The Parties

On Boushka's birthday we had the grandparents over for dinner and presents. The birthday girl chose to for everybody to have their own pizza. So we made 9 pizzas. She also wanted cheese sticks, salad, and pudding for her dessert. 

The cheese sticks, I think, were her fav. They were the first food she requested!

We served marinara and ranch to dip these homemade puppies in.

I think she enjoyed it all! This smile lets me know.

Our older two girls each made her a special birthday card. Here is Brownie's.

And here is Peach's card.

After dinner she opened her presents. The girl obviously doesn't want for much, but that is an even truer statement now. She made out like a bandit--new dress up, dolls, book bag, and a chair.

All her dress up stuff made her feel like a princess. Her sisters helped her get all dressed up.

And the Mickey book bag was a hit.

Her pudding dessert is in the background here--with her number 3 candle sticking up.

And finally, this weekend we had her actual birthday party. All Mickey Mouse themed. Except these cupcakes--I guess they were red/pink , and I did stick little Mickey toppers in them--so it works.

My friend Lynette made this awesome cake. To my knowledge, she recently got into making cakes--but she's doing a fantastic job.

And my friend Caroline--the same one who knows the sex of our baby--made these little tents. Aren't they awesome?

She also did the lemonade signs. Too cute! Bouska loved them!

Here's the party table. The kids decorated their treat bags here and were able to eat their food here.

A more close up view.

I set out some "handy helpers" for the kids to munch on while they worked.

We also set up a little dessert/treat table. At the last minute I threw this "3" banner together. I like it when cute things come out of a "I feel crafty" night.

What's a treat table without Pluto's Puppy Chow? I love puppy chow. Isn't one of the best things about having kids getting to revisit your own childhood. So glad I have a good reason to make this stuff! YUM!

I believe at one point some of the kids started eating the M&M's right out of the dish with a spoon. HA!

We also played Pin the Nose on Mickey. Isn't she adorable? Mwah!

We snapped a quick picture with our birthday girl. We love you sweet Boushka. Hope your birthday was everything you dreamed it would be. We adore you! Many blessings in your fourth year.

Love mommy and daddy.

The Weekend

We had a fun weekend. I picked Matt up from work on Friday afternoon so we could head to our doc and sono appointment. We have a good 30 minute drive to the doc, so we had plenty of time discuss if we would really go through with our plan to NOT find out the gender of our baby.

I was solid on not finding out, but as I like to say, Matt put ideas in my head. He started asking questions and putting what if' situations in my head. I started to think I wouldn't be able to hold off finding out if our baby was a boy or girl. But we made it through our sono without gaining a clue about our baby's gender. The sono tech didn't have much faith in us, but we made it out of the parking lot without opening the envelope. And we made it all the way home and handed it over to my friend, Caroline. She is the only other person to know the sex of our baby because she is going to reveal it to us and all of our friends and family. I'm getting very excited to celebrate this sweet life.

Matt and I were able to grab a bit to eat on Friday after our appointments. It was just the two of us, so we were able to enjoy some quiet time. We then came home and got ready for our baby Boushka's party (can I still call her a baby now that she's three?).

We woke up early Saturday morning for our first softball game--we had to be there around 8:30 for our 9AM game. Sweet Bug made her game debut as a player and Matt and I  made ours as coaches. Our older two played last year, so this was all old stuff to them--HA! The girls all played hard and did so well. At this age, we don't keep score or even have umps--in fact, the league is called instructional. So this is all a learning experience--which if I'm going to be coaching, is a good thing. I'm excited to see how the summer goes--though after our excruciatingly hot afternoon practice today, I can't say that I'm excited to be 7 months preggo coaching in the heat/humidity!

We came straight home and spent the next 5 hours prepping food and doing some cleaning for the birthday party. We had a Mickey theme again--as per the birthday girl's request. She didn't want to put on her Mickey dress, but she still looked beautiful in her Easter dress (the one she chose to wear). We had some friends and family to hep us celebrate, and it was a beautiful time to celebrate my Boushka beginning her fourth year of life.

Once the party ended, I took a seat and put my feet up. I was in a ton of pain after being on my feet from 8:30-6:30, but my baby is totally worth it. Thankfully, I woke up this morning with 90% of the pain gone. And good thing too because it was time to take care of the party hangover--the mess. We had a low-key day of laundry, groceries, and softball practice, but it was still enough to bring back the pain in my legs and feet. But I know this will all disappear after my sweet baby arrives.

So here's to the rest of the week being fantastic. The next few weekends are going to be Super Crazy with tons of activities going on non-stop. But as long as I can keep propping my feet up occasionally, then I say BRING IT ON!

My Boushka is Three

(I thought this posted a few days ago. This post is about a week old---oops!)

Somebody special turned three on Saturday.You'll have to excuse my tardiness for I'm still in disbelief that she is three years old! I honestly don't know how they  have made time fly even faster, but they have!

She woke up to a few goodies on birthday morning. I like to start their special day off right, so I always put out the "reserved" sign in front of their seat. I also put out a few small goodies.

 But before the birthday girl could even get to the table, we had to take a picture of her with big sis, Peach. These two are just like two peas in a pod. They are my verbal kids. They talked the earliest and have quite the grasp on the English language. These two were also my crazy-hair babies. They had such long hair at birth--and a ton of it. One just happens to have red, and one is more blondish.

She's showing off her goodies--Micky Bandaids. Does it get better than this? In her world--not much better! You can also see the new finger paints---yaaaayyyy (what the H-E-Double hockey sticks was I thinking???).

And more paint---this is the fingernail variety. She loves to paint nails.

She wanted to wear her crown, but it kept falling to the side. But we got a picture anyway. She also got a package of fruit snacks (which is a big deal when your mom never buys them for you) and some fake nails with Daisy Duck on them.

You can't see Daisy well, but here she is on these sweet little nails.

The rest of the day was kind of crazy with two soccer games, a sick sister (who threw up five times--mostly within minutes of each other) and another sister with a tick. I seriously couldn't write this stuff! But we did have a special birthday dinner in there for our girl complete with the seven of us, Grammy, Gram and Papa. She picked pizza (everybody had their own mini pizza), salad, cheese sticks, and lemonade for dinner. She also wanted chocolate pudding for dessert--so that 's what she got.

We will be celebrating with a party this weekend. Of course this is a Mickey Mouse and Friends party--just like we had last year. She's one big fan! 

Happy birthday to my sweet little Boushka. Everything I imagined you'd be by three years old, you are--and so much more. You have the pretty hair like I imagined. The big, dark eyes. A petite stature. A super kind heart. And an understanding of how to use words to convey anything and everything. But you are so much sweeter than I could've imagined. You've got the sweetest little girl voice that I want to capture on video just so I can hear it for always. The way you look at me when you're excited is something I never could've dreamed up. The way you love your sisters so much is something I hoped for, but the sweet ways you show your love is something else. You are my tiny--I tell you this all the time.  When I tuck you in at night, you always want me to "tuddle wif" you--and no matter what else I have to do or how tired I am, I always "tuddle" you. I can't get enough of you. Often times, you are my breath of fresh air when I need to relax. You calm me down and ground me--making me realize how deeply I can love and how happy I can feel. One of my six hearts belongs entirely to you, my precious girl. There is so much I want to share with you. To tell you. To teach you--and I hope I'm blessed with all the years it will take for me to do these things--- plus a whole lot more. Because I want to see you pass them on to my grandchildren--knowing that the love they feel from you was planted in your heart many moons ago. I love you, Boushka (thiiiiiisss much)!

Blasts from the Past

 As you probably know, I'm not the best at keeping up with blogging. I know I don't meet my own standards--sad as it may be. So here are some things I wish I would've blogged about--but this is the Cliff notes version.

Shortly before spring break (yes, like over six weeks ago) the four younger girls and I went with my mom to pick some asparagus. It came up a little early this year due to our very mild winter. This little place is a good drive away, but for this asparagus it'd be worth it.When we got there, we were told that all the asparagus had just been picked. So the nice gentleman took us for a ride out to the fields anyway. We thought it was fun!

And the cat in the above picture is a farm cat. She was due to give birth shortly after this picture was taken. From what I understood, she gives birth in front of live audiences all the time. The girls were wishing it would've been the day we were there!

My Brownie enjoying the tractor ride.

A few weeks later, we went out for BBQ. Well, Peach was missing because she was having her very first sleepover at somebody's (besides family) house. She had a blast, as did we.

These girls were in such good moods after dinner that they walked around the restaurant posing and asking to have their picture taken. I obliged... Shocked?

A couple weeks ago Brownie had Kindergarten Roundup. Here she is with her friend in front of the school. I can't believe my second little one is ready to start kindergarten---it just breaks my heart if I think too much about it!

Some Fun We Like To Have

In light of all the crazy that goes on in our lives, I do make it a point to get out of the house everyday and we try to do something fun while the preschoolers are at school. If anything, I'm always hoping this will help them have a good rest time once we come home and have lunch.

 So, I decided to buy a zoo pass.

 I am not a big fan of zoos in general, but I really don't care much for ours. I don't really know why, but I think I just associate it with boring school field trips when it was nasty hot outside during my childhood days. I must not have been a typical kid, but anyway...

 

I'm not particularly proud that I don't care for the zoo, so I didn't want to pass this on to the girls. Plus, we need some free activities (well, the pass isn't free, but it's darn cheap to include all members of my family--pays for itself in 1.5 visits) to do this summer. It also makes sense for us because I really don't like to spend a long day there, but for the price my family pays (without the pass), I feel like we should stay there the whole day to get our money's worth. Now with the pass, we can stay five minutes or five hours. I opt for five minutes {SMILE}!


The day we bought our pass, the younger four and I stayed for an hour or so. On the way out, I told them we'd stop by the store to cool off and look around--it may or may not have been a bribe to make them behave and not whine.




Well, they behaved so I let them pick out something. Boushka and Bug each picked a tattoo--elephant for Bug, Giraffe for Boushka. Brownie was diggin' the small, plastic animals. So I let her get those, and I told her what her Auntie and I used to do when we were bored in the summer at my Grandma's house in the desert of Arizona.

We made zoos out of shoe boxes.

 Brownie was in love with this idea.

 I told her we could make the zoo during quiet time someday while the baby was sleeping (because she makes it quite impossible to do anything besides chase, play, and feed her). Well, the opportunity didn't present itself for a few days, and in this time Peach also heard about this "craft." She, too, got excited to create the zoo. So we did.

There were two of several animals, but we ended up making a cage for lions, hippos and giraffes. And there are plans to add on to our zoo this summer!

Since I don't get as much time with these two cuties as I do the younger three, I like to take them out at night sometimes--usually after a soccer practice or dance class. About once a season, I'll take them to our FroYo place--we all love it (me for the add-ins, really).

We also play dress up. Yes, the kids do play dress up with princess clothes, but I also play dress up with my baby Scrunchie. I like to make her look like a little lady--with a bow when I can get one to stay on that pretty little head.

A handful of times this year, I've stopped by Peach's school to have lunch with her. Sometimes it's a surprise and sometimes it's planned. Just recently it was planned (last minute) the day when Matt left town and I had nothing other than a peanut butter sandwich to pack in her bag. It's rare that we don't have fruit, leftovers, or something good to pack--but we just didn't that day. So all four kiddos and I brought her a sandwich from one of our fav places. Peach's grade has recess immediately following lunch, and it's part of the norm to go to recess with her. Thankfully I had my stroller to contain Scrunchie while the other kids ran off to play, but that didn't stop a large crowd of kids flocking to my baby. They were touching her and patting her gently on the head. I was a little paranoid at first, but they all were so kind and didn't go near her eyes/nose/mouth. Peach ended up picking her up and holding her to show everybody her baby sister (so proud of her baby).

Another "free" place we often go is the Children's Museum. They have an area sectioned off for toddlers. This is perfect now that Scrunch can walk. She and Boushka can play all day in there and I don't have to worry because they can't get out of that area. And on this particular day, we were the only ones in there. So nice!

She inspects toys-- though usually with her mouth.

This sweet thing was all over the place discovering new toys and doing some learning along they way.

I really tried my best to make them pose... but I didn't get too lucky!

This is my little vet in training.. actually, she's one of two I may have someday. Peach is insisting she will someday be a vet.

And in my spare time I love to cook. I also love to recipe hunt. This is a gem I found last week and made from Pinterest. They are lasagna roll-ups. I made a few adjustments, but they tasted super good.

So that's some fun we like to have. of course, there's plenty more where that came from--and I'm sure I'll share that someday too.

Sixth baby

I've kind of neglected my pregnancy as far as blogging about it goes. I know it's the sixth, but it's so special to me. And since this is my place to document family events, I wanted to update the pregnancy stats thus far.

I didn't begin documenting the belly until about 12 weeks. I didn't even plan on doing it this particular day, but as I was getting ready for work, I took a look in the mirror and saw the pooch. Thankfully, this one is a baby pooch and not just a "I've had lotsa babies" pooch. But that'll rear it's ugly head in a few months, too.

Here I am at about 15 weeks. I am horrible at keeping track of what week I was in a photo, but I'm just making guesses based on the date attached to the photo.

This is a new maternity shirt. I haven't been a preggo in the summertime for five years. My last two pregnancies were mostly in the winter, so I was in need of some new clothes (that fit). My mom blessed me with a shopping trip to Motherhood where she bought me several new shirts, a skirt, a few pair of capris, and a trusty pair of jeans. I'm so very grateful because at this stage, I could no longer wear my regular jeans comfortably.

17 Weeks brought me such a bad stomach. I don't believe it's heartburn--though I'm not sure I've truly experienced it before--but this feels like it's all in my stomach. I have a feeling it's starting to get a little squished and pushed on, so that is probably why I'm experiencing such awful feelings. Luckily, about five minutes after I pop four Tums I'm feeling much better. I'm just glad it doesn't linger.

This is between 17 and 18 weeks on Easter day. I bought this dress two years ago when I was losing weight and wanted to be a little more bold in my clothing choices. Well, I pulled the tags off on Easter this year--I didn't ever wear this in the past two years because I found out I was pregnant right after I bought this dress. But I figured if there's ever a time to flaunt curves it's when your halfway through your sixth pregnancy!

Finally, 18 weeks. I am sporting new clothes again {SMILE}. Matt and I are wanting to do something different for finding out the sex of our baby. Originally, we wanted to have a delivery room surprise, but then I thought about a gender reveal party. Ironically enough, my friend approached me about having a GRP at Mops two days later. I figured that was my sign! So I'm thinking that's the direction we'll go. I just don't know how it'll work out because I don't want to know until the surprise is revealed at the party. I love the idea of celebrating this new life. I've had showers, "make something for the baby" parties, and a sip and see that was more like an eat and see, so it'll be fun to celebrate our baby with a new kind of party. Ideas welcome!

Close to 18.5 weeks--My jeans are maternity but my KU shirt is obviously not. I've said for a while now that I feel like my first and second trimesters were reversed. The whole first trimester really wasn't that bad--especially when I compare it to all of my previous 5. I held down two jobs, five kids and a house during the first 13 weeks. In all of my previous pregnancies I was exhausted and sick. I missed events all the time due to how I felt. This pregnancy though, has been rather smooth.... until the second trimester. The exhaustion kicked into high gear, the stomach problems came on, I already feel too much pressure when I stand, my head aches about 4 days a week (sometimes awfully bad), and I have spells where my heart races and makes me feel like I want to pass out. Oh, and my feet swell---and it's not even summer yet. I'm in for it, I'm sure.

19 weeks has been pretty good to me. Except for today--it's the first time I ever got sick due to what I think is the pregnancy. Nobody else is sick and I don't have a fever, so I'm assuming baby didn't like my tea this morning. I saw the doctor at 9, 13 and 17 weeks. At our next appointment I'll be 21 weeks exactly--and this is also the sono appointment. I plan on having the tech write the gender down on a piece of paper--what we'll do with that paper is somewhat up int he air. But I'm hoping it will be shown to only one person who will keep it a secret and help us reveal it to family and friends at a party.

So far I haven't had any real cravings. I've had more aversions than cravings I suppose. And my aversions are to anything that isn't white or carb-loaded. I can pretty much always eat bread or noodles. And what's crazy is I don't really eat white foods--I buy whole wheat bread, pasta and tortillas and brown rice--I just don't really care for the white variety and it's not that good for the body. But for some reason I can't seem to stop thinking about big pretzels and marinara sauce--pizza will do the trick too, but I usually don't want the accompanying grease and cheese.

Nothing major has happened related to the pregnancy. The doctor did test my thyroid due to a hunch about what happens to me after I give birth. My TSH came back low, but my T3 and T4 were normal. So they're doing nothing for now and will retest me after I have this baby (that's when the symptoms start).

This baby did give me a scare at our first two appointments when we couldn't find the heartbeat. Due to this, I did get two sonograms--one at 9 and one at 13 weeks. Turns out the placenta is posterior (?) meaning it is in front of the baby, thus blocking the thumping noise I wanted to hear so badly. But both times we did see the heart flutter on the screen. At 17 weeks I did get to hear it with the doppler and it was in the 140s--which I don't interpret that as anything. I've heard of several mispredictions about gender based upon the heart rate.

I'll check back in with the pregnancy soon--and hopefully I'll stay on top of the growing belly and preggo facts.

Our Weekend

Now that I've had a weekend to catch my breath, I'm hoping to jump back into blogging--and doing it more often. Instead of backing up to several posts I wish I'd done--IE, the second part of spring break and Easter, just to name a couple--I'm just going to start back with the here and now.

Friday night, Peach had her Spring Fling date with PAPA. This is a father/daughter and mother/son dance--talk about discrimination--I'll never get to go. HA! Since Matt was flying in from Atlanta, PAPA was able to take my beauty to her first dance. She looked absolutely precious--they made stunning couple. Gram bought her a pretty corsage that PAPA brought over when he came to pick her up. Grammy got her a new dress, sweater, shoes, jewelry, and hair accessory for the occasion. Spoiled--only a little, and it's all out of love. She's a lucky girl.

I heard there was some good food, dancing with her date, and dancing with other boys. Oh my, what are we getting ourselves into? Her date brought her home on time and we heard all the fun details.

Matt has been gone a handful of days during the past two weeks, so it was nice to have him come home Friday night. I may have been in bed already by the time I heard the garage door open, but I was not all the way to la-la land yet--thank you Big Bang Theory!

We woke up Saturday morning with high hopes to do several chores--well, the hopes were all mine, but I push my ideas onto the whole family. If Mama ain't happy...

Anyway, instead of getting the laundry from the week started, vacuuming my hairy (thank you dogs) carpets, dusting anything, mopping up my ugly, white kitchen floors, running the dishes through the wash, or what have you, I messed around on pinterest for some new recopies. For those of you who don't know, other than sleeping this is pretty much my way of relaxing--pinterest is my often my wine (during the preggo months).

So after a chocolate chip pancake and black tea breakfast while pinteresting my way around good food, we headed out to the soccer games. We had two--and thankfully they were back-to-back. Peach played first and scored 3 goals all in one quarter! I was a little pumped about this {SMILE}!

Brownie's game was next. Peach was asked to play on her team for the day since they were missing 1/3 of the team. She gladly stepped in and scored three more goals for their team. And my Brownie was really getting into the game towards the end. She was being like "Edie"--which in our family means "aggressive." Our young dog is named "Edie" and she is a bit excited to love on people--despite her massive body size.

After the games it was practically past lunch time, but we hadn't eaten so we stopped at the girls' fav--Red Robin. For being so late and with no naps, the girls did amazingly well. Scrunchie gets a little "Edie" when she's tired and hungry, but she managed through it well.

Then we headed to Lowe's to pick up our gardening supplies. I loved picking out all the organic veggies (one fruit--melon) that will hopefully grow so we can munch on our own goods while saving a little at the grocery store. I asked Matt if we could stroll by the refrigerators and front loading washer/dryer--so we did. And of course, I have my eye on a few.

After Lowe's we stopped by Target to pick up diapers and new toothbrushes for the kids. But of course I found some other goodies to put in our cart. With summer break just a month away, I went ahead and picked up some "school" stuff for the girls to work on during quiet time or on rainy days.

And as if our day wasn't long enough (don't forget nobody had napped yet), we trekked out to south of town where the girls play softball so that I could pick up candy bars for our  fundraiser.

We came home after that because it was nearing dinner time. Since we ate so late, I just threw together some leftovers while the girls and Matt were out in the back yard playing and prepping the garden. We wanted to get them to bed early, but somehow it wound up being just after 8 by the time the lights were out.

The two of us finally had a chance to catch up since his class load was light and I am done teaching. We discussed all of the things in life causing us stress, and we tried to come to some resolutions. But we realized that we may just be stuck in the stress for a while. I think we both wished we had better coping mechanisms, but doesn't everybody. We're not turning to drugs, alcohol or gambling, so we're not too far off the deep-end.

We woke up Sunday with baby screams on the monitor. Since Matt has been home again, Scrunchie likes to wake up and practically beg Daddy to come get her and put her in our bed. This happens sometime before 7. Matt usually gets up before I do, but I was the one who got up first today. So all the kids and I came downstairs. I made the grocery list and had my tea. Matt came downstairs and did his coffee routine. Then I started feeling sick, but this is not uncommon for me during pregnancy so I didn't think much about it. I laid down on the couch for a few minutes and then I got sick. I was mad--mostly because I had plans to go to a friend's party and coach softball practice--not to mention all the chores I didn't get done yesterday. So I rested and started feeling guilty. There was so much that needed to be done around the house and for the family, so I got up the nerve to go to the store. I brought Peach along in case of a catastrophe, but we made it through quickly--our list was rather short.

I came home and crashed another two hours and woke up feeling a little better. So I went ahead and held practice with the agreement that Matt would do the physical things and I would handle the logistics of practice. Thankfully, we have a great assistant coach and support from the parents, so practice went on as planned. It's fun to coach all three of our big girls--I love to see them develop their talents.

 After practice, we made dinner and ate as a family. We always love having family meal on Sunday. And today, Matt read a chapter from our Laura Ingalls Wilder book as the girls finished eating. I addressed Boushka's party invitations and vacuumed while Dad gave the baths. And then it was TUCK IN TIME! Bless their hearts, they can talk and talk and talk. I just wish I knew where they got it--HA!

My Days are Ours Again

My class (that I teach) ends tonight. I have everything (that's been turned in thus far) graded. I have my email for the morning ready to go. The only obligations I have left for this class will be taken care of just after sunrise tomorrow morning. I cannot convey how freeing this is. The kind of freeing that makes you feel lighter and more full of life!

Don't misunderstand--I'm certainly thankful that I have a way to provide financially for my family. I'm happy to help out. I enjoy shopping for cute kid clothes, craft supplies, and organic/real food too much to say that I could easily live without the extra income. But I also enjoy just being a mom.

And by "just," I don't mean that mothering is so simple a task. No! What I mean is that my brain can "just" focus on being a mom because I do not do well when I have several major issues to focus on. After almost 30 (no, not quite, but we're getting close folks) years on this earth, I've learned that I am easily overwhelmed by big commitments. And having "just" one major focus is how I function most efficiently. Your definition and my definition of "easily overwhelmed" may be different, but to me it seems that I can't have too many things up in the air, so to speak, or I become miserable. Because I dwell--Yep, I'm a dweller. And then I dwell, and dwell, and dwell some more until my head spins and I become a hot mess.

A HOT!
SOBBING!
MESS...

as noted by several family and friends this past week who all saw me as a hot, sobbing mess because I was completely and totally overwhelmed.

When I can cross one of my up in the air issues off the list in my head, the burden I carry feels so much lighter. I know this may not sound like a revelation to many of you-- in fact, I agree it's pretty simplistic. First grade math, really. 10 things (up in the air, floating around in my head) minus one (huge and time consuming task) equals 9 things (up in the air, floating around in my head). Which translates into an obviously lighter burden to carry during my days.

But for some reason, the working from home gig feels more like 85% of my burden. It weighs me down. There is so much emotion wrapped up in one tiny job. A job that, again, I'm thrilled to have yet I kinda loathe it as well.

There is so much guilt tied to this job. Well, I suppose really it's tied to me, but I'm tied to my job--so it works. Anyway, it's hard to define yourself when you are a stay-at-home mom who also works from home. And we all know what happens to people who don't know or perhaps lose their identity---well, I don't know, but I do know it's messy.

I don't lead the life of a typical stay-at-home parent, nor do I lead the typical working parent life either. Thus, I feel horrible for not providing in the way I wish I could. I yearn to be a mother first and foremost. I have five, almost six kids for a reason. I adore each and every one of them. I want to put my all into them. I want the love I feel for them to seep out of my eyes and cover them for eternity--in case it wasn't clear.

This leaves me riddled with icky, self-loathing, I'm not good enough feelings. And these feelings only add to the time and responsibility burden that come with the job. I know working from home while raising a family sounds like the ideal job--I did start doing it for the obvious reasons--money coming in--no day care expenses--I still get to raise my kids. But nothing is ever as simple as it first appears, right?

Luckily, I really don't have that much guilt toward my work. I know several working moms who feel guilty about what they're putting into their job due to the responsibilities that come with raising children.  But, I feel like I put in a ton of hours, and I really don't care for the job that much. It's not inspiring like I always dreamed my teaching job would be. My sole purpose is to provide feedback on papers and assign them a grade. There's none of those famous "ah-ha" moments that nearly every teacher in the typical classroom can experience on any given day (though I know those can be few and far between). I hardly know my students, so I have no close bonds to tend to. There's no camaraderie among the faculty--hell, I don't really even know any other TA's. You get my point--I work because there are dollar signs associated with it--not because I feel something for anything or anybody related to that job.

On the other hand, I feel an immense amount of guilt with the kids. I try to only grade papers while they are sleeping, but on any given day there is somebody in my house not sleeping during naps. So then I'm left with either ignoring my kids or staying up until the early morning hours to grade. I often have to choose to turn on the television or send them outside to play while I work. And this is only if Scrunchie is asleep. If she's awake, there's no chance for me to concentrate long enough or well enough to grade a paper with any real fairness.

And then I think...  I would never send my kids to a daycare where they are forced to watch t.v. so that the sitter can work on her other job!
Yes, I enjoy torturing myself.

Enter: GUILT!

I have been known to say things like Please just give mommy one more second/5 more minutes/10 more minutes/etc to finish up and then I'll be right with you. 

or

I asked you to go play outside so that I could finish this one last paper; please do so.

or


Not now, honey, mommy's busy.

I'm sure several moms can relate to the last line. I often say this when I'm in the middle of changing a diaper and somebody wants a snack. Or I'm in the middle of cooking and somebody wants me to color with them. But I'm more okay with saying "not now" in those scenarios for some reason. I suppose it is because those tasks all feel interrelated and the consequences are immediate and very real. If I'm busy cooking a meal they're about to eat and I can't color with them, then the guilt isn't really that much since I'm still providing for them in a very tangible manner. 

But if I have to tell them that last line because I'm working to earn money to provide clothes on their backs and a roof over their head, I feel the guilt. Why I separate the two issues, I'm not completely sure. But I can only guess it's because I value and identify much more with mothering in the immediate and concrete sense of the word than in the abstract sense of the word. For instance, I value putting a meal on the table in the literal sense--what I'm cooking they will soon be consuming.  But, for whatever dumb reason, I do not value the more abstract idea of earning money which eventually puts a meal on the table. I'm providing by cooking and by making money, but in my head these two things are not equal. They aren't even separate but equal. The latter is much lower on the totem pole than the former.

At least this is how I make sense of it all. I don't think this is right or wrong ... it just is. It's the way my overwhelmed brain works. I wish I could see the value in my working from home, but it's not as easy as seeing the disappointment in their faces when I tell them we can't do something that I'd be doing as a normal SAHM if I didn't have to put in time at work during the day as well.

So, I'm taking some time off from work. Thank God, some things fell into place recently so that we can afford for me to take off some time and concentrate on my family. I'm full of motivation to go have fun. All the kid-friendly places that I usually don't like going to for whatever reason are now suddenly calling our name. School will let out in the next month and then my kids are all mine again. I realize I'm fantasizing about the adventures we'll encounter and that reality may look a little more dull, but that's okay. I know I'll be entering the third trimester during the hot summer months. I've done the big in the summer pregnancy three times before, but I can still dream. If anything, we'll do lots of playing in the water in our own yard. However it works out, I'm just absolutely thrilled that I can focus on the girls, Matt, our new baby, a garage sale, and friends--items listed are in no particular order

{SMILE}!