Reality Check

So I thought this morning, "I am super woman! I can handle taking 4 kids to the grocery store!" Well a 4,3,1, and 6 week old baby and I all got packed into the van and headed off to Shop-Rite. We actually made it through the entire store with no sore bottoms, no broken jars, and a full grocery cart. We get home in one piece and I unload the car. While I put away all the milk products, the baby is in the swing and the kids are eating lunch. I look around and think, "Yay! I did it! I am awesome!" Just then the baby starts to cry. So I clean up my 1 year old and put him to bed so I can nurse the baby in peace. As I go to lift my precious daughter out of the swing I realize she is completely covered in poo. I mean up the front, up the back, and out the sides. I run upstairs to start the cleaning process but I soon realize that the more poop I clean off the baby the more I get on me. By the time I am done cleaning up Chloe, I need a bath. At the end of this episode it took just as long to change and clean up the baby as it did for me to grocery shop. Maybe I am not super woman. Good thing kids dish out humility so cutely!

Life's Suprises

The last 5 years of my life has been full of suprises. It's felt like a drive in the country in the middle of the night when you have your high beams on and still can't see what's around the next corner, or what is going to pop out on the road in front of you. Most of my surprises have been more then wonderful. I married John sooner then expected, had four wonderful kids, graduated college, enjoyed work, and now enjoying staying at home. We were so lucky to get John an amazing job that afforded us the opportunity to own a home much earlier then expected. There have really been so many blessings. At the same time, as soon as the ride seems to go smoothly, there is a curve in the road or something jumping in front of us that causes us to really hit our brakes. We had the unexpected complications with my pregnancy with Brooke, who tried to come out earlier then planned, followed by me hemorrhaging after delivery. Not long after buying our first home and passing the 12 week "safe" mark of my third pregnancy, I found out I was going to miscarry. Definitely one of the hardest moments a mom has to go through, made harder by the fact I had to come up with an explanation a 2 and 3 year old could understand. The sadness only lessened when we were happy to find out that I was pregnant again and more then excited we would have a little "John". Not long after his birth we were knocked off cloud nine by news that he was close to suffering brain damage by the rising bilirubin levels in his blood. We again made it through the ordeal with a happy, healthy baby. Again after being suprised with baby number four, we found out that there was a very good chance John might lose his job before the baby would arrive. After going through the months of biting our nails, the Union and Sunoco reached an agreement. Chloe arrived this summer and has been more then a burst of sunshine to our family. She has really brought a whole new level of happiness to our home. And yet here we are again facing another layoff and the very really fact that we would be much better off selling our home before the end of the year and waiting to buy a new house for several months. Although everything seems so unpredictable, I really think we are haapier now then we have ever been. I think if my married life had been more predictable, it wouldn't be as amazing as it is now. I realized that at every moment when life has taken one of those sharp turns, it was an opportunity for John and I to hold on to each other and make it through. Each problem has left us stronger as a partners and parents. I think that is what God's plan is. He presents problems as opportunites. How else could we learn? If life just went along "perfectly", we wouldn't need each other, we wouldn't grow, we wouldn't really do anything. But each time we feel things are out of our control and we lean on each other, whether its parents, spouses, or friends, we grow together. We learn how strong we really are. We learn how much we really love each other. We learn what truelly makes us happy and what really is important. Then, as soon as life gets easy again, we start to forget. We get back in old patterns, we spend when we should save, we say I love you less often then we should, we start to think we are doing things by ourselves, until we are knocked back down again and have to learn what we should already know. What a perfect plan God has. He continues to offer us opportunites to learn even repeat lessons and he gives us the people who are most able to help us through. Man, as many times as I have been knocked on my butt I must really forget fast.

Mommy Thoughts

I don't know if it is technically post-par tum depression but I have felt so crazy after the last two babies. I have these crazy anxiety attacks and my mind goes to the worst places. The other day I was driving over the St. Georges bridge with just Chloe in the car and I kept thinking that if the bridge collapses how am I gonna get in the back, unbuckle her and swim to the surface, or if it was better to leave her in the carrier because it would help her float up to the surface, and how would I do CPR fast enough if I had to swim to the shore. It was a much more mild anxiety attack then usual. It gets worse when all four kids are with me and I go over a bridge or think I am gonna get in a car accident and how will I check on them all. It is so much harder because I really am not that person who worries about everything. I am so laid back and I hate feeling so uptight. The other night I was trying desperately to figure out how I would save my kids if some horrible person broke in my house and tried to attack my girls. I couldn't figure out if it was better to try to fight him and take the chance of being killed and really not being able to save them, or try and hide them before the guy got upstairs , but how do you keep a 1,3, and 4 year old quiet and not to mention the baby? And the more I tried every scenario out in my head, the worse it got. I finally realized I can't save them, and now I feel like a failure of a mom. It took at least 6 months after John Michael to stop being so irrational. I hope it stops sooner this time. Its keeping me up at night and the only thing that makes it better is being next to the kids or John. As soon as they are away from me I get scared again. I guess its a normal mom thing to want to keep your family safe but this is kind of extreme.

Mommy Math

So I have figured out that when it comes to motherhood, more really is less. More kids equals less money, more babies equals less sleep, more family equals less food, and more bodies to dress means less clothes for mommy. Of course there is always the positives side to those things. There might be less money to spend but we have gotten more creative for fun time and the in-laws have us over for dinner at least once a week to help out. We're not that broke but it is GREAT to not have to cook a meal. There might be less sleep for mommy, but daddy has risen to the challenge of a new level of noise to sleep through. I think he deserves a reward for it. Less clothes for mommy because everything is dirty 2 minutes after I put it on so whats the point of putting on new clothes, just to have them dirty again. The up side to that is .......more laundry? Woohoo.