes into town, making a big loop from Grandma’s house to the library and downtown shops, and then to Wal Mart. We’d be gone for hours.

And then, for some reason, I got scared of growing up. My parents had to plant a boot on my butt and kick me out of the house, because I was scared to leave home. My mother had to force me to learn to drive. She battled me through it because she needed me to drive my younger sisters to school. Then I didn’t want to work. After an outing with my friends, she greeted me with, “Did you have fun? That’s nice. You’re not doing it again until you get a job.”

I need to be clear: this was not a neglectful home. Every night we ate dinner as a family. My parents kept contact with what we were doing and who our friends were, all our interests. One night when a close shift at Taco Bell ran late due to multiple buses and the resulting mess, a fellow worker and I de-stressed in the parking lot by turning our car radios up and dancing the electric slide before coming home. When I drove in the driveway an hour and a half later than usual, the house was ablaze with light, my dad headed out the door to look for me, my mother standing at the top of the stairs in tears. It hadn’t occurred to me that they’d even know what time I got home, because they were always in bed.

But we were expected to do our own homework, without supervision—though we could ask questions if we needed to. We were expected to practice our music without being babysat through it. For several years, I was paid to make dinner for the whole family so Mom could go help Dad in the field.

I know the argument against everything I’m holding up as an ideal: it’s a different time now, and country living is less frightening than city. But I don’t buy it. Wide open spaces with no people around to witness if something happens? The jagged edges of two generations’ junk hiding in tall grasses? Bluffs to fall off, into jagged rocks?

The world wasn’t any less terrifying for my parents. They just handled it differently. They were always there when I needed them—when I got food poisoning, when I had to go to court for causing a car accident—but they were the anti-helicopter parent. They have approached every new stage of their life with incredible grace: adolescent children, empty nest, grandkids, caring for parents. They aren’t afraid to age. And I think this is because they have chosen to embrace letting go.

This is what I aspire to as a parent. It’s about balance, about enjoying the good parts without glossing over the bad, without over-sentimentalizing any stage. It is possible to enjoy the present without regretting when it’s time to move on. My parents have proven it. I pray every day that I achieve what they have.

Published in: on November 7, 2011 at 4:28 am  Comments (10)  
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Reflections on the words “Enjoy it! It Goes So Fast!”

Light and Shadow 4

Image by Iáin Aléxander via Flickr

It seems like there are stages in my life when everywhere I go, people are always telling me, “Enjoy your kids! It goes so fast!”

**Important note before reading on!**
If you have ever said this to me, please don’t think the following constitutes me scolding you.
It’s just something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I think it’s important enough to warrant public reflection.

Before, it seemed like these admonitions were always clumped around a time when I was griping a lot. The odd thing about the recent rash of “enjoy it”’s is that I really have been enjoying my kids—laughing at their funny moments, sharing the silly ones. The two most recent times, it came from complete strangers: an old man in the Aldi parking lot, when I was trying to get the little ones to hold my hands to walk inside, and the cashier at Penney’s, who didn’t even see my kids, because Christian and I were alone.

I’m always conflicted when someone expresses this sentiment. On the one hand, I understand exactly where they’re coming from. Those who are farther along in the parenting journey have the perspective to know it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. You don’t want to wish away the beauty of the present.

But on the other hand, it’s really easy to sentimentalize the past, to downplay or dismiss its troubles and glorify its virtues. Think about the deliberate amnesia we impose upon ourselves to make it psychologically possible to go through pregnancy again. Let’s be frank: pregnancy is not for the faint of heart! Especially the last six weeks. (Want to hazard a guess how far out I am?) Then there’s the haze of no sleep and adjusting to a new, adorable little tyrant ruling your life, which is soon enough followed by toilet training and tantrums.

Of course, that’s not the whole story. At almost all times, the moments of grace and wonder outweigh the trials. Sometimes we need to be smacked upside the head with a reminder: “Dude! Focusing on the wrong thing here!”

Yet you have to be careful not to belittle a person’s struggles. We all think whatever stage we’re dealing with is the worst. I hear the “enjoy it” sentiment most often from parents of teenagers.  I can only speak from a standpoint of reason, not experience, but I just don’t buy that teen angst is any more punishing on a parent than round-the-clock diapering, toddler willfulness and the general high-maintenance of teaching a small person every single skill they have to know in order to function as a human being, from self-care to self-control. Parents of teens may take issue with me, but I think the stages are just different, not more or less intensive. Just as there are trials and rewards in the young years, so are there trials and rewards in the teen years—and every other stage. Parents of ten-year-olds or adolescents or grown kids with kids of their own—each have concerns about their children unique to that stage.

Now, no one who says, “Enjoy it! It goes so fast!” means to belittle the struggles faced by parents of young children. But on the receiving end, it often feels as if we’re not allowed to get angry or frustrated. Parenthood, as all of life, is roses with thorns. You can’t have one without the other, and the best way to support each other through this journey is to affirm both the good parts and the bad.

What do you think? More experienced parents, am I missing something? Fellow young-ie’s, do these kinds of statements ever bother you? Or am I overthinking the whole topic?

Published in: on November 2, 2011 at 7:02 am  Comments (12)  
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I Filled The Diaper Drawer. Then I Freaked Out.

They’re so small.

You’d think that a mother approaching the birth of her fourth child in seven years (well, 7 ½) wouldn’t be floored by the sheer tininess. But as I pulled out our trusty cloth diapers, counted them, stacked them in the drawer, I couldn’t believe it. Every single baby diaper fit in one drawer. After close-on four years of double diapering, it just blew my mind.

I have to admit, I’m kind of freaking out here. People get out of the habit of having babies around, and then they feel a tug in the heart to have another, but they think back on the intensity of the experience, and they get scared off. When we started trying for #4, we were still in full-on Baby mode. But it took us six months to conceive. A lot can change in six months. And a lot more in the nine months that follow. We are no longer a baby household. We are a nighttime-and-nap-time-diapers family. A my-youngest-child-is-talking family. An everyone-has-chores (although they don’t always do them) family.

But seven weeks from now…

Well, let just say it’s making me think about how many more things than diaper drawers are going to change.

Some nights, I already get up seven times in six hours. How in the name of all that is holy am I going to comfort Julianna after a nightmare, the drama king when he has a runny nose, AND nurse a baby during the night?

How am I going to exercise? And post a blog? It’s already a delicate balance to do those two things and still get Alex off to school.

How am I going to chase down the munchkins when they run in opposite directions and I have a baby attached to the breast? (Is it possible to run and nurse simultaneously?)

I’m well aware that the writing is going to have to simmer down for a while. A good long while. But, um, I can’t even get the house clean now. How can I add the time commitment of a newborn on to the kid commitments I already have? The last time I had a baby, Alex was in preschool for a whopping two mornings a week. I freaked out when he had eight weeks of baseball once a week. And now it’s all-day school and piano lessons and homework, and Julianna on the bus, and Julianna’s speech homework, and…

Folks, I’m a little intimidated by what my life’s about to become.

Don’t get me wrong. It’ll all be worth it. The back shot, the surgery, the two weeks without driving and six weeks without lifting, the sleepless nights. It’ll already be worth it a week in—a day in. But there were plenty of times in Nicholas’s first six months when I lost all semblance of cool. And as I begin to contemplate the change to come, I’m kind of scared.

Pour some loving on me, folks.

Just Write
Published in: on October 25, 2011 at 4:09 am  Comments (26)  
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What if My Attitude Shapes Reality?

(Warning: This is going to be an uncomfortable read.)

One of my blog friends started a series yesterday on “the practices of mothering.” Sarah’s blog, Emerging Mummy, is one of the must-reads of every day, no matter how busy. Sarah breathes serenity through her words, exudes a faith that I can only hope someday to emulate in my own life and circumstances.

But when I set out to skim her blog on my reader Monday afternoon, it was as if God was prying the blinders off my eyes, holding my head still and making me look head-on at something I didn’t want to acknowledge.

“The words I scatter so carelessly around me can take root in the hearts and minds of us all, giving a narrative deep in the core about ourselves, the God we love, each other and our world,”

she wrote, and I felt a deep shot in my gut. What do I say to my children? The umpteenth glass of spilled milk, the stepping on the books on the floor even though there’s plenty of room to walk on either side, the dumping copious amounts of water on the floor…what do I say in those times, which come a dozen or two times every day? How am I teaching my children to view the world…and more importantly, themselves?

“I’m not a big fan of complaining about my tinies, of talking about them like they are a gigantic pain in the neck… I never want to make them feel like an inconvenience, like they exhaust me or that I don’t take great joy in being their mother.”

Oh. My. Word. That’s me. Is that what my children think?

Immediately I started listing the tickle wars, the giggles, the kisses and swinging and turning upside down, the book reading and playground-visiting and construction-truck-watching and dessert-making. I tried to tell myself that the good outweighs the bad. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve recognized something in myself that I don’t like.

I have to be honest, I argued. If I pretend like the bad stuff doesn’t happen, I’m sugar-coating the truth, telling only half the story. If I really want to be of use to other mothers, I need to be real. And besides, I’m not being true to myself if I’m all happy-happy.

But then it occurred to me: if attitude changes everything, might it change, not just my vision of reality—but reality itself?

Criticism and negativity form a vicious circle: the more you complain about something, the more you find to complain about. Isn’t that exactly what I’ve been fighting with lately? What if, by choosing not to highlight the bad, but the good, I teach myself to see the world through a more life-giving lens? Isn’t it possible that if I focus on the good, I’ll be better able to recognize it? Is it possible that if I chill out about the mountains of irritations and focus on what’s good and beautiful and holy about my children, that not only will I see the good more clearly, but so will they? And if they see the good in themselves more clearly, are they not more likely to act accordingly?

Holy cow. Hello, Philippians 4.

Published in: on June 8, 2011 at 4:43 am  Comments (5)  
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In Need of a Fresh Start

Anger Controlls Him

Image via Wikipedia

So I’m a slow learner.

I know that attitude changes everything. I know that put-on anger in the interest of discipline leads smoothly to real anger, and real anger to helpless rage, and that starting a cycle leads to looking at all of life in the negative.

And yet here I am again.

On the highway home from choir practice last night, with the remnants of Alex sulking, Nicholas dirty (again, despite plentiful opportunities on the toilet) and Julianna unbuckling Alex’s seatbelt just to be a stinker, I gritted my teeth and said to Christian, “It’s a good thing I’m already pregnant, because otherwise I might just say the heck with the whole thing.”

“Speaking of negativity,” Christian said sternly.

Angry Talk (Comic Style)

Image via Wikipedia

Yeah, fine. But Julianna tore up two scrapbook pages yesterday. Two of my best, mind you. And when Christian called at noon the day before, the phone line opened to the dulcet tones of two children screaming….and screaming…and screaming. (I think it was because we’d come inside for lunch instead of playing outside. I don’t exactly remember now, it’s all running together.) Christian laughed. “Great, go ahead,” I said furiously. “While I’m the one that has to deal with it.”

 

I’m in need of yet another fresh start, people. It’s been coming on for a while, and I knew it. I kept trying to ward it off, nudge the inertia just a degree or two to the left. But here I am. If you’ve got a few spare prayers, toss them my way, will you? Because it’s time to go get the kids up, the Morning After Choir Practice, and I really want today to be a fresh start.

Published in: on June 2, 2011 at 5:23 am  Comments (12)  
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