Strength and Beauty

I am having a moment. A moment where I am wondering, “Is this what I signed up for as a mom?” If so, I am done. It is the second day of tantrums with Audrey that start to rumble around lunchtime. I cannot figure out what to feed these kids that has any nutritional values that they won’t spit out with spite or tell me in a whine, “This is gross!” without even tasting it! And that sets off the tantrum. And then I am dragging them upstairs for time-outs and naps. Spankings don’t work. Today, we are heaving up the stairs with screeching and little bursts of blood-curdling screams of anger and rage and all of a sudden Audrey is coughing and hacking and making herself dry-heave (curse that strong gag-reflex). Before I know it, the fruit smoothie from mid-morning is coming up and out onto the hardwood stairs in a nice, neat little puddle. Great. I feel my heart racing, emotion rising and tears brimming.

And all I have to say when it is all over: thank God for Solumel.

Postscript: My kind husband has pointed out that the above writing could be misconstrued as anger. No. Exasperation mixed with humor is more like it.

Postscript2: Get this: the girls wake up from their forced naps. Audrey tells me she is thirsty while I am cleaning the upstairs sitting room. I tell her to go downstairs and find her water cup. I come down a bit later after not seeing her for sometime, and lo and behold, there she is in the kitchen nook eating the very food we fought to the point of vomit over earlier. You have got to be freakin’ kidding me?!? Get this2: This evening, instead of eating LoAnn’s amazing homemade macaroni and cheese, the kid wants a repeat performance of what we had for lunch. She is currently in the kitchen eating another helping of it (tuna fish salad).

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (like four year old’s who refuse to eat their lunches and puke all over my stairs) and courage to change the things I can (like my visceral reactions to not liking being a mom some days).

We drove from Chicago to Iowa City in record time despite the rain and the holiday traffic. The only hitch were the two children in the back of the minivan who absolutely refused to go to sleep. DVD’s did not work. Quiet music did not work. Blankey’s and pacey’s did not work. Food and milk did not work. NOTHING WORKED. We listened to a one year old squawk and whine and grunt and produce every annoying sound of frustration known to a child for almost the entirety of the trip.

So you will understand exactly why the moment we arrived at my parents house we unloaded perishable items and perishable children and left immediately for the local bar, the Hilltop.

And you will understand, based on previous mentioned evidence, that it would be totally appropriate to catch Ivan drinking one of these:

I Took His Hand and Followed
by Mrs. Roy L. Peifer

My dishes went unwashed today,
I didn’t make the bed,
I took his hand and followed
Where his eager footsteps led.

Oh yes, we went adventuring,
My little son and I…
Exploring all the great outdoors
Beneath the summer sky

We waded in a crystal stream,
We wandered through a wood…
My kitchen wasn’t swept today
But life was gay and good.

We found a cool, sun-dappled glade
And now my small son knows
How Mother Bunny hides her nest,
Where jack-in-the-pulpit grows.

We watched a robin feed her young,
We climbed a sunlit hill…
Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky,
We plucked a daffodil.

That my house was neglected,
That I didn’t brush the stairs,
In twenty years, no one on earth
Will know, or even care.

But that I’ve helped my little boy
To noble manhood grow,
In twenty years, the whole wide world
May look and see and know.

Today my second daughter turned one year old. I was recently re-watching the video of me birthing her and bringing her into the world and something caught my attention I hadn’t noticed before. When she finally comes out and there is all the commotion (which actually wasn’t much in this scene), there is the normal chatter and me, the birthing woman, saying all sort of incoherent things that mostly mean, “give me my baby”. The first real intelligible words that leave my mouth are these: “That was so easy.”

HA!

Can you believe that? And it was, truly. I think I was the most well supported woman in that hospital probably for the entire month of November. I had so many people loving on me before the birth and so many surrounding me (in multiple ways). I was covered. I popped that baby out without any difficulty (all things considering) and I held her in my arms and was just amazed.

God buys back really bad birth experiences and gives us new ones. Right, Sarah? And he continues to do that in other areas of my life. He does.

So here’s to God and his love for me as a mother, as a birthing woman and as a courageous, pink-caped soul! And here’s to the little life he formed in my womb and brought into being, Scarlet Charlene. I celebrate her this day and all that she means to me.