Motherhood Remembered

For the last several months I've been mediocre at keeping up with this blog. Many of the little tidbits of everyday life have not been recorded here, so I want to be better at that. Often times I am obsessing over the thought of how my children will remember their childhood. Will they remember the grumpy mom days and me rushing them into the car? Or will they remember me reading to them, playing with them and teaching them? As for myself, I want to remember the good and bad of motherhood. One of the saddest thoughts is thinking about how I will likely forget so many things about them and my life now. So here are a few little things I want to record and remember. 

The kids have been sick this past couple of weeks and nights have been rough. Sometimes at night Adele will crawl into our bed and restlessly roll around, half asleep. Then an hour or so later Baby Boy will wake up, which will wake Adele fully, so I will have Leland take her back to her bed and hold her hand until she is asleep while I get up and make Baby Boy a bottle and feed him, also half asleep. Then I will sometimes get an hour of two of sleep before Israel wakes up. I nurse-rock him for a while but he typically goes to sleep better for Leland, so I get Leland and he will go sleep on the floor in Israel's room, which will satisfy Israel enough to sleep. Then I go back to sleep for a bit and Baby Boy wakes up and wants another bottle. I feed him and go back to sleep and an hour later Adele is waking me up for the day wanting breakfast. If it is a very bad night then I also have to deal with a child throwing up or wetting their pajamas. (Yes, Leland is a saint for helping me so much at night, especially when he has to wake up for work before 5am). Their sleep habits aren't horrible independently, and I don't have it in me to begrudge them my presence and comfort at night, especially when they're sick. But combined, their night-time needs can be overwhelming for me. Still, I am surprised by myself because at the beginning of my motherhood journey, night waking was so difficult. I felt I could barely survive until Esther and Adele were sleeping through the night when they were babies. Not only that, I would often get angry and resentful about them waking up when I expected that they should be sleeping through the night by now. One piece of motherhood advice I try to stick to is Lower your standards, and then lower them again. Now, although at times I do still get frustrated with their night waking, I mostly take it with an it is what it is approach. It is heartening to see how far I've come, and I'm glad to know that these past six years of parenting have afforded me at least a little more patience. I know that these extremely hard sick nights will pass and they will go back to their slightly better sleep habits. And I know those nights will pass quickly too, and someday I will have a blissful night of uninterrupted sleep.  

Tonight we did Family Home Evening, and the kids were so excited about it. Admittedly we've been pretty bad at doing it lately, but I love how they are young enough to still just think it is the funnest thing to ever happen. Our activity tonight was a rousing game of Duck-Duck-Goose. I want to always remeber Israel's adorable laugh as he chased everyone around regardless of if he was goose or not. Afterwards they all wore their Christmas pajamas and Esther referred to them as "candy cane kids" saying "all candy cane kids, come kneel down for prayers". 

Also today, I had quite the grumpy day (see aforementioned sleep loss). I was having a hard time dealing with Baby Boy screaming incessantly and I had just sat down to feed him a bottle. Adele noticed that my feet were dirty and offered to wash them for me. She went and got a little rag wet and started wiping my feet. The rag was too wet and was dripping all over the floor, in my irritation I wanted to tell her no, I don't want you to wash my feet. Suddenly I realized the parallels to the story in John where Peter refuses the Savior when he tries to wash his feet. I recognized that I had been like Peter, I had been refusing Christ's love and help all day by being grumpy and murmuring. Adele kept washing my feet and I was filled with gratitude for my little four year old and all she teaches me about being Christ-like.