Muppets and Musings

Do those look like Muppets?  They should!

My wonderfully talented brother came to visit this weekend, and he is a gifted balloon artist.  Our kids were enchanted as he put on a show and showed off his balloons.

My mom and dad came as well.  It was a riot here yesterday with 9 excited children, 2 grandparents, an uncle, and of course Kevin and me. There was one humorous moment when 11 of us were jammed into our family room, with kids loudly chattering about balloons and throwing them around.  Chaotic is a good word to describe it, but it was fun.

It was a wonderful visit and we are very thankful they came.

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Going back in time a BIT, last week was Kevin's first week in a new position at work. He moved to a new building and is doing entirely new things.  It is a challenging job and he feels like he is dealing with a fire hose of new information being hurled at him each day.  We are thankful for the job, very thankful, but also realize we'll need to make some changes to our lives.  Kevin's job was previously somewhat flexible in terms of hours, but the new position requires him to be there early and leave moderately late, and so I'll need to take over some errands that he used to run. That is fine, of course -- we just need to figure it all out.

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Miss Rosy Posy continues to grow.  I stepped on a scale with and without her and I think she is a bit over 10 lbs now.  My milk supply is holding up, praise God!

She is starting to smile often.  She is a happy girl. She also usually goes to sleep for the night around 9:30 p.m.  It is hard to put into words how much EASIER that is for me than when she was a newborn and was up until midnight every night.  I am a morning person and most definitely NOT a night person at all.  Now that I have confidence that I can head to bed by 10:30 p.m. or so, I am much better rested and happier.  She usually sleeps through the night, also a gigantic, enormous, stupendous blessing.

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Our pastor at church has been preaching through the Ten Commandments.  Today he talked about the last one, "You shall not covet."  He talked about that quite a bit and I pondered what I tend to covet.

I concluded that what I covet MOST is other parents' available, helpful, healthy extended family.  Kevin and I have a wonderful family but only Kevin's mom lives nearby and she is shockingly busy.  She occasionally is able to take our kids to lunch and the like, but in general she doesn't have time to help us out much. (Which is totally fine!  I know how little time she has.)  My family and Kevin's other relatives either live a long away from us, or are suffering from serious health problems.  So as someone once said at a work party, we're a "two man army."  I know many other families where grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. are able to take children to activities, doctor appointments, etc.   I think I desire that option because I do feel guilty sometimes that we have to stay home most of the time.  I just can't run around with 9 kids, one of whom is nursing.  Our big girls help out very very well, but going out is just not easy with a crazy toddler and other busy little people who could run off at a moment's notice.

When I was thinking through the sermon, I considered how important it is to get to the root cause of coveting. I really don't covet fancy cars or designer clothes. That's not me. But this coveting of other family's ability to go out and do exciting things probably pushes an emotional button about me wanting to be a GREAT parent. I really do want to be a great parent. I want to meet our children's needs, of course, but I also want to meet some of their wants. And I do.  But I know some of them would love to do more out in the world, and I have to say no to something as simple as going to a park sometimes because I'm tired, the baby needs to be home to nurse, etc.

But thinking it through carefully, I know that life is not perfect.  I was recently reading a FB entry about a woman (not someone I know personally) who has a new baby and an 11 year old.  Her 11 year old is in a million activities and money is tight, so this mom is trying to decide whether to go back to work full time, which would actually mean 50+ hours away from home because the job would be an hour away.  She wants to be a good mother and feels like the money might be necessary, but if she DID that, she basically wouldn't see her 11 year old and would really barely see her new baby.  

I would say that is a long way from a good situation.  Obviously each family has to decide what is best, but nothing in this world is ever PERFECT.

For that matter, I'm not remotely a "royal watcher" (I think getting weird about the British Royal Family is, well, weird, for an American) but I read that the wife of Prince William (Princess William?  Princess Kate?  Duchess of Cambridge?) is horribly ill with her second pregnancy.  She was horribly ill with the first pregnancy too. Bless her heart, that is hard.  And her little son, who is only a year old, is probably not seeing as much of his mother as he is used to because she is so sick.

Nothing is perfect.  The key is to pray for wisdom and do what we can with our available time, energy, and money