"What is a blog?" I asked Sarah about 7 years ago. My teenage niece turned to look at me with a face mingling between amusement and disgust. "That is like asking what the internet is!" was her response. At that point in my life I wasn't far out of teenage land myself. How did I miss this? I'll tell you how! Their names are Bret, Chloe and Jackson. I had two toddlers and a baby. My time for trolling on the internet looking for blogs didn't exist. Did I become so detached from the up and coming on purpose? No! I was just elbow deep is crazy.
Now life is different. The two toddlers and a baby are getting older. Bret is 10, Chloe is 8 and Jackson is 7. But wait! There's more... We adopted a sweet baby that has transformed into our spunky 3 year old. My little miss Mary. In September our newest family member came to join us. She is Mary's biological sister. For confidentiality purposes we can call her Cutie. She is our 18 month old foster daughter.
So here we are! Two mostly sane adults outnumbered and at times outsmarted by our brood of kids. Lets be real, anyone that knows us knows that the big family was mostly my idea but Bret is pretty great at this parenting stuff:) Lucky for the both of us.
I love being a mom and I love where God is taking my little family. I have so many forms of support in my life. I must give a big shout out to my running buddies! I cringe to think where I would be without you.
A few days ago I read a blog that a mother had written about the end of the school year craziness. I loved it! It validated where I have been the last couple of weeks. Down in the trenches of last minute projects and painfully packing or as the case sometimes is not packing lunches. We have baseball games and choir concerts. The list goes on and the jobs aren't all bad. Some of them are even fun! The one thing that can't be denied is that it can be overwhelming and as a mother I can often feel that I am coming up short on every front. As I share more about my mothering struggles it is becoming clear that there is a certain freedom in that honesty. Maybe writing about the chaos will help keep meaningful moments to the front and help some of that worry and self doubt stay to the back.
Happy Monday!
I have often read your FB commentaries with amusement and admiration. Maybe you should keep writing, and then run it by a local newspaper as a column. I do think the 'perfect parent' think gets tiring, either because the person putting up that front and everyone else
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2) doesn't
either way, it sucks a lot of energy that could be better directed. Your accounts of your day also makes me better appreciate what my own mother did four of us!
Keep writing!
Thanks for the kind words Bart!
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