Last Weeks of Summer

I reckon the boys can sense summer coming to an end and are getting their last bouts of rebellion out of the way. Or I reckon we could be in for a very rough year!

We were sitting at lunch with a couple of friends this afternoon and the boys were behaving so well.  I even remember swelling with pride and thinking how fun it is when we can all eat a nice lunch together. Then Little N starts spitting. And then throws something across the table that hits sweet hubby. And then raising his voice. These are toddler behaviors, they are not new, they can be dealt with quickly and quietly. But then he doesn't correct when I remind him of our manners. This defiance is what really wears me down! I know it is also part of the wonderful age of two. Big B picks up on the action and sees I have my hands full with brother. He corrects himself quickly because he has moved on from the "asserting his independence AT ALL COSTS" phase. Lunch is over...next on our list is grocery store.

Nice car ride to the store with promises of  "special treats" for good behavior. We are all on board! Maybe our day has turned around? But alas...there are no double seater carts which means one boy has to walk. Maybe I should have turned around, gotten back in the car and drove right home. But alas...I opt for Big B to walk and I take my chances.

For as much energy as Big B has I have never seen him walk so slowly! He wants to look and touch each item we pass. New rule-Hands on the cart! Okay...rule amendment- Hands cannot be on the front of the cart so mommy does not run you over. While browsing the baby section for clearance items ( Another mistake right there! Veterans know in and out with kids! IN and OUT!) mommy indeed runs Big B over. Mommy-" What were you doing?! I didn't see you?!". Big B-" Getting my shoe. It fell off.". All the while he is shrieking as if his entire foot fell off with it. One friendly employee comes over and asks if we're okay. "Yes, thank you." All the while another not-so-friendly employee is glaring at us-she may have seen me hit my own child with the cart. Then a second! employee asks if we are okay. "Yes, thank you". Throw the shoe in the cart and keep moving away from the staring employee.

We pass the dollar section where we find our special treats. Big B's foot is miraculously better and I spy a teacher section. I start looking and plucking to fill in the gaps for my classroom and let the boys go to town finding their treat. Seconds later I look up to see the boys throwing balls willy nilly around the aisle and their arms are full of special treats. As we clean up, choose one item each and start making our way to the check out I begin to see the scene from an onlookers eyes. After B is almost hit by a second cart (not me) because of the slow rate at which he is traveling, I can clearly see a small boy with one shoe who was just hit by a cart (by his own mother), made a mess of the dollar section because no one was paying attention to him, and left to trail behind his mother to the check out. In my defense there were only 2 lanes open and they were filling up quickly. What a sad scene. What a mishap of a day.

I have currently gone into their room 3 times to remind them it is nap time all to no avail. I can hear them playing again. I reckon I will have to waltz back in there and give it one more go before I give up on naps completely. I reckon we ought to scrap the whole day and try again tomorrow.

The Laundry Situation

I reckon our laundry situation has gotten a bit out of control. Maybe-a lot out of control. I reckon we should go back to last week with what started out as such good intentions...

Last week I did 2 loads of little boy clothes (among many other loads-but these 2 are important to the story). One for each boy- Their hampers only hold that much so I don't allow myself to let it get out of hand. (Side note-Do crazy people set up those kinds of limits to keep themselves in check? Hmmm....) I delayed the folding of that never-ending pile of tiny clean clothes until my sweet hubby got home to help. Which he helped with very graciously. We did this after the boys went to bed while watching TV- therefore I was unable to put them up directly-therefore setting the neatly folded piles in a laundry basket to be put away tomorrow-therefore setting myself up for failure.

Fast forward a week and we have been moving this laundry basket to our bed every morning to pick clothes from it and back to our computer chair every night to lay in our bed. Somehow-one child's clothes got put away and the other's did not. I have no excuse... Over the course of the week more clothes have been added to the pile in the laundry basket. As well as more loads of laundry being done and left unfolded in the laundry room. Leaving the house this morning-I pass the laundry room and let out an audible sigh as I pass the scene of devastation waiting to be organized. I vow-I will take care of it all at nap time!

It is now nap time. And I am so disturbed by what I found in the laundry basket in our room-I had to stop and blog. I make myself comfy on the bed and dig in. The top layer-a mix of dirty clothes and clean ones that didn't make the morning "dressing" cut. I should have re-washed the whole basket-but there are other loads in line. I don't have time for that. So, I picked out the clean ones. Yes-with the smell test-you've done it too! Don't judge me! The second layer-sweet N's clean clothes that never got put up. They are no longer folded-so I start doing that. And then...as I get closer to the bottom of this Narnia basket-a stack of 11 magazines and 2 books. One of which I am in the middle of reading and have not even missed. MAGAZINES people! I have no recollection of putting these in there-nor can think of a good reason why I would put a stack of magazines and books into a laundry basket in my room.

I reckon it's madness. That's the only explanation. Now-onto the laundry room. Wonder what we will find there...

Bedtime Revisted

Just wanted to add:

I reckon no matter how much you are "enjoying your children"...there will still be nights when bedtime is a welcomed thing.

Nights when you just can't wait to curl up on the couch with your sweet hubby.

Nights when you have budgeted a piece of chocolate into your daily calories and you don't want to share.

Or even nights when you've played your hardest and laughed until you cried...and they are still running circles around you.

And I reckon I'm okay with those kind of nights too.

(Totally passed out from a hard day of playing!)

Is it bedtime yet?!

I reckon that was a horrible last post to write and then disappear again. Truly things have been going well...really busy and a bit stressful but a lot of great stuff mixed in there too.

There has been a lot of laughter in our house lately and I reckon that is a really good thing! I will admit to some pulling my hair out moments too. But I think that comes with the territory of two boys ages 3 and 2 and a small business trying to find it's footing. We went through a spell there when the kids were in bed at 8! We were counting down the minutes to say, "It's bedtime! Kiss Daddy! See you in the morning." Sing our songs, read our books and lay them down! And I would be asleep as soon as I hit the couch. And I started to ask myself...am I actually enjoying my children?

From as far back as I can remember I wanted to be a mom. I would play lawyer...but I always had a babydoll on my hip at the same time. I knew I would be one that married young and started having kids right away. I really yearned for it. As soon as the sweet hubby and I got married I had baby fever. We probably weren't even married yet to be honest! Trying to be responsible we decided to wait 2 years to try. Yet, babies were all I thought about, all I talked about, and all I read about. (Seriously, what 19 year old watches A Baby Story on TLC? It was a little weird!) I remember sitting and thinking about what they would look like and act like. I vividly recall sitting on the couch with my sweet hubby and thinking about little munchkins rambling on and on and cracking us up with the crazy things they'd say. Fast forward almost 5 years (in July) and all my dreams have come true and so much more than I could have imagined.

Big B does not stop talking. If he runs out of something to say on a topic-he will just. make. noise. And he is so sweet and funny he makes me cry happy tears daily. Little N is getting so big! He can be so sweet or so ornery when he wants to be. Even his ornery self is hilarious! I dreamed about our house being filled with laughter and we have been blessed with two little boys who know just how to do it!

But a lot of things come with children that I didn't expect. I guess I knew they would come but I didn't expect them to wear on you like they do. You know..all the mundane life stuff. Dishes, laundry, ants in the kitchen, dog eating my favorite shoes, bills, tummy bugs, ear aches, diets...(insert your own list). These things by themselves are no big deal! When I'm feeling strong I can tackle them all without blinking. I have the potential to be super mom-there are times I have felt like I am.

But when I am feeling weak, when these things have worn me down so that I can no longer laugh at the beautifully hilarious things my children say. When I can no longer see the blessings in my lap (even when they are asking me "why" for the millionth time!), I know I have become too focused on these mundane things and I need a refresher. I need to leave the dishes and read that book about the caterpillar (again). I need to just throw out those once adorable shoes and hold my baby because he won't be asking for too much longer. I need to remember the reason I am doing all those mundane things in the first place.

I reckon I am back to enjoying the laughter for the moment. I hope it stays. There is nothing worse than relearning a lesson and realizing, "Gosh, I was just here!". But I reckon there isn't a more important lesson for me than this.

Oh, and...my children have gone to bed late almost every night this week.

Where to begin...

I reckon you think I've fallen off the face of the Earth. I just reckon I may have for a short time. So much has happened and changed in my life the past couple of months. But where do I begin? I guess the beginning is a good place to start. I hope I'm not too long winded here...

In December we had a miscarriage and I didn't take it as well as I had hoped I would. Whenever you go into your first doctor's appointment you hope and pray everything is fine but you know there is always a possibility of something going wrong. At least I do, since we had one miscarriage before the boys. So, I don't generally just expect things to be fine. However, I had waited quite a while before making my first appointment and should have been around 12 weeks along. And all the normal symptoms-nauseous, hungry, tired, cranky and excited! I had my hopes way up! I had after all had two healthy babies and there were no signs something was wrong.

The decision to have a third was something the sweet hubby and I had gone back and forth on. Well, I had gone back and forth (back to sleepless nights and crying newborns or sleep peacefully and hold other people's precious bundles then hand them back when they started crying) and the sweet hubby had stayed firm on his "two is plenty!". Then I came down with baby fever-badly-and there was no going back for me! And suddenly sweet hubby had too! We decided for sure to start trying and hopefully get pregnant around February or March. Of course it happened right away-and we were thrilled! Thinking of names, telling family and friends, looking at tiny little onesies, and thinking of how our lives would change so soon! All the fun stuff.

Sparing you all the details-there was no heartbeat at our first appointment and I had had a "silent miscarriage". Basically, your body doesn't notice the baby has stopped growing and you continue experiencing normal pregnancy symptoms for several weeks. Who knew? I was shocked and didn't know how to handle myself. And to top it all off-have you looked around recently? EVERYBODY is pregnant right now. It's a little crazy. So, all my friends are announcing their pregnancies and at any other time-I would have been thrilled. But I just couldn't do it. I just tried to smile and my bitterness grew. And I was so angry at myself for feeling that way.Plus I had two healthy boys-didn't I know some people can't have children at all? I felt selfish.

People seemed appropriately upset right along with me and that helped a little. And then they all seemed to move on...including sweet hubby ( I know! Men handle these things differently than we do!)   And I was stuck. Whenever I was alone I would honestly just cry and wonder if I was ever going to get past this. How was I supposed to move on? And why was I being such a baby? And then people started asking when we were going to try again. And I couldn't even imagine going through that pain again. And I became even more bitter. I truly felt as if I had fallen off the face of the Earth and no one had noticed. And I felt selfish. Something had to give. Something had to change.

I tried a lot of things. I tried being honest about how I felt-but I really do try to be a positive person and I hated the way I sounded telling people I was feeling so awful. So, I tried pretending I was fine. "It was hard but I'm doing much better.Thank you for asking." And that seemed to make everyone leave me alone-but my bitterness grew. I had finally given up actually trying to feel better and focused all my energy on pretending to feel better. And I didn't have much energy to begin with. I would notice Big B had been asking for something 4 or 5 times before I even heard him. I had an excuse almost every night why we should eat out. I hired a house cleaner. I went to work but cannot tell you what I got done while I was there. I didn't return texts or phone calls because I really didn't want to talk to anyone-it was too much work. I would like to add that my hormone levels were falling during this time too. I'd like to think that had a part in all this mess.

One day I went to get my hair done and I spilled a little. Don't we all spill to our hairdresser? Mine happens to be wonderful and it was just what I needed. She was so genuine when she said that I didn't need to move on so quickly. That I didn't need to think about trying again right away. She didn't even flinch when I said I was bitter that my friends were pregnant. I told her how selfish I had become. She didn't seem to expect anything from me. She couldn't relate exactly but she seemed to understand that I was a mess and made it seem only logical that I would be a mess. And it hit me-that was what was bugging me so much about the whole situation. I'm sure as wives and mothers we all feel the expectations of our roles. And it was the weight of those expectations on me when I truly felt broken that I couldn't handle. I could handle that God had a plan and this baby was in heaven with him now. I could even rejoice in the fact that two of my babies have gone straight to Him without any fear or sickness or trouble in this life. I could even handle that no one would feel this loss as deeply as I would. I just couldn't handle the expectations on me to deal with it. Whether imagined or real-I felt them and I couldn't cope.

I had finally come to the end of myself, I've always disliked that phrase until I went through his. And now it fits perfectly. I was done. I didn't know where to go next. And as a result of being totally lost and broken my prayers changed. I had been asking for peace and the strength to pull through this. Which I don't think are bad prayers but I wanted those things just so I could feel better. Instead, I started praying for HIM. Wanting to know Him better. Wanting to be full in Him. Wanting to do whatever he wanted me to do. I felt led to MOVE. To do things differently. A deep desire to please Him simply because He is worthy. Not looking for anything in return. I told you I had given up on ever feeling better.

So, that's where I am. I'm not sure what my next move is. But I am praying, reading, and listening to the needs around me. What a change from expecting everyone else to cater to my needs of the moment. I'm not saying the loss doesn't hurt anymore. It was very difficult for me to write about this. So, I reckon there is more healing to be done there. But I have found joy in my friend's pregnancies and joy in my two healthy babies. I've found joy in a nice healthy meal at home and when I clean the house. (Which I should be doing right now!) I am excited to see what God leads me to next. I hope He has planned big things!

I really don't want to post this. I don't want you to know where I have been because it was ugly and I'm nervous to say I don't know where to go next. But I reckon I feel like I can't just pick up where I left off and ignore that this has even happened. Plus I feel changed in a positive way and wanted to write about that change.

Okay-now seriously, I need to go clean so sweet hubby doesn't worry I've lost my mind again! :)