My Three Sons...: 2018

It has been many years since I have “blogged” {or would the correct term be “written a blog”?}. Heck. I don’t know and if you are here for correct punctuation and grammar – this is probably not the blog for you. I spent the last few days searching and trying to remember the name of my 'old' blog and then the past few hours trying to remember the password to edit it. It was fun looking through all of the pictures and my commentary of raising "My Three Sons". A lot has happened since I last posted in 2010. My boys are much older, we've added some bonus blessings to our family and I've experienced a lot - learning life lessons from it. I retired from working five years ago and my parenting style has changed as I become a "seasoned" mom. As I was reading through the old posts and reminiscing, I've realized that most of the things that we stress over when our kids are little, really don’t matter.

I think back of my last 15 years of being a mom and how stressed that I thought I was…boy would I love for the biggest struggle in my life to be “should my kid use a pacifier?” The struggle was real in that moment. I was friends with a group of moms that all had children within a few months of each other. As a young, brand new mom – it was easy to get caught up into comparing myself to the other moms and comparing my baby to the other babies. Moms would get together and talk about the big transition such as adding rice cereal to the baby’s diet. The next week, I’d be at the grocery store getting rice cereal for my little dude. Little Johnny rolled over for the first time. We’d go home and have “Tummy Time” boot camp! Little Suzy ate some smashed up unflavored homemade green beans that were placed in an ice tray for the first time. Shoot. If Little Suzy can eat ‘real’ food – so can my kid and quickly we’d follow just as the other kids in the group were doing. Little Suzy was walking months before my baby did. But when it came time for potty training – my guy was fully potty trained by 2 years. I mean, my kid didn’t even have to wear pull ups at night! We went cold turkey one weekend, dropping the diapers and it worked!! Parenting Level: Expert. I was a GREAT mom, wasn’t I? Ummm. No. I wasn’t. I had a super amazing kid that was ready to potty train a little earlier than most of the other kids in the playgroup. Fast forward to three years later when I had kid number two and I felt like the potty training expert. God laughed and blessed me a child that I was afraid would be going to high school wearing diapers. Potty training was extremely difficult. It seemed like it lasted for decades – when in reality it was quite a few months and he was three years old. Fast forward to fifteen years later. My oldest child is now a sophomore in high school. I may be wrong, but I feel pretty confident that he and his buddies are not sitting around the school courtyard discussing who was potty trained first. They are probably not discussing their academic successes and professional futures and how they are due to the fact that they were bottle fed, exclusively breast fed or had both.

One thing I’ve learned as my children get older, is that we need to follow the same advise that we give them. Choose your friends and influences wisely. I’ll share a bit of wisdom that I’ve learned as we recently begin raising two more youngsters. We started over. Suddenly, I am doing things that I thought I was finished doing...like having to install car seats, washing the darn nap mats and having to attend kids birthday parties every weekend. Oh how I'm looking forward to drop off birthday parties and a school year of not being obligated to do laundry on a weekend! This time around I am so different. I’m not worrying about what everyone else is doing. I don’t care if Little Suzy in my little girls’ class is going to be cast as a lead in a Broadway play in New York City and will be performing across Europe this summer. I mean, wow. That’s awesome! But my kid won’t be doing that. Yes, I'm willing to shoot down my unrealistic dream of being the mom of a child star to instead keep her home to play with her friends, ride her bike around the neighborhood, pretend and act like the five year old child that she is. This time around, I will help guide and encourage her to do activities that SHE truly wants to do – not the things that her friends are doing or what I would like for her to do. If she wants to become an underwater basket weaver, I’ll do everything that I can to support her and look for a class for her to attend…. As long as it doesn’t require five practices a week and then an event on the sixth day. J This time around, I value our family time even more. In the past, it seemed like the only quality family time we had was when we were traveling or at the ballfields. I now strive to have our home as a place where we can all be together for dinner a few times during the week. With five children all in activities (school clubs, church youth group, scouts, band, dancing, gymnastics, baseball, basketball, horse therapy, tutoring, etc...plus weekly doctor and therapy appointments), it is necessary to limit some of their activities in order to have some family time too. Yep, they may mean that my kid may be the only one in school not participating in a baseball world series – but I’m ok with that! By the way, someone please explain how there can be so many “World Series”? I know that we’ve turned into a trophy giving society…but have we turned into a society that every kid’s baseball team can now attend the “World Series” too? And how can there be more than one “World Series”? It seems like I’ve seen every kid that’s on a baseball team attending a world series this summer in all different locations? How does that even work? Ahhh. I digress.

One thing that I’ve noticed in this parenting gig, is that we seem to be a lot harder on ourselves than our little bosses are on us. Your little minon doesn't care if you dusted your house this week – or at least mine don’t. My kids don’t care if I spent all day cooking a meal with a meat, two vegetables, a starch and dessert for dinner. They are just as happy (or happier!) with Chick-fil-A or pizza! Your kiddos don't care if you look like a beached whale in a swimsuit. They want you to show them how to use the Slip-N-Slide anyway. I remember being exhausted when I had three little boys in four years (48 months). My youngest two were only twelve months apart. My middle son was fighting a complex heart disease and I still had to struggle with normal motherly duties as well as working part time too. It was tough. My kids didn't care. They enjoyed the day anyway. As a young mom, I clearly remember longing for the sound of the garage door opening in the he evening meaning that its now “Daddy’s Turn”. The days are long, but the years are short.

It seems like just yesterday that I was in the hospital trying to show off my brand new one day old first born child that was in the hospital nursery to my friend. She made the mistake of asking me which child was mine. The nursery was filled with babies that were not labeled for the visitors to see through the glass and I was clueless! They all looked the same wrapped in the same blanket and the same pink and blue hat. I froze. I didn’t even know my own child. So I did what any good mother would do, I pointed to a Caucasian kid and took credit for him…or her? From that day fifteen and a half years ago until today, I’ve been winging this motherhood profession. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’ve learned from them. One thing that I know for certain is that each child is a gift from God, along with the very limited amount of time that we have together with them. My ultimate goal is to be ENJOYING EVERY MOMENT.

I’m not trying to paint a fake picture here implying that I have enjoyed each moment. I haven’t! In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in a hospital room with a very sick child. It’s miserable here. He feels miserable and is in pain. While I’m here, my other kids are preparing to begin school next week. I missed school supply drop off yesterday. I’ll be missing “Back to School Night” tonight at their elementary school and parent night tomorrow at the middle school. I’ve missed tucking in my other children at night. My little girl that has already experienced neglect in her life, asked me if I’m ever coming back home. My heart is torn struggling between parenting four children staying at our home, while my fifth child is confined to a bed in an out of town hospital and needs me. He barely has the energy to move. Out of the blue my son told me this morning that he was ready to get out of bed. Wow! Let’s do it. So, I call the nurse and we get his wires and tubes all situated to help get him up. Suddenly, he tells us he’s too tired. He sits there with his feet dangling over the side of the bed with a big ole grin for a while trying to regain some energy to finish the task of just getting out of bed. And he pukes. All. Over. Me. I mean ALL over me! Am I really “Enjoying Every Moment”? Nope. If I’m being honest, I haven’t enjoyed this day. Much less that specific moment. But my goal is to be mindful of the time that we have together and enjoy the little things in life. I enjoyed seeing how proud he was to be able to sit up and just hang his feet over the side of his bed. I’m working on finding the little things and being more mindful of them. I’ve come to realize that many times the “little things” are more important and often times turn into “big things”.

I remember when my boys were little how excited they would get when their dad came through the door. It was a "little thing" that they would stop what ever they were doing and run to the back door to greet him. At 15, 12 and 11 years old, they don’t really do that anymore – but they still have such an admiration for their dad and have a close relationship with him. I can’t help but think it is because of the time and attention that my amazing husband has spent with them. He would always mirror that same excitement that they had for him. It didn’t matter if he had a bad day or good day – the kids were always under the impression that he was super excited to be home with them. It's turned into a "Big Thing" of an amazing father/son relationship.

Today, I write this blog not really for anyone to read. It's more to remind and encourage myself to take the time and “Enjoy Every Moment”. As I read back over these blog posts, it was nice to be reminded of how much my parenting skills have progressed, how the dynamics of our family have changed and how we now value each moment even more than we did in the past. We never know when it will be our last moment or our last time together - especially with the unique dynamics of our current unique situation. It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years that matter! Make the best of it!