The Struggle is Real

I think I've posted a lot about being tired recently. I've even erased this several times because I don't want to sound like I'm looking for sympathy or whining. I'm not. When I sit down today to write this is just what came out. And as the kids fight upstairs while they are supposed to be cleaning, as my back aches for the best possible reason -carrying the weight of this sweet baby-, as the budget seems to get tighter every month instead of having some room to breath...I just keep finding myself in this tired, weary place. Maybe pregnancy is just making me more honest than I usually am, and I'm not so great at hiding the tired. It's not without its moments of joy and relaxation, but I think "tired" would be a good blanket label for how I've felt for a long time. 

It's not so much the tired that can be fixed with a good nights sleep, or a vacation. (Which I don't think we've had -without kids- since before there were kids. Sure we've taken a weekend here or there, but other than the 3 day cruise while I was pregnant with Jericho it's kind of been full speed ahead.) 6.5 wonderfully exhausting years that have been spent doing what I love to do, but that doing can leave a person stripped bare and realizing exactly where you are the weakest.

For me, I'm finding that I can only ignore my own soul for so long, and that soul needs stillness and rest. I catch myself searching for the stillness in the few hours after the kids are sleeping when I ignore that I need to be sleeping, in the minutes I send them outside and let them run wild and tell myself I don't care if the neighbors think they are loud, in the moments when I finally have a minute to sit down, in the moments when I think Billy has finally gotten that big breakthrough at work. Trying desperately to fill a gaping hole through the middle of everything with a handful of the wrong materials. It's never going to work. I just can't seem to remember that.

I know people joke all the time, saying "the struggle is real", but it really is real. We ignore it so much, cover it up in silliness and busy-ness and this cause or that, ignore it with self-centeredness or excuses. But it's still there. "It" being that nagging feeling that no matter what we do, its not enough to make us happy, its not meeting the needs we have, its too small to fill that hole we step around every day in the middle of the floor, that if we happen to acknowledge we just might fall in or the bottom might fall out. And where would it end? Where would we land? I know for me, the joy, the stillness, the rest, comes when I remember that I put the hole there myself, and it doesn't have to be there. God is the one trying to fill it, but I swat His hand away and tell him there's no problem here...this piddly few minutes I have should fix it. Carry on. Nevermind that He sees how futile the things I'm throwing into that hole are. 

I had one of those moments of stillness the other morning. I was praying for something that I just have to have or that hole might swallow me, I'll be so exhausted I'll just throw up my hands and say "forget it", and I felt God whispering straight to my heart that I already had in Him this exact thing I was begging for. My prayer was perfectly answered, simply because I let Him fill up what I can't fill myself. The peace that washed over me was something I hadn't felt in a long time. It's something that I could feel a lot more often if I just stopped struggling. Because as real as the struggle is, it's something that I insist on every day that I look away from Him.

Nesting is a Funny Word.

Billy and I have been having a great time getting the "nursery" ready for Amaryllis. I say "nursery" because it's really a little walk through on the way to our room, but how much space will one little lady need? I think it'll be just perfect. Currently JHawk is residing in there, since he's still in a crib. (He realized how to get out the other day, but hasn't done it again since. I'm hoping he has short term memory loss and it won't happen again until I can get his room ready for him. He will be in his own room, and it's all set up for him, but I HAVE to figure out a way to keep him in his room. He has snuck out of the house before, so I want to be sure this can't happen before I move him. The room he is currently in he'd have to go through my room to get out, because the door from the hall sticks and only Billy and I can open it.)

There have been several big projects we've worked on for the nursery. The first was an old window frame (I love these!) that we found out in the shed at the new place (and our landlord said help yourself). We painted it and cleaned it up and put her initials on it. I plan on putting pictures of her on it as well when she's born. Cannot wait to see her sweet face!

We've had this older dresser for some time now, and it kind of was a junk collector. I knew we'd need it eventually for someone, so I didn't sell it like I do with most things I think I don't need. ;) We painted it, put on some new handles since it was missing several, and it's all ready to be filled up with little tiny ruffly girly stuff. In case you haven't already noticed, we are doing her nursery in pink, gold and mint green. Kind of a random color scheme, but I liked all three so why not?

We also had all the kiddos "songs" framed (they've each had a song we played for them in-utero...usually it was just a popular song we liked while I was pregnant, but for Amaryllis, as you know, there is actually a song we named her from). I found some really cheap frames I repainted with some gold spray paint.

The other day we picked up a cute sheet for her crib (a friend gave us their old one, which is in better shape than the one we have...Jericho is hard on a crib) that matches the colors in the nursery perfectly, and got a curtain for the window. I have a few other little things I'm on the hunt for to finish it all up, but am really excited and can't wait for her to be sleeping in here...hurry up July! We have an important person to meet.

Walk Like a Hooligan

The kids love taking walks in the evenings. At our old house, it was a little more tricky to go for a walk, since we had to cross a rather busy street to even get to a safe sidewalk. We did still go for walks, as I'm sure you know from the many pictures of hooligans walking with capes/costumes on, but it was always a little stressful. Our new neighborhood involves no crossing of busy streets, but it's also quieter so everyone can hear my loud children strolling around.

This time of year is pretty awesome for walking (and running!), it's gorgeous outside and a great temperature. And there are lots of flowers for the kids to fight over...I mean, pick. Tirzah loves picking flowers, and Merrick loves picking flowers before she can get to them as a means of picking on her. It's loads of fun for all involved as you can imagine. (But really, they don't do this the entire time we are walking. Occasionally they fall in ditches, run into parked cars, trip and fall in front of the stroller and get run over, fall out of the stroller, etc.)

All antics aside, I love walking with them too. It's always a good "walk off some dinner" activity, and a good way for us all just to chat and listen and learn about what's going on around us. They always ask lots of questions, and it's fun to listen to the way that they think. These walks are even more fun for me when Billy is there, and I don't have sole responsibility of pushing the stroller up and down all the local hills. I took my camera last time we were out and finally was able to get a few pictures of all the Spring color.

Usually, now that we are in a safer neighborhood, the older two like to walk on their own. (Although they do take breaks now and then and hop on the stroller) Jericho is a little jealous, and likes to yell "out me!" sporadically while we are walking. "Out me" is Jericho for let me out of this thing. Kind of like "fart me", which is what he says when, ya know. He's working on sentences, people. I'm so proud. ;) They may be a little mixed up and/or incomplete (and inappropriate), but we are working on it.

I'm so grateful for the quiet time in the evenings with them. (We are sad we didn't get to walk tonight, since it was cold and rainy...but looking forward to lots more of our Spring walk-a-thon.) Our days can be crazy and busy and stressful, and we usually don't see a lot of "Da-da", or even get to eat dinner together. But I also think it's kind of fitting that our "family time" is spent doing something where none of us are sitting still (cuz most of us in this family can't sit still), as opposed to a family evening meal. Maybe one day we will take up a hobby that involves less falling in ditches, though.

Menageries and Potty Training

--I guess that title will make sense eventually. Sometimes when I start a post I'm really not even sure.-- Recently I had signed up to take the kids to the local zoo. (Looking back on it, I'm really not sure what I was thinking. I mean, I take them everywhere mostly by myself, but a trip to the zoo was uncharted territory even for me. Especially at 6 months pregnant. I'm not exactly fast on my feet should a kiddo jump into the tiger cage, ya know. I was also having flashbacks to that time we took Merrick to an aquarium at about Jericho's age. It was a nightmare, and he was on a leash, and I had reinforcements. haha.) It was a good deal through one of the local homeschool groups, though, and I hate for the kiddos to miss out on everything fun just because I'm doing the wobble, or the waddle whichever, these days. So I said, "self, suck it up. you're going to the zoo and you're going to like it."

On the other half of the title, I had decided to potty train Jericho this week. I had been thinking he was "ready" for a while now, but just hadn't taken the plunge because honestly sometimes it's easier to just deal with changing a diaper than be diaper-free with the chance that someone will pee all over themselves. But I was having these visions of having just a few months diaper free, for the first time in 6 years. It sounded pretty awesome if I could pull it off. I buy the cheapest diapers I can find, but still...it adds up financially after awhile, especially when your kid wears size 73 diapers and only like 2 come in a box. ;) Ok, not that bad...but J-Hawk definitely has more junk in the trunk than the other two Barron children before him, both of whom never graduated from a size 3 diaper.

I say this with my fingers crossed and while knocking on wood, he's done fabulously. After about the first day he's been pretty much accident free, even overnight and during naps. I guess the non-speaking caveman act he puts on is just to keep us fooled? Kid really does know what's going on. ;) So I think it's safe to say, after managing a day trip to the zoo with not a single accident (on no nap and lots of juice/water/excitement), Jericho is potty trained and I'm on diaper vacay until Lady A is born. Sidenote: 3 Day Potty Training. DO IT. It's worked on all 3 of my kids, who were all potty trained -through no credit to myself because I can't even make them get off my coffee table while I'm writing this- completely, including sleeping accident free, in about 3 days each. (It does typically take longer to get, ahem, number 2 figured out. It seems to freak kids out at first to use the toilet for that, but they get that quickly after.) I do have to remind him to go...but he'll get the hang of that eventually, too.

Now, back to the zoo. (I just felt the need to also throw in there one of the reasons I was so terrified of the zoo. We were going there with no diapers.) It went surprisingly well, since Jericho did so well, and since there were tons of other kids there being just as bad as mine were. ;) We saw lots of cool animals, tried to climb into their cages, tried to feed them things they shouldn't eat, tried to mimic every. animal. sound. for the entire trip home, etc. (That's what you do at a zoo, right?) We even went on this fun "sky safari", which is pretty much a ski lift over the animal pens. In hindsight, it sounds like a horrible idea and I'm not sure why I did that either. Three children and a pregnant lady (who just made the cutoff...3rd trimester and we woulda been out of luck. Although I'm not sure what's going to happen in the 10 minutes you're over the animal cages. Labor and delivery? Well, in my case, maybe. Jericho's labor was pretty fast.) flying over rhinos and giraffes and lions. But I think I just wanted a good excuse to sit down for a few minutes. And Jericho was a little concerned about where exactly that thing was taking us and where the ground was going...so he was a little angel who did not wiggle the whole time. I almost begged the operator to let me take a second loop.

We started to get a little warm towards the end of the zoo loop, but for the most part they kept the complaining to a minimum. I seriously need to invest in some warm weather clothing, however...especially if I'm going to be out in the sun pushing over 100 pounds of kid in a stroller. But by that point we had seen most of the "fun animals", the kiddos weren't too interested in 45 species of deer. Who knew there were that many kids of horned things with long legs? I managed to get out of the park without them noticing the gift shop, which is also a major win for the day. We do wish that Billy could have gone with us, but we had a great time. We made some fun memories together, no one got eaten by a wild animal, and no one peed in their pants. I think that's about all you can ask for in terms of a good day around here. ;)

Wasn't Expecting That

The other day I had blogged and said how we were going to have a milestone week (hopefully) because Jericho was potty training beginning first thing Monday morning. I didn't realize when I said milestone that Merrick would take me literally and lose his first tooth the next morning. We had been to the dentist the week before, and the dentist had mentioned one of his top teeth was a little bit wiggly, and that it was not going to be long. (She also mentioned it was a little different for it to be a top tooth, since it's typically a bottom tooth. But far be it for one of my kids to do something the normal way, right?)

I had kinda warned my worrisome, inquisitive eldest child to be aware that his tooth might be getting more and more loose, and it would eventually come out so it could make room for a new, bigger tooth. But I don't think either one of us expected it so soon, or to happen with a little help. (He apparently hit himself in the mouth with a curtain rod -that he wasn't supposed to be playing with- and knocked it the rest of the way out.) I heard him howling upstairs and asked what was wrong. He howled through his crocodile tears, "MY TOOTH FELL OUT!"

He was seriously distraught. And teeth give me the willies, so I was kinda scared to even look. As with most things, though, being a mom forces you to suck it up, so I put on my "I'm not grossed out by this at all" face and remained calm. I told him how exciting it was and that he would get a fun surprise now, and eventually a new tooth, out of the deal. Surprises heal lots of wounds, so once he realized losing a tooth is a good thing, and that he didn't have to get a fake tooth (as he was apparently concerned about) all was well.

Well, except for my heart. I mean, I can't really call him a baby anymore when he's losing teeth. I told him that, and in typical Merrick fashion he was concerned and didn't want me to be sad. (He's such a sweetheart.) He reminded me, through that goofy little hole in his smile, that even if he's not a baby he will always give me kisses. I'm gonna hold him to that. It's been put in writing and published on the internet...there's no getting out of it, kiddo.