Tag: children

The woes of everyday life…

~ ~M ~ 11 Comments

It was early New Year’s Eve morning.  A knock on my bedroom door, and a small little voice alerted me to the fact that something wasn’t quite right.  The little voice proceeded to make her way into the bedroom, and with a very firm and demanding tone she said, “Mommy, you need to take me to the doctors right now!”

I immediately flung myself out of the bed and ran to my littlest daughter.  I expected blood to be trailing off somewhere, maybe from a missing limb or a fractured skull.  Not seeing the cause for such an alarm, I asked her what was wrong.  She said, “Mommy, come here!  I’ll show you!”  In which she proceeded to drag me to the other side of the house and into the bathroom we went.  “See mommy look!  My poop is all big and messy and I had to sit in here for a whole hour!”

Her eyes were crazy and wild looking, as she seemed to have no concept or recollection of ever having diarrhea in her entire life.  I almost started to laugh, as her demanding little face pleaded with me to help her make some sense of this agonizing experience.  So I began to explain to this child of eight, that she just had a stomach bug, and that she would soon be better.  I ended up giving her some anti-diarrheal medicine, sat her in front of the television, and told her that no matter what, she was not to eat anything until her stomach righted itself.

Well since it was still so early, I decided to go back to bed and see if I could get a few more minutes of shut eye in before enduring further chaos.  Climbing back into bed, my husband proceeded to tell me that she had been throwing up several hours earlier.  I was completely shocked by his statement and I said, “What do you mean?  Where was I? And who cleaned everything up?  He just simply smiled and said, “I took care of it all, I didn’t want to wake you up.”

I was completely dumbfounded by the fact that I had not woken up and even more shocked that my husband had cleaned everything up by himself.  To imagine him enduring that grueling task all by himself, made me feel so very guilty for not being there, and blessed at the same time, for having a husband who would attend to such a mess himself.

Now that a week has passed, I was sure we had sailed that ship, and didn’t expect to see the boat return so quickly.  And yet unfortunately, there was another reoccurrence of the entire event last night.  Only this time, hubby was at work, and I was left to attend to my poor child who was squirting from both ends.

Of course I’ve told all of you before, Autumn is my happy child.  Always smiling, always thankful, and through it all, she was thanking me for helping her, and smiling up at me and snuggling next to me, once the squirting eventually stopped.  This time she seemed like she had a better handle on what was going on, and didn’t seem so eager to rush to the emergency room.

Fortunately, my daughter Autumn is rarely sick, and so the week before had been the very first time in her eight year old life that she had experienced any kind of a flu bug.  I’m guessing that nursing her for the first two years of her life, is the reason behind her incredible immunity to illness.  I nursed her the longest and it really has made a difference when I compare her to my other daughters and how often they were all sick.

Anyway, today I am thankful for a child who can still find something to smile about, despite having the stomach flu, and I am thankful for a husband who surprised me last week, and took on a task that most people would shudder to do.  This time around, I sure was missing his help, and I am so tired today because of being up all night.  Fortunately my daughter is feeling better once more, and I’m just hoping and praying that we don’t have another repeat of this in another week.

Hope all of you are having a fantastic week and starting the New Year off on the right foot.  Remember when things don’t go as planned, tomorrow is a new day.  A chance to start over, another opportunity to get over the many hurdles, and carry on with God’s plan for your life.  It may not always be rosy, and you may face a few battles.  Just don’t ever give up!  Love you guys so much.  Hang in there, the weekend is finally here!  ~M xoxo

Oh the joys of children…

~ ~M ~ 23 Comments

Don’t get me wrong here, I love my girls to the moon and back.  However, I’ve come to the conclusion, that the reason most parents don’t warn their own children about having babies, is simply because they realize that if they do, the human population would eventually cease to exist.

It’s not so much about the infant or toddler years.  Heck, even the grammar school age is fairly simple.  But the teenage years and a little beyond that….. Yes, those are the years I should have been forewarned about!  Plus, parents don’t warn their children about having kids, because they have to be able to get even somehow!  Lol….

Anyway, my children are driving me insane right now, and if God doesn’t intervene soon, I may not make it through the end of this month!  I am dealing with a wedding this week.  Yes, my second oldest this time around.  And if my two oldest daughters can’t be civil with one another, I fear I may not survive!

Just a few more weeks…. I’m home free after December 31st!  Hope I last that long!  😉

 

Incredibly blessed

~ ~M ~ 29 Comments

As I was heading out from dropping my daughter off at church tonight for Awana, someone stopped me to tell me how well-behaved my daughter always is.  It’s so good to hear that your child is well liked by others and acting appropriately when they are away from you.  And honestly, I am not surprised by the comment that was made.  My daughter Autumn is 8 years old, and one of the happiest children that I have ever met. 

She is always smiling, and loves to surround herself with people.  It makes it very hard to home school her at times, for I fear that she isn’t getting the social interaction that she requires.  And yet by being home schooled, I think it has helped her to stay so well adjusted.  She doesn’t have to deal with the kids on the playground calling her names and she doesn’t have to worry about fitting in.  She is so happy here at home, that I often wonder what a public school might do to her sweet spirit. 

I myself, grew up going to a public school, and I learned from an early age to be very wary of the kids around me.  Most of my classmates were affiliated with different gangs in the area, and most would insist that I choose a side.  Weapons were routinely brought to school and passed around, which made me feel very unsafe and ill prepared for whatever situation I might be forced into.  I felt like an outsider most of the time, since I was one of the few Caucasian girls in my class.  It made such a difference, because so often I couldn’t speak their language, and so even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t interact with the majority of the kids around me.

I also grew up in a very poor area of town, and so even during the day, it was dangerous to walk the streets alone.  My mother kept me very sheltered because of it, and I wasn’t allowed to do much of anything or go anywhere, because my mother feared what might happen to me if she let me out of her sight for even a minute.

Now that I have my own four girls, I don’t blame my mother for being so overprotective, but I do wish she had been a little less stringent, and perhaps allowed me a bit more freedom than she did.  But who knows… by doing that, something terrible could have happened to me, and so I have to believe that she did the best she could, and her over protectiveness probably benefited me in ways, in which I will never fully understand.

On the way home tonight, I couldn’t stop thinking about the comment made about my daughter, and I began to wonder what life would have been like, had Autumn’s twin been born as well.  I don’t bring it up very often, but I had a miscarriage early on in my pregnancy with her, and another miscarriage the year prior. 

As I think back to that time in my life, I still feel so much grief over losing them.  I often sit and wonder about each one; what their personalities would have been like, their potential likes and dislikes, how they would have looked, etc…. And I find myself daydreaming, about how different my life would be now, had they both been born. 

It still breaks my heart, knowing that I will never be able to hold either one of them in my arms and rock them to sleep, or sing them a lullaby before tucking them into bed.  And when I see my daughter Autumn’s bright smiling face, I just want to wrap my arms around her and never let her go.  She is such an amazing blessing to me, as are my other three girls. So today, I just want to say how thankful I am, for the children I do have, and for the loving personalities of each one.  I feel amazingly blessed.

Whitewater Lake

~ ~M ~ 1 Comment

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Whitewater Lake isn’t far from where I live.  We had such an amazing afternoon there, and so I wanted to share some of the pictures I took.  This was one of the most perfect ways to spend one of the last few days of summer.  My girls had a blast watching the turtles and the muskrats that were floating on the surface of the water.  They even tried to make their own fishing poles while we were there and attempted to catch some fish.  Overall, it was a very fun day and I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to spend this time with my girls.

He said, “Cool.” Cool with a period at the end…

~ ~M ~ 23 Comments

So my 19 yr old daughter just came running to me and said, “Mom!  He said, “Cool.” Cool with a period at the end!  She is a writer like me, hence the problem with just a period at the end of Cool and not an exclamation point like there should have been.  Now she strongly believes that her boyfriend is going to break up with her tonight, for lack of the exclamation point in his response to her text.  Oh the woes of life these days…  It really doesn’t get any better than this!  I’m sorry but I can’t stop laughing…  🙂  Does this make me a bad parent?