Four

I've currently found myself home alone with only a sleeping baby for company.  Ah bliss.  Perfect time to try to get a little blogging in.

I've decided that hubby and I are pretty much mad crazy.  Four.  FOUR.  Four mouths to feed.  Four little bodies to clothe.  Four heads of hair to wash and brush and twist into braids.  Four lunches to make everyday.  Four backpacks to empty at night.  Four book reports to help with.  Four drivers.  Four college tuitions.  Four WEDDINGS.

Yeah, I pretty much need to stop looking at my life that way, LOL.  We are so blessed, so, so blessed.  I look at my newborn and am just in awe of God's work.  It fills me up so much, it makes everything I mentioned above worth it.  It's true I'm mourning the fact that we can no longer only order one pizza when we go out to eat, and that the next house we buy is going to need FIVE bedrooms (gosh that sounds HUGE!).  But I feel so lucky.  Four Princesses to watch grow.  Four kisses every night before bed.  Four sets of arms wrapping around me in the biggest hugs.  Four little voices saying "I love you mommy".  

It just doesn't get much better than that.

Perspective

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, where if you recall, I was pretty much ready to just throw in the towel.  I love that I have an outlet to share and vent my day to day frustrations if need be, because I think it's important to get it out.  However, at times I wish that I had the ability to think outside of myself on those days, to step back and look at the situations I'm facing with a little perspective, a little compartmentalization.  Rarely does a bad day with the Princesses ever become a bad week, or year or life.  Truly, it's usually simply just a bad day, one that's erased as the sun goes down and rises again with the promise of a fresh start.  And thank God for those fresh starts, right?  Where would we be without grace?

And I think that God knows, exactly when we need those fresh starts.  Those moments of reflection when we can look at our lives and say, "yeah, I'm not perfect.  I've screwed up bigtime.  But I'm blessed beyond words.  My life is full and complete.  And when He looks at me, he doesn't see the mess that I am, but the promise I have the potential to be."

A week ago, I got to see and experience first hand that fresh start.  My beautiful, perfect Princess #4 was born.  There is nothing, nothing, like holding a precious life fresh from God to bring a little perspective.  Such a miracle, from the beginning to the end, my mind can't even begin to wrap around it.  So much promise, so much life wrapped up in those blankets and laid in my arms.  What an awesome responsibility and gift.  I know I'm not the perfect mommy, I know that there are days where I literally throw in the towel.  But I hope that even in those moments, I'll always be able to take a step back and remember these first few days of our fresh start with Princess #4, and know that it's going to be OK.  

You get to be a fly on my wall today

I am spent.  I am so at my end I don't even know where to start.  Lately it feels like every single thing that could possibly challenge my relative success as a good mom, has.  And it all culminates into one word: FAILURE.  Just pin a big fat F on my forehead because that's where I am.  

I hate mealtime.  LOATHE it.  Nothing I do is right.  We can never get through a meal without at least one of the Princesses dissolving into a puddle of tears because they didn't like it, or didn't eat it fast enough, or whatever.  Today I made waffles.  WAFFLES.  I mean seriously, that's like straight sugar on a plate.  You'd think they'd be falling all over themselves in excitement.  But no.  Princess #1 turns what should be a relatively quiet meal into a tear fest because it's "just not what she wanted".  I seriously cannot win.  Then you add to that the pressure to feed your kids the right food, good food, food that won't poison them or give them cancer in 20 years because it was made mostly of chemicals and you've really got a guilt trip on your hands.  I just can't do it anymore.  I'm tired of laboring over menus and cookbooks, trying to decide what to feed my family during the week, hoping I have enough money to cover all the ingredients.  Tired of rushing off to grocery stores either with all the kids in tow or with an extremely tight budget, reading labels and agonizing in the aisle over whether or not I should buy that box of Golden Crisp just so we don't have to fight over what the kids will eat for breakfast.  I'm tired of spending forever in the kitchen making a mess that I will have to clean up, just to put a decent meal on the table so that the Princesses' can turn up their noses, tell my how stinky it is or how much they hate it.  It hurts.

And that's just mealtime.  Everything I say is questioned by Princess #1 or #2 these days.  Everything.  Every request is met with a "but...".  They have apparently forgotten how to pick up after themselves.  I must have the word maid tattooed on my forehead.  Any request to pick up toys is treated like I just asked them to run outside naked.  The sheer HORROR!  I'm raising my voice more than I like to because I feel like I'm not being heard.  Princess #3 has decided she has no use for naps anymore.  I put her down in her crib and she will talk and jabber for about 20 minutes and then that quickly dissolves into full on screaming and attempts to climb out.  The child NEEDS a nap.  The rest of the afternoon is shot when she doesn't get one.  Princess #2 is just flat out testing the limits.  Purposely disobeying, not listening, ignoring, whathaveyou.  By the end of the day I don't even have enough energy to discipline anymore.

I just... I just don't know.  I feel like I'm screwing up somehow.  Like it's not supposed to be this hard.  Like my kids don't like me.  I'm not the "fun" parent.  I'm the one that keeps food in the fridge and clothes clean.  And right now it just feels like that doesn't mean much when you're 6, 4 and nearly 2.