Life with three!!

I could not imagine life without my sweet little baby boy!! He is the sweetest child alive and is the easiest baby I've ever seen.....but I feel like I am not equipped to deal with life with three children.  I wanted to go away this weekend.  Nowhere special just to a local hotel and get some distance from my beautiful three children. 

The problem is who do we leave these sweet kiddos with?  I mean really...my family is sooooo busy that even though we found a time that worked for one of them they need at least two adult sets of arms to deal with all three of my kids.  It's not their fault, I have three kids.  How ridiculous am I to expect anyone to take three kids so that my husband and I get a night kids free.  Anyone up for the task of having three children around already has three or more children themselves.  And anyone who has three children does not want an extra three around (for those who are slow on math that would make six total).

I just didn't see this day coming, we just have too many children to leave them anywhere anymore.  It snuck up on me. 

The irony is those who have three young children are the ones who need to get away.  We may not be the people who are in a position to take a night off work but we are certainly the ones who need to.  My dear sweet parents let me know that after 32 yrs of marriage they are taking their first (tropical) vacation (may I point out that they have taken a number of getaways many different places all over the US) but have never been to a "beachish" type vacation and they feel unapologetic about taking that vacation.  Yes they deserve it, but they can get away from their children whenever they like; we are all grown.  Those of us with little children have to move heaven and earth just to get out of the house for an hour.

When I am a grown up and have the luxury of going anywhere I please, whenever I feel like it I am going to choose to help those who really need a break.  I will use my vacation to watch my grandchildren so my children who can't afford to pay a sitter for the evening can actually go someplace where they won't have baby food in their hair and they can sleep in and actually take a shower the next morning. 

I know that sounds harsh, but I am bitter.  I want help, whether from a parent or sibling....I don't really care.  But logically I know that as a grown-up person who chose to have children I don't have the luxury of asking another person to take on my responsibilities even for an evening.  I will just have to save my pennies till I can afford to pay someone to watch my children or not go at all.

The only thing that makes me feel better is that I will make sure my children have breaks.  I am going to scrimp and save and live on nothing if I have to so that I can be a grandmother who is always there.  When my daughters are crying because they love their children but can't stand them another minute....I will be there with a box of crayons and a bottle.  I will shoe them out the door and let them enjoy if only for an evening, being young attractive and in love with their spouse.  Because my youth, and looks will fade soon....and when they finally do, then and only then will I have time to enjoy just being with my husband.

Rain, rain go away!

My husband clearly remembers an experience when we were living in Florida that he related to me the other night.  He remembers being at Animal Kingdom and there being a sudden incredibly wet rainstorm and us ducking into an artificial cave and sitting watching this seemingly jungle around us get drenched by the downpour.  We only had our oldest child at the time and she was very little probably 18months old or something.

We waited in that little cave and watched the rain, we had all the time in the world so we weren't stressed or in any hurry to get anywhere and watched as probably hundreds of people ran out of the park to get out of the rain.  Eventually after at least twenty or thirty minutes the rain stopped.

We ventured out of the cave and walked around the park, it was almost quiet.  Many people had went back to their hotels or homes and the park was as desolate as I had ever seen it.  We went on the safari ride and not only did we not have to wait at all for it but all the animals were out and enjoying the cool feeling left behind by the rain.

We saw rainbows and the whole experience was so pleasant that it is no wonder why my husband thinks back on that day as his favorite memory of our Florida Disney experiences.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in that cave, waiting for the rain to stop, sure that it will and that if I can only outwait it then it will be so much better than before.  But the rain keeps coming and unlike our Disney experience I am in a hurry and feel like I want to run out of the park instead of waiting patiently for it to end.

Today two of my siblings are in the hospital.  For two very different reasons but I am devastated.  I'm tired of thinking about it and then I feel guilty for being tired of thinking about it.  I wish it would stop raining.

I'm 27 years old, yesterday.  I haven't been alive that long.  No matter how old I may feel or how mature I fancy myself I'm just a baby in the game of life.  When I think that it will only get harder and more complex I just want to run.....or hide.

"If only life was easier" is the phrase I keep hearing myself say over and over again in my mind and even to others.  I don't want to struggle all the time and I really would like a moment of peace and security.  I hear my voice sounding the tiny violins and yet ...I don't care if I sound like a whiner or a wimp...because the truth is that I am.

Do you know the saying that all clouds have silver linings; it is one of those sayings that really doesn't always make sense.  It's great to spout at others when they are struggling but in some of lifes bizzaar circumstances it just doesn't apply.

I am grateful, incredibly so even, for all of the friends and angels that are around me and buoy me up, Gratitude for my health and husband and children overwhelms me at times and brings me to tears.  I focus on it as much as I can.

But today is a grey day and I cannot shake the tired, achy feeling of sorrow over things which I have no control.

Memories on Memorial day:-(

I was fairly young the first time I experienced a death in my family.  We lived close to a number of relatives on my mother's side.  I was about eight or so when a chaotic day ended with the news that my little sister was born and my Aunt Janet died.  It was all a very unusual experience.  At the time I although I saw my aunt weekly (sometimes more) and I really didn't know her well.  I remembered one time when she picked me up from school because I was sick and for some reason my parents were busy.  She brought me over to her house and I did a puzzle.  It is a lovely memory and it became the symbol to me of that woman who was connected to me but I didn't feel connected to.

A year or two later my grandfather died.  This was a stranger experience for my young mind.  Grandpa was old, not like my aunt when she died.  It seemed a more normal experience and yet my mother took it very hard, I was a little confused.  Aren't you supposed to die when you got old.  What I didn't know at the time that somebody isn't supposed to die in their sixties.

A year or two later my father's mother died.  My father's family is quite different than my mothers and they express emotion in a more noticeable way.  They were so visibly upset that many got sick.  They were almost overly emotional but their emotional ties to their mother and grandmother were heightened because they had already experienced loss.  My father's father died when he was ten years old.  The death of my grandmother was taking away the only parent many of my fathers siblings ever knew.  This funeral was the first one I cried at, I was about twelve and old enough to really understand what death was.

Memorial day is an interesting American holiday.  It is like Remembrance day in Canada, but the emphasis over the last while seems to be more on remembering loved ones who've died as opposed to those who died defending our freedom.  In Canada we didn't get as sad on Remembrance day because we didn't know any relatives who'd died in a war.  Here my new in-laws decorate many generations of ancestors graves.  I have never done that before.  Perhaps it's because my ancestors graves are spread out all over Canada and several US states.

Death has touched my family over the last five years as well.  Five years ago another one of my aunts from my mothers side died, again just like my first aunt this one died in her forties leaving a growing family behind.  Three years ago a first cousin of mine died from a brain tumor.  The funeral happened while I was in the hospital giving birth to my second daughter.

Then death came to me in a new way, and I have to admit it shook me much more than my previous experiences with death.  A close friend had a baby die, her little boy was almost the same age as my second child.  I went to the funeral and it changed me forever.  In my experience people who were older were the ones who died, not children.  A child dying is something people can't hardly ever hear of happening because it is scary.  Children rebound and recover from things older people can't.  It shakes up your perspective when someone you know quite well loses a child.

This last year has been the most I have ever dealt with death, and granted it has still been from a distance.  My husband was a pallbearer at a funeral of someone we both knew as teenagers.  She was older and had been battling cancer.  Then the unimaginable happened again.  A cousin whose wife I had recently been getting to know fairly well....their little 20 month old died. 

Then early last month a neighbor died in her fifties from ASL.  A week ago a sister in law lost her father, he was also too young.   

This last memorial day was a different day for me.  My cousin's little boy, his birthday was the 31st of May and then I found out that my very best friend had lost a baby and his birthday was on the 31st as well.  I started to feel weighed down.  Death was coming from everywhere.  No one was exempt, young, middle aged, old... it didn't matter anyone at anytime.

Sometimes I really hate growing up.  Bubbles get shattered and life seems so much darker and more scary.  Waking up at night and checking to see if all your children and your husband are breathing....I don't like it.  Let alone every time the phone rings worrying who it might be this time and whether it's going to hit even closer to home.

I think the thing that bothers me the most though is that there is little to nothing I can do to ease the pain of those who are right next to the pain suffering intensely from losing those they are closest to.  I cry at night because of their pain and wish that I could do more.  I pray for them but it doesn't seem like enough.  I try and send encouraging notes of support, but I often worry that I'm not helping and may be saying the wrong thing.  I'm grateful I have my belief system to comfort me.  Knowing in my heart that God has prepared a way for people to be together after death gives me intense comfort.

If you are suffering from the loss of a loved one, know that you are not alone.  Even if you don't believe in a higher power.  We are one big human family and somebody somewhere is wishing you well.  Tonight I will pray for you, even if I don't know who you are.  I'm going to send it out into the night hoping that it will ease your pain.

To spoil or not to spoil?

I think I've written about this before but it is a subject that constantly plagues me so pardon the redundancy.

I have always loved toys. When I was child we didn't have that many. In fact I remember only ever having one barbie doll and it wasn't even a barbie it was a skipper doll. My brothers fed it to the dog and afterwards the legs were all chewed off and I remember the white part showing so that it looked like her bones were sticking out.

 

 

I didn't ever have a doll house or a baby doll bed or dress up clothes; I specifically remember never having a "my little pony" because there was a group of girls who during lunch had a club that met under the trees by the big field and you had to have a pony to belong. I could never be a member because I didn't have one.

Now don't get me wrong my parents did everything in their power to give us toys, especially ones we wanted. But when we were young I was slightly conscious that they couldn't afford to get us that much so I didn't ask and tried to make things to play with instead of asking for premade toys. I made dollhouses out of cardboard, doll clothing out of my mothers scrap fabric from sewing and cars for our stuffies out of boxes.

I was the oldest girl in my family and my parents didn't have as much money when I was little as when my younger sisters were, so even though I was "too old" to play with barbies and dolls I would play with my younger sisters and try and make their play time as fun as it possibly could be.

When my daughters were born I could not stop myself. Granted Dan and I didn't have a lot of money but whatever we had was so much more than what my parents had that it seemed (and still does seem) like we were millionaires. We bought brand new toys for my eldest's first birthday. I really was like a kid in the candy store when we went to toys r us that first time. My eyes lit up as we carefully picked out each item and I will never forget the amazing feeling of bringing those toys to the register, paying for them and then taking them home.

Now I am a budget person by choice and a second hand connoisseur by nature. So those first few toys we bought brand new quickly became some of the only new toys I ever bought. I started going to yard sales religiously and shopped clearance and day after thanksgiving sales like a madwoman (not really but I was very diligent at trying).

I bought a beautiful play kitchen for my girls two years ago on clearance for $50 when it originally sold for $150. I bought dollhouses at yard sales for $10-$15 a piece that sold on ebay for $200 used. I bought princess dresses new and used and made several myself. All in all it started to add up to a lot of toys. My girls have so much, maybe a little too much but I am constantly downsizing or giving away when I upgrade to a toy that works more fluently in the scientific flow of toys I orchestrate for my children. I am beginning to have a perfect knowledge of which things should be bought new, which should be bought used and which things should never be bought in the first place.

I can never get away from the guilt though that plagues me for giving them so much. Yes they are spoiled. My second oldest daughter's third birthday was yesterday and I asked my sister on a scale of one to ten how spoiled my girls were. She said "Eleven" ;-) My mother is constantly commenting on how they don't need all of those toys and how ridiculous it is that I keep buying them for them. Now to be fair to me my house does have quite a few toys but it is not crowded with them and they all have a place to be put away.

It's not necessarily the guilt of overcrowding that bothers me it's the attachment to things that bothers me. I recently read a book "By some miracle not yet clear to me" written by a man from Uganda named Vincent Musaalo. He spoke of the homemade toys he had to play with and the horror of not knowing whether they would have enough food to eat.

Life is not special because of the things we have or don't have it's special because of our families and our service to other people. My husband lived for two years in Bolivia where families of four would live in a one room apartment. Having is not important, I know that from my humble beginnings. I loved my childhood even though I really did wish we had more.

And yet I do get intense joy from creating a fanciful world for my children to grow up in.

Yes I may buy them a few too many toys and insist on getting them the very cutest things at the cheapest price, but I do that so they will want to play instead of sitting around watching television or playing video games. We do not invest in gaming systems or cable TV (although we do buy movies because they are awesome to keep kids occupied while I exercise or clean). But I invest in inventive play instruments also known as toys.

 

 

Now it may sound a little like I am trying to convince myself it is OK to spoil my children far, far beyond what I had as a child....and in truth I am. When you are raised very unspoiled you gain character that is immeasurable in worth. Which brings me to why I wrote in the first place. For a combined birthday gift for both of my girls we got them this.

This playhouse is the only toy I have ever bought that is over $100. Yes my parents and sister went in on the gift but it was very expensive and although we can afford it I do feel like a rich person who has the luxury of spending money on a toy. (Have I mentioned that I have a unique bias against rich people due to my singular childhood) I call this syndrome "gifter's guilt". I feel bad that I have given my children something they will enjoy all summer long because it is just a thing.

My husband would rather spend that money on their college funds or their wedding funds or a host of other more worthy things. He is probably right, and yet those little girls will only be little once and I want them to enjoy every minute of it:-)

......a picture box!

I am now the proud mother of three children. Two sweet girls and one extremely huggable baby boy. He is a joy and I am just now readjusting to life. Each week I add back another responsibility/activity of pre-baby life. After I had him I took a break from everything from cooking to exercising and many other things in between.

This week I added back exercising but last week I added back church responsibilities and threw a party for the teenage girls I teach on Sundays. I was excited about it but nervous because my first week back I was completely in charge of the activity and there was a lot to remember and to get done.

Well I showed up at the church building lugging in five boxes of pizza and three other bags of treats, fruit and decorations. I put a few of the things down and realized I had to go the the library and check out a TV to show the movies I brought. I turned to another leader and said "I'll be right back, I just have to go get......a........." a long pause followed while I waved my arms and roughly sketched out in the air a large square shape, "a..... you know....a picture box thing". The woman looked at me not knowing whether to laugh or cry at my lack of mental acuity. "A TV! that's what I meant!" I laughed and shook my head as I ran to the other side of the building to get the "picture box".

Yes I am blaming post baby brain on this one. I couldn't stop laughing at myself or wondering if I will ever be that eloquent young lady I once fancied myself to be. My family always lauded me for my extensive vocabulary and my ability to find words for others when their brains couldn't connect a thought with the appropriate verbal description. Now I am the sad example of a frazzled mother who can't correctly label the noun: television.

I am sure that my amusing anecdote will bring a smile to your faces, and rightly so. I mean really.......picture box. But as you laugh say a silent prayer that my mental faculties will one day return to me. Or else one day you will see me wandering down the street pointing out animals or rocks to my children and describing them as "things that move" or "that hard lump over there" and my poor children will grow up with no knowledge of the real words attached to everyday objects:-)