Sure I have opinions, but I have a life too!

    Even though I spend a considerable amount of time blogging about what I believe, and well, what I choose not to believe and then everything in between, I thought it would be wise to write a little bit about how things have been.  After all, that was the reason entirety that I began an online blog.  Then it felt like I had an outlet for expressing myself. Sure, I could do it on facebook where all of the young 'uns could disagree with me, with great zest, haste, conviction, and absolutely no scientific method as to why they arrived at any conclusion (...homeschoolers ;) )**. I can pretty much write whatever I want to on here with little to no feedback and even though it's sad that my audience is so limited, I do not lend myself to confrontational backdrops anyhow.  Ok, so where was I?  Ah, yes, LIFE.  (**no knock on homeschoolers, I will probably raise a couple myself!)

      I know what the world thinks about children.  I do not want to say what I think about them, although I will say that my husband and I take a far more positive approach than do some. So there, it isn't at all condemnatory. We love children, we want more children, as many as God would have us to have.  We wouldn't trade our strong-willed children for any in the world.  We struggle, sweat, cry, lose sleep, wonder if we're even doing this right, and can barely get the words out as we lie knocked out on our backs in bed, muffled and strung out the words come, 'we want more?' 
      But the truth is, we do want more.  Despite the season we have been walking through.  Jake has decided that he doesn't want to sleep. He doesn't want to nap, although when he doesn't he acts like an animal that desperately needs to be caged. He screams, kicks, fights, ignores every word out of our mouths.  We say, "he's tired" to strangers and they've heard the excuse a thousand times, but it is the truth.  If he gets a good nap, it makes the day nearly 500% easier than it would have been otherwise, a little winged cherub. However, come 8:00 he is not ready to sleep.  We spank him, and spank him, sit in his room and hold his hand until he falls asleep, read books outside his room until he falls asleep, in the course of five weeks we have tried almost everything. Still, he laughs and sings songs, 'Jesus loves me,' of all things, maybe that will keep me from beating him!  Even in the chaos I can't help but to laugh.
Mommy: "Goodnight Jake.  If you go night-night you can have dreams about fire trucks!"
Jake: "I want apple cider."
     Sometimes I just give up, as long as he stays in bed we guess it'll be ok.  Sometimes we'll hear him on the monitor at 11:00, you know, playing with Woody and Buzz and pushing trucks around on the floor. 
     
      Believe it or not, Jake is the "good one."  Sonora Grace doesn't sleep unless she is nursing.  So I nurse her for 20 minutes, carefully detach her and inch by inch roll away as if I'm doing some precise military boot camp drill, and as soon as my big toe touches the carpet, she wails. The truth is, she has no reason to be afraid. All I do is hold her. All I do is nurse her while she sleeps.  She has what we would call separation anxiety.  I told my Mom that I deserve this because it used to hurt my feelings that Jake would go to anybody.  Not sister!  You know though, I love it.  It is difficult when I have to brush my teeth, pee, do my makeup, get dressed, eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, make Jake breakfast, lunch, and dinner and do laundry and any sort of cleaning, having only one hand is not conducive to doing hardly anything at all.  Yet, we make it work because hearing her scream for an hour (yes, it takes over an hour to get her to cry to sleep) makes me even crazier. 
 
     When I think about all of our problems- even though problems typically have solutions, I wonder if I'm doing ok.  I do not seem to be fitting into the class of parents whose kids always behave perfectly.  My mom and I have been somewhat picking on my grandparents as of late. They are always worried about the mundane-est of things. That's what grandparents do, after all.  I've been trying to remove myself from the "details," and concentrate on the scope of it all. Certainly discipline is important, direction, love, family, and so on. Those are the kinds of things I want to keep my eyes on. "Training them the way they should go," and to not let the enemy get me worked up over a season. 

      My childless friends (I'm only friends with them if I have to be ;) )  know I get irritated sometimes with them.  I think some of it is jealousy because I see them with their lives and I look at mine and think where did it go?  My life is made up of my kids.  I wonder why I always have to sacrifice so much of myself. My family and friends when I moved to California, my hobbies, my likes and dislikes, everything has changed since I had children.  We want more?  I wonder if Jesus every felt like that. He gave up his family to travel, gave up his trade, had to let go friends who weren't willing to give up the world to have him.  Having kids makes me understand the gospel because "greater love hath no other than to lay down his life for a friend" and that is parenting.  Say goodbye to your life, but say hello to beautiful new life.  Somehow we miss that part.  It's the best part of all.
      Sometimes, this gets old.  Frustrating, overwhelming, repetitive beyond belief but I love it. I can't get enough of it.  Story time before bed, nursing my little girl, all five of us on the couch (our yellow lab is the middle child) watching a movie with popcorn and coca-cola, hearing Jake sing all of the songs he knows, watching Sonora learn the world around her, it is all way too much to give up.  My life before isn't nearly worth what I have now.  Christmas in 40 years, I hope there are a hundred of us gathered around the table, a houseful of heritage, that is all I want. To get there, I have to get through this.  It's just a season.  These seasons are tough, trying, terrible sometimes. It is all we can do to get through a day. 
     We want more? Paul looks over and smiles, "You know, it would be kind of exciting to have another."  I nod in total agreement.