Other Parents' Struggles

Sometimes as a parent it's reassuring to hear about other parents' struggles because you feel like at least there's other people out there who know the ups and downs of parenthood. Every parent struggles with different things, and we all have our work cut out for us. Every now and then, you hear about someone else's parenting woes, and it makes you glad that you're not in their shoes.

James told me his cousin had started a blog, and I went over there to check it out tonight. I read this story and thought it was hilarious. Sorry Tarah, I don't mean to make a mockery of your parenting struggles. I really do hope you find something that helps. In the interim, here's all I could think about while I was reading about your little sleepwalker.

Good Enough Mother

Some days, no matter how hard you try to get the day back on track, you just end up feeling like a complete failure for one or many reasons. For me, today, was one of those days.

Of course, I am pregnant and emotional, but I am sitting in bed writing this post with the feeling that today I was just not a good enough mother. In fact, the overwhelming feeling I had at the end of the day was wondering if I was ever a really good mother. Lately, I seem to be thinking about this an awful lot, and I don't always like my own answer.

Although today seemed uneventful, by the end of the day, the little struggles of the day and my response to them left me with lingering feelings of inadequacy - 'Was I too harsh? Was I unreasonable? Where did I go wrong? Have I done everything I can? Why won't he cooperate? Why does it make me so mad (then sad)?'. By the end of the day, all I wanted to do was cry.

I thought posting would have a cathartic effect, and it has, but I am still struggling with how I move past this feeling. The answer for me here is to see what I can do that makes me feel like a better parent. It seems I've made myself this promise time and time again, but I always struggle when it's time to make good on it. I see these 3 little faces, and I want to be the best parent I can be, so why do I keep falling on my face?



Tomorrow, I will try again, but I swear if they turn out to be confident, well-adjusted adults, I will not take even half the credit. I love being a mom, but these are the hardest days I have lived.

No Time

If you can believe it, I just finished up some work. Although working late at night has been rare while I've been pregnant, I used to be up at least one night a week until the wee hours working on some spreadsheet or another. The strange part is that I don't hate it. I will, however, hate getting up in a few hours.

I have been wanting to post an update of the kids since that's why I started this blog after all, but between, work, pregnancy, and the kids I don't know how anyone can find the time.

Without selling them too short, let me try to get this done in 5 minutes.

Jameson manages to make James and I laugh about something he does or says every day. He is full of words, and he says a lot of unexpected things. When I went to pick him up from school today, I looked in and saw him talking to one of the little girls, very involved in whatever he was telling her. Later tonight when I was giving him his bedtime snack, I asked him what he was talking to her about. He responds without diverting his attention from his cartoon, "I told her how I went swimming and drowned.". That was it - no more explanation. I laughed at his unexpected response, but I'm not sure why I was surprised. He is a lot of fun, and I love to see how he is a bit of his dad and a bit of me - makes for a funny combination.

Miss Amelia is Jameson-in-training. Interestingly, she is also full of words, although many of them incomprehensible at this point. Every morning she wakes up with usual call, "Dada, Dada, Dadaaaaa", and I think it helps James get out of bed when I tell him it's time to get up and get the babies. She is saying a handful of words, but she is great with communicating with hand signals and looks. She has a really expressive face, and she demands a lot of attention. I know I am going to have my hands full with this one, but the good thing is that she is going to tell me what she needs early. She is very affectionate, especially with her brothers and loves to give hugs and kisses.

Truman is developing a stronger personality lately, throwing fits when you try to feed him as he insists on feeding himself. He doesn't try to talk as much as Amelia, but he does have his own way of communicating. One day, we will have to record some of his "talk" since it's nothing like how Jameson and Amelia (so far) started to communicate. He is very sweet, loving, and ridiculously strong. He has been climbing everything in sight for months. I can barely carry him since he knows exactly how to twist his body when he wants to be put down. Considering that his head probably weights a good 5 lbs., he's not exactly easy to control. He is very mechanically-inclined that my dad might just get that engineer he's hope to get. He loves books, and he will study them for a long time, but he loves food and naptime even more. His temperament is like his dad's, which is both a good and bad thing. He is so laid-back most of the time, but he will, rarely, have an unexpected outburst for some unknown reason. Then I'm stuck trying to figure out if he's sick, or if he's just angry or frustrated. It's hard to tell since he doesn't do it very often.

I have a handful of pictures/videos from this weekend that I will sift through and post over the weekend, but we are having lots of fun with our kiddos. They are exhausting, and many days I think I may lose my mind. Those moments always pass though, and somehow it's so much easier to remember the good moments. It's easily been more than 10 minutes now, so I better get some sleep if I'm actually going to show up at work tomorrow.

Cutting the Cord

I am guilty of babying my kids. I figure they will only be babies once in their lives, so it's my one chance. I love to see them growing up, but I'm not anxious to see their time as babies end. Well, despite my efforts to slow him down, my biggest baby is getting more independent every day. At his request, we are trying another sleepover at grandma's tonight. Other than when the twins were born (when it was required), he has asked two other times to stay the night at my mom's house without either me or James also staying. Both times, I have had my parents give up and bring him back home by 2 a.m. It has been months since the last time he tried, so we have yet to see if he will be successful this time.

Tonight, he's with his grandma Claire on the promise of late night movies, waffles for breakfast, and a return trip home tomorrow. We had a showing on our house tonight, so we went over to James's parents' house to kill some time. We figured we would be returning around bedtime, so we got everyone ready before we left. Just before we were ready to leave, Jameson decided that he wanted to stay and watch movies instead of going home and going to bed (go figure). I tried to make sure he knew it meant he would be there without mom and dad, and we didn't want anyone to have to bring him home in the middle of the night. I'm still a little nervous, but I hope he makes it.

As much as I cherish him as my "baby", I also want to see him grow up to be confident and independent. I will miss not waking up to him tomorrow morning asking me to take him downstairs and get his chocolate milk, and he's only gone for one night. I can't imagine what I'm going to feel like when he tells me he want to go away to college.

Can't Catch a Break

Truman is sick AGAIN. He started at the end of last week with a cough and some congestion. He continued this week with fever and vomiting. I am honestly at my wits end with viruses this season. The other two seem to have some congestion, but Truman seems to be the only one with vomiting. Hopefully, it's not a sign of what's to come for the other two. I'm not sure how much more I can take of all of this.

Well, James was nice enough to announce to all his Facebook friends that we're expecting our 4th, so I thought I might as well break my silence too. I'm about 10 weeks in, and it probably explains a lot about my stressed out, impatient mood lately. I am not one of those giddy, 'I feel great' pregnant people. In fact, I am probably the complete opposite. I am in a foul mood, and I lose any semblance of patience I might ordinarily have. It's not pretty, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. The only thing that seems to help is having some time to myself and lots of sleep.

I'm looking back at the title of this post, and realize how it probably sounds. I think it's obvious I'm talking about the sick kids. Although we had planned to wait a bit for another baby, we are happy to welcome him/her early. We might go insane for a while, but somehow we will make it work. Now, if we could just keep them healthy. . .

Healthy For the Moment

I feel like I've been on a nursing sick kids to healthy marathon.  Thankfully, they are all better, for the moment, at least.  Seriously, what a pain!!!  In four days, Jameson had almost an entire container of Children's Motrin.  I'm not one to medicate quickly, but 24/7 fever is unbearable.  It's really strange too how when he's running a fever, he seems to have stronger responses to his dreams.  Anyone else seen this in their kids?  If I sat outside his room when his fever was returning, I could hear all the nonsensical things he was saying.  It was cute, but I felt bad for him.

Truman kicked off this virus round with 4 nights of the worst sleep I have ever gotten.  I think on the last night, we just gave up and let me scream his head off for a couple of hours.  This is not normally our style, but we were both deliriously tired.  I was cursing everything in mind and sight a couple of those nights.

Amelia was, as usual, our good sleeper despite her fever.  She got the least amount of Motrin and did the least amount of complaining.  I guess that just goes to show you that men are wimps when it comes to illness.  Then again, I didn't need my daughter as evidence to confirm that men are the weaker sex.  Sorry, guys, you have your strengths, but toughing it out is not one of them.

I am now cringing at the thought of sending Jameson to the virus cesspool that is daycare tomorrow.  He doesn't go every day, but I know every day that he goes is another day he is likely to pick something up from some other snot-nosed 3 year old.  Well, wish us luck that the rest of the cold and flu season is, at least, tolerable.

Too Sick For Blogging

I've been meaning to blog all week, but we've had our hands more than full with sick kids. I finally seem to have found a few moments of peace before the next kid needs his/her dose of ibuprofen.

Truman kicked off the week with high fever in the middle of the night and continued for about 3 days. He is a bear at night when he's sick, so nobody got any sleep. Amelia followed him a few days later with the same symptoms, and continues with her fever. Jameson just started with fever yesterday, so he is eager for the "purple medicine" every 6 hours. Not to be outdone, Truman suddenly broke out in hives last night, so all eyes were on him again last night.

It's no fun with a whole house full of sick kids, but it's one of the ugly necessities of parenting. Congratulations, Jim & Liz! Enjoy the "honeymoon" of parenting.

Work For It, Damn It!

Driving home from work yesterday, I saw a truck for a rent-to-own furniture store, and on the side was written, 'because everyone deserves nice things'. At the time, I didn't give it much thought other than noting that companies with mottos like that are just what our entitlement culture needs.

The thought came back to me tonight while doing dishes because I had read a blog earlier about socializing health care. I thought, 'Is there no limit to what we expect the government to provide for us?' What is the lesson here for my children (since this is a blog about family)? Something like 'Hey, don't worry about working hard because the government is going to take care of you'. I don't subscribe to this idea, and I want to raise children that believe in the power of freedom and self-reliance.

As I thought some more, while loading and unloading the dishwasher for the 2nd time today, the movie The Pursuit of Happyness came to mind because I remembered something that had really struck me when I watched it. I remember that Will Smith's character (Chris Gardner), during one of his struggles between poverty and homelessness thinks of Thomas Jefferson. According to the IMDB, the dialogue goes like this:

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?

At his wits' end, Will Smith's character begins to doubt he will ever find happiness. What I love about the movie - he perseveres! Despite all the difficulties he has faced, he doesn't just give up and expect the government to take care of him, instead, he uses his unhappiness with his current situation as motivation to work his way out of it. I know, it's just a movie, but if you listen to the real Chris Gardner on YouTube, his life was, in fact, worse than the movie portrayed.

Having the freedom to pursue happiness - that is truly freedom. Our freedom and entrepreneurial spirit is part of what makes me feel blessed that I get to raise my children in this country. I hope they will never think they deserve something because others have it. I want them to grow up firmly believing they are masters of their own destiny.

Not Ready For This

Last night while getting Jameson to bed, he told me, "Mom, I don't wanna die.".  My heart broke a little, and I didn't really know what to say.  He continued with the following questions:

Am I going to die?

Why do I have to die?

Will the man that made me make me better so I can come back?

Are you going to die?

Is Dad going to die?

Who is going to be my Mom and Dad if you die?

Bombarded with these questions, I didn't really know how to answer.  I didn't want to lie to him, but I didn't want to scare him either.  I did my best to reassure him, but he just wanted to hear me say that none of us would die.  I couldn't do that, so he started crying in the middle of his questioning because I think he sensed my inability to fully reassure him.

"Yes, we're going to die, but hopefully not for a long time.  Honey, I can't promise you that I'm not going to die, but hopefully Momma will be around until you're a big man and you have your own kids.  I'm sorry I don't know all the answers to your questions, but no one really knows."  I felt myself sinking.  He persisted, and I couldn't help but cry as I empathized with his sadness and fear.  I called James in the room, and I'm not sure he did any better.

Wow, I was not prepared for these questions or these emotions yet.  He's only 3, and I guess I didn't think the fear of death would enter his mind until he was a lot older.  I was wrong.  Tonight, he told me he didn't want to die because he was scared.  This time he was much calmer, and he let it go after I tried my best to tell him it was okay to be scared.  I told him I thought we're all a little scared, but we should live our lives to enjoy our life, not to waste it worrying about something we can't change.  He seemed somewhat satisfied with that response although I'm sure it's not the last I will hear of it.

With all this talk of death, I couldn't help but think about my own worries.  What if one or both of us does die?  Who will be their "mom & dad" if we both do?  What if my children don't get to know their parents?  Or worse, I can't even bear to think about other scenarios.  I think it would be great if I would just take my own advice.  I've said my prayers, so I guess I have no choice but to leave this in God's hands.  Now, I'm just praying for all the right answers.