Today I WILL Be A Mom!

Today, I vowed, I would be a Mom.  I know, I know, a funny vow for a Mom of three children.  What I mean is I will be a real mom as opposed to the glazed, half-dead woman who has been walking staggering around here lately just trying to exist and in some small way meet the physical needs of her family.  Just meeting your family's physical needs is not all there is to being a mom, though.

Let me go back.  This has been a hard week.  I think I would be in the loony-bin had it not been for my loving husband and kind Mother-in-law.  I'm not complaining...okay, maybe a little.  Its the kind of week that has had me up crying in the middle of the night when everyone else has been asleep, not just because I feel so sick but because of the discouragement of knowing that tomorrow I will wake and feel the same way and will try to survive and pray for night when I might be able to get a little sleep, if I'm not too sick.  Then there's the guilt.  The heavy weight of guilt I carry around knowing that little children need moms who meet their emotional needs as well as their physical needs and husbands need wives who can carry on a small conversation once in a while instead of just glassy-eyed nodding and mumbling, and look cheerful and happy once in a while when they return home from work.  There is a difference between tolerating your family and enjoying your family.  So I cry because of the overwhelming guilt I feel.

So today when I awoke I vowed that whatever I had to do, if I felt well at all, I would just be a mom-a real mom.  I bypassed the mountain of laundry in the laundry room and after three doses of three different medicines, beginning at 5:00 in the morning, was feeling pretty good.  I decided I would take as much of my precious medicine as I had to, even if I had none left for the next week.  (If you have strong opinions about women taking medicine while they're pregnant, just don't speak to me.)

And we've had a good day!  We took the children to Tuttle's Apple Farm where they played on the farm, took pony rides, picked three kinds of yummy apples and drank fresh apple cider.  We narrowly avoided the rain.  Then we spent the rest of the rainy afternoon inside, making pencil toppers, writing letters together, playing games, enjoying a rare treat of homemade pumpkin muffins (I don't do much baking right now), made some homemade applesauce and watched a movie together.

Yes, it was a good day!  I felt that I really enjoyed my family and connected with them.  And for one day, I was a mom, a real mom.  Tomorrow I will probably be back to laying around in a half-comatose state, but today was good.

And for that I will be thankful!

Inside the Mind of a 7 yr. Old Boy

Take a good look at this face.

This is the boy who has told me on more than one occasion, with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, "Mom, I like to give you trouble!" 

There is something about boys that is so mischievous and fun.  The thing about boys is that you never know what they're thinking or what they are going to say or do.

Let me give you a few examples from the past week.

During a school lesson Breck asked, "Mom, how do we know that God created the world?"  This child NEVER asks easy questions. 

"Well, to start with you have to understand that everything in life has a beginning.  God is the only One who had no beginning.  So the world had to have a beginning."

"That's not true, Mom."  "A fence that goes in a circle has no beginning or ending."

At which point I picked him up and threw him out the window!

I decided one day this week to have a "kindness contest" to see which one of the children could be the kindest to each other, with the winner receiving a prize at the end of the day.  They both did admirably well and I was impressed.  But toward evening Breck came to me with his head drooping and said to me with a big sigh, "Mom, being kind is haaaard!"  He had managed to get through the day with only hitting his sister on the head with a shoe one time.  

We were studying in history about how pretty much the entire world thought that the end of the world would be 1000 AD.  (which by the way, if you're keeping track, didn't happen)  This brought on a discussion of the end of the world and how it really would end.  I told them the Bible says that the world will someday be burned with fire and God will make us a new Heaven and earth.

Fast forward to that evening:

Autumn comes in crying because her older brother with his newly-acquired information about the end of the world has informed her that God is going to burn her alive with the world, which as you can imagine, did not go over too well with her!! 

It is a pretty normal occurance for me and Leland to share a hug and kiss when he returns home from work.  I imagine this is pretty normal for many households.  Breck has watched us do this since he was born, but last night when he walked into the kitchen and found us hugging, he ran down the hallway yelling, "Autumn, do you want to see something dis.gust.ing?????  Mom and Dad are hugging!!" 

I guess we've reached that age.  Sometime soon I expect to hear him say that he won't sit by his sister at the dinner table because she has cooties!

Boys are a handful trying delightful!  They definitely keep things interesting, and I suspect they make God smile just a bit.