I've been needing a good day lately. For the first six months after Neva was born, I didn't think three kids was such a very big deal. Now that she is crawling, it is one heck of a big deal. I recently told a friend, you kind of just think, what's the big deal about having lots of babies close together? Are parents just lazy, that they don't feel like taking care of babies for a lot of years in a row? The answer to that judgmental and totally obliviously ignorant train of thought is: kids don't stop needing you when they turn four. They need you all the way up to 18 and even after that. But especially before the age of five, they still need you to do things like wipe their butts, dish out their food, tie their tricky shoes, pick out their clothes, and help them navigate sibling arguments. And then they need you to homeschool them, if you plan on going that route, which we do, happily, and that is no small task, I am sure. (I plan to start next fall, and already I am wondering, how am I going to do this with the hoped-for four babies that I wanted to have? Ahh, Maegan, one day at a time. One day at a time.)
And speaking of one day at a time, yesterday was such a good day. On a lark, I checked a website from which I was planning on purchasing a very large portion of Neva's Christmas gift. (But Maegan, Neva's only going to be one-year-old! She doesn't need a Christmas gift! That's totally true. But maybe mommy wants a dollhouse and now she finally has an excuse to buy one and who cares if the baby's only a-year-old, mom is going to buy the dollhouse anyway.) So I happened to check this Canadian website on the last day of a big sale they were having after recently launching their new site. And it seemed that they were discontinuing the line of furniture I have been planning on buying for said dollhouse, and it was deeply discounted already. After applying the sale code, I saved so much money that I now have money left over to buy all my nieces and nephews their Christmas presents. That was a seriously fun online shopping experience.
Then, in the afternoon, William and Barrett were having trouble not playing nicely. After the seventh or eighth scream / cry in a row, I called them both upstairs, where I was changing Neva's diaper, and made them both sit on the floor cross-legged behind me. "Lord," I asked out loud, totally out of ideas. "How can I teach these boys how to be kind and share with one another? What should I do? Should I discipline them? Should I make them do chores?" The boys sat there while I finished the diaper and somehow, my prayer was answered and minute by minute, we navigated. I had them clean up quite a bit, and then asked them if they preferred to do chores or if they wanted to try again to play nicely. "Can we try again?" William asked. I shut the doors to the playroom (so that Neva would not bother them) and for the next 45 minutes, I heard them having such a happy time in there, working together to set up a little ramp for their cars. It just made me smile. At one point William came out to tattletale and I interrupted him, asking, "Are you about to tell me that you guys are done playing nicely and that you need to do chores now?"
"Nope!" he replied instantly, and turned around and went back into the room where they continued their play. Amazing.
Finally, after dinner, the boys went outside with Brian and then went down into the basement with Brian while I cleaned up the kitchen with Neva on my back and talked to a friend until my phone died. It was an unexpected and wonderful break.
A good day.
A couple things I wonder if I have blogged yet. One: when Barrett hears something he doesn't recognize, he asks, "What's that soundnoise?"
Another quip from Barrett, when I gave him a light smack on the butt to get him moving up the stairs, gruffly grunted, "Mom! That hurts my body."
In Montana, I was trying to make conversation with William while I helped him get ready for bed. I asked him if he remembered who had given him his pajamas. "Nana!" I reminded him. "Do you miss going to Nana's house? What do you like best about Nana's house?" He must've thought I intended to take him away from Montana at that moment to go to Nana's house, and apparently frustrated, he replied, "Mom! I like a lotta buddy's houses."
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