Thankful

I had to report for jury duty last week and as luck would have it I got selected as a juror for a case that lasted FIVE days long.  I was frustrated, annoyed, and slightly panicky wondering what I would do for childcare for so many days as we have never needed someone to watch the kids after school since I was at home.  For the first day I had my husband take a half day off and watch the kids until I came home, but I knew that I couldn’t ask him to do this for the whole week.

So I leaned on the kindness of friends and neighbors to help me.  And after the long week was over I looked back and was awed and overcome with thankfulness of the help and hospitality of those that came so willingly to help.  For a while I had been complaining and discouraged at the fact that I couldn’t find community after living in this area for over ten years.  I was expecting my community to look a specific way here, the same as how it looked in my childhood when I was growing up in the suburbs of DE.  It was only after this past week that I realized I do have real community here and I was just looking for it in all the wrong places when it had been here all along.  I have failed to see just how much God has blessed me with such loyal and caring friends and neighbors who picked up my kids after school, watched my kids, fed my kids, and gave up their afternoons just to care for them while I was at jury duty.  I reached out for help and these friends did not even hesitate to respond and help me out.  And now I can see just how much I care and depend on their friendships not just for this but for being able to share my life with them over the months and years.  And for that I am so very very thankful.

Summer days

It is almost the end of summer for my kids and school is starting in just a few days. This means it is also the end of summer for me as well. The first few weeks of summer are always awesome and I’m so glad that school is over but usually as the weeks go on I’m starting to count down the days until school starts again and the kids are back in school.

But this summer has been different. I’m not ready for school to start again, to be up before the sun rises and for schedules and extra-curricular activities to fill up our weekday afternoons and weekends. This summer was filled with just the right amount of fun and busyness and rest and relaxation. We stayed over at grandparents house, played with friends, ran around the city doing different activities, hung out with the cousins, and also stayed at home. Although I thrive on routines and schedules I actually loved not having any place to be at any specific time over the summer (but I did still have our weeks loosely planned out).

The kids are also at an age where I can take them out and it not be super exhausting and draining on me. They are so much more self-sufficient now but they still want to hang out with me and spend time with family. In all honesty, I think I was the last one to wake up almost every day over the summer… it was so great.

I can still remember not so long ago where I worried that the kids would remember their summers with mommy and daddy just always feeling tired and fatigued and not being able to do much but just survive (being a family with young children). Or the time M had to be away the whole summer doing consulting in other cities and not able to spend much time with the family.

I want to remember this summer. This summer where my husband comments on how happy I seem. (A plus for him too as he voices his sentiment, “happy wife, happy life!”) This summer where my kids and I have lots of fun memories but also times of just being bored at home. I’m sad this summer is coming to an end. As I conveniently block out the times in my mind when the kids were bickering and fighting with each other and the times when I was yelling and screaming at them, I will remember this summer with many fond memories.

Hole in the Wall

I used to cry over every little thing. I was one big emotional rollercoaster of a mess. Once I became a mom I felt like it toughened me up and I wasn’t as afraid to speak up for myself and my kids and I didn’t cry as much (after the first few hormonal months).
But I realize I am still quite an emotional person but instead of just crying when I feel like it, I bottle it all up until one day I explode. And boy did I explode yesterday.
I haven’t quite figured out everything that I have been suppressing but it’s a combination of being tired, kids driving me crazy, and M traveling a lot lately.  He’s pretty much gone 4 out of the 5 days each week and it will probably continue like this for the next few months. When he gets back he is also exhausted from the traveling and the grueling work week. And for some reason our weekends have been so busy as well that there is hardly time to rest, even though we both need it.

And so I try to do as much as I can but I can sense the impatience and annoyance building up in me and when the kids are driving me crazy (as they so often do) I just need to shut the door and let out all my anger.  And so I punched and kicked a hole in our bedroom wall.  I even shocked myself.  It felt like an all time low in motherhood in so many aspects.

Well, that certainly got M’s attention and I got a lot of time to myself the rest of the night.  I admit that I need to find some better outlet of letting my anger and other emotions out.  Maybe getting back into a good exercise routine again and being okay with asking for help from others and to just cry when I feel like it.

And now I’ve got to watch youtube and figure out a way to patch up this hole.

Accomplishment

In the last week a work opportunity just fell into my lap and if all works out well I might be able to start doing some mechanical drawings for a friend’s company. It would be a few hours a week, I can work from home, and the projects would be non time critical. At this season in my life it’s a great job.
I haven’t touched any CAD software in 7 years now so my husband suggested that I try and play around with Google Sketchup to try and get back into the groove of solid modelling. He actually had a project I could do for his company on Sketchup and asked if I wanted to try it out. I enthusiastically said yes.
I thought it would be pretty easy for me to pick up when I started but it was not. After the first night of playing around with Sketchup and trying to make a solid model off a picture I ended up frustrated and in a bad mood. M was super nice about it and said if I didn’t want to finish his project it would be okay. I thought I would’ve enjoyed the challenge of learning a new software and we were both surprised at how discouraged I was and how much I just wanted to give up. Sketchup is actually not like the other 3D CAD programs I have used in the past and I think that really took me by surprise as well.
M had wanted me to finish the model in one night so I was ready to call it quits when I didn’t get very far the first night. But the next morning when I woke up I was determined to finish his model just for my own sake, even if he couldn’t use it at all. Let me just say, the next couple of days were even more frustrating and I was cursing up a storm as I spent hours working on it. But by the last day as I was finishing it up I found myself starting to get the hang of it. And to be honest, it was kind of nice being somewhat productive at night and not just being a complete sloth after the kids went to bed. (I tried to work on it during the day when I thought the kids were preoccupied but that was a complete fail. As soon as I opened my laptop the kids would swarm like a moth to a flame. They would gather around me and ask a million and one questions. “What are you watching mommy? What are doing with daddy’s picture? Are you doing daddy’s work?”)
I was supposed to have finished the model on Wednesday night but I was a little late in delivering it and finally finished it Saturday night. And even better he was able to use my model for his project still! So the model is not perfect by any means and probably isn’t anything super awesome looking but it felt great to learn a new tool and to finish my first ever solid model on Sketchup. It really has been a long time since I’ve challenged myself like this and the feeling of accomplishment of teaching myself Sketchup and completing a project has been pretty nice.

                    

Mom’s Influence

We are doing premarital counseling with an engaged couple and I am reminded how much we are shaped and influenced by the way we were raised by our parents. As I am thinking more about what I want to do as the kids get older I realize how much my thinking is influenced by the way my mom raised me and how much I want to emulate what she did.

My mom was a stay at home mom to me and my brother up until my later elementary school years. I think she studied botany in college but when she did go back to work after I was in school she became a realtor. It was a part-time job with flexible hours and she was great at it. But I still remember her being home most of the time when I was home from school. And if she wasn’t then my brother was old enough to watch me. Her priority was still to be at home when we were out of school and to take care of us.

And now that I am a parent and have kids of my own I find myself wanting the same thing. I want to also pursue something that has flexible hours because I think I would still really like to be at home and with my kids when they are home from school most of the time. While I would still feel the need/want to do something for myself, my main priority would still be to be at home when my kids come home. It is familiar to me because that’s the way it was done when I was growing up and it worked for my family growing up. And so I want to follow a similar path also.

My middle child

My daughter, C, is my middle child. My husband has a soft spot for her as he is also the middle child in his family. It is very rare that she has any alone time with mommy or daddy. By the time my oldest started preschool my youngest was already born. Daddy has tried to have some one on one father – daughter time by taking her out for donuts every Friday last year after dropping J off at school. But she is such a generous spirit and has never known what it’s like to be without either her older brother or younger sister that she almost always invites her younger sister to join her donuts with daddy time.

But for me, she is my most difficult kid. She is my first girl and she is all girl. I don’t mind the princesses and sparkle and glitter but what is hard for me to deal with is the whining and the tears that never end and the drama queen in her. I am impatient with her and have a low tolerance for all things whiny and too much crying over every little bump and scrape.

She was supposed to start in a pre-k program this fall and I was looking forward to having her and her brother in school and the ease of just having one kid at home full time. But as it turns out there has been a lot of delays in the start of her pre-k program and so she is at home with me everyday along with her younger sister. I thought it might kill me to have both girls at home every day when I was expecting her to be in school already.

But having her at home with me every day has turned out so much better than I ever could have expected. The two girls play so well together and they enjoy each other’s company so much that they can entertain themselves for hours playing together. And now when my youngest, K, goes down to take a nap I have some one on one time with C. I try and make a conscious effort to spend quality time with her during this time. We will do homework together, prep and cook for dinner together, and just recently we looked through my jewelry together and organized it. That time of being alone with her has done so much for our relationship. We get along so much better, she whines less, and I don’t get as easily annoyed at her. I think she and I both really enjoy our one on one time together.

It is true what people say about kids… they act out a lot of times because they are just looking to get more attention and be noticed. I love my daughter and spending some time with C has helped me to notice her more and helped both of us to see how much I enjoy spending time with just her.

Transitions

As the kids are getting older I’m feeling more and more like I would like to find something to do for myself. Even though only one of them is in school every day and it will probably be another year before the youngest is in preschool I want to do more than just have my life revolve around staying at home with the kids and being the supportive wife. I used to think that I would be happy just being a stay at home mom forever and spending my free time being the PTA mom and volunteering at my kids schools. To be painfully honest I’m feeling burnt out being a stay at home mom. During the days I will still be with the kids and doing things with them but I feel like at night I should be more productive and meaningful with my time, whether it be pursuing a new hobby or thinking about a new career path and planning for it or something.

I’m not a very disciplined person or super ambitious in terms of career so I keep thinking maybe I will start off with something as simple as learning to play guitar. Finding something to do that could eventually lead to making some money would be even better! I’ve been looking at my spiritual gifts and wondering how I could be exercising those more to benefit others and myself at the same time. I’ve been thinking about wanting to do something for myself for a while… it’s time that I start acting on it now.

Happy Mother’s Day

It is Sunday afternoon and I am hiding out in my son’s room (this is a good thing) while my husband takes care of the kids, prepares lunch, and cleans up our home. It has been a great weekend. We took the kids to Disneyland yesterday for C’s birthday and didn’t make it back home til almost midnight. It was a full day but happy to see the kids faces light up as they go on their favorite rides, meet princesses and duel with Darth Vader. And the fireworks show to cap off the night can’t be beat.

After a long day of being on our feet and waiting in lines yesterday, this morning M has ordered me to relax and I got breakfast in bed as the kids piled in to watch tv in our room. I got cards and a picture made by my two older kids and am catching up on my magazine reading this morning. This has been nothing short of awesome as I take advantage of all this pampering.

And I realize as much complaining as I do about my kids (and sometimes my husband too ;)) on this blog and how tiring it can be staying at home with them I am so very thankful to be a mom and to have a husband that is so great with the kids and so patient with me.

I am able to reflect this morning of the joy my family brings me and am so very thankful that God has blessed me with three crazy little monsters and a partner that is just right for me.

Happy Mother’s Day to me! (and yes, all the other moms out there too)