The Mothership

Here I am, beginning  in the land of the teenagers and loving it. These people are the ones I wanted and prayed for when I was in high school. I love littles, so this comes a a huge surprise to me. These are truly some of the sweetest and yet unnerving years in parenting yet. And I’ve only approached the edge.  Each parenting season is harder than others in their own unique ways and each season is easier than another. I would give ANYTHING for the slower pace we had when the kids were tiny. Watching them learn things for the first time - it’s so much more concrete than watching your teen figure out their hormones. At the same time, my kids all know how to tie their own shoes and can prepare themselves accordingly to leave the house at a specific time- varied obviously by emotions, but they can do it. The sleeping schedule from the season of littles is least desired and yet - I could use a nap and a cuddle midday myself. The rocking to sleep and the little games that k...

I'm not sure that it was ever in our complete plans to have babies so close in age.  The weekend before we found out we were pregnant with our third, we were watching a t.v. series that involved a lot of young children running around and we turned to each other and said, "HA! WE will NEVER have 3 children 3 and under!"... Well, the next weekend we would be eating our words...our daughter would soon have her 1st birthday and our oldest had not even turned 2 yet!  AHHHHH! I mean I "knew" it would be exhausting because of course EVERYONE tells you, "Oh you are gonna have your hands full!" but...whatever! It's no secret I always envisioned myself a mother of young children.  But I don't think ANYTHING prepared me for; the cloudiness of thought process, the moments of shear terror, the never-seeming to end sleepless nights, the always making your best guess as to why they are upset - which is brain numbing - the frequent in the moment discipline ...