A Delightful Discussion & Life in the Circus

I had another delightful evening with the mothers from my Power of Moms Learning Circle. There’s something truly fulfilling about discussing with other women ideas on motherhood. We based this month’s discussion on the article from the now infamous Tiger Mom. While we all agreed that her measures for producing success in her kids were extreme, we also agreed that kids need to be challenged and they need to learn they can do hard things because hard things will be required of them. We talked about kids working to master talents and ideas for directing their interests. In our group, we have different parenting styles but we all worry if we’re doing our best. Are we staying close to the spirit so we will be directed to know what is best for each of our children? We also talked about how this applied to us as mothers – we are required to do hard things on a daily basis (speaking kindly to our kids when we haven’t slept in who knows how many days). We must stretch ourselves to master important character traits such as patience and charity. Wonderful ideas, wonderful mothers a fascinating discussion.

I typically get home late after a Learning Circle evening, but usually find it hard to fall asleep because of all the thoughts floating through my mind. But I always wake up vowing to try harder, implement new ideas…etc. The same was true this morning. I woke refreshed because I actually slept for almost 5 hours with no one waking me up! I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been able to get a 5 hour stretch of sleep. It lead me to fantasize about how amazing it would be to actually get a whole night’s uninterrupted sleep – but the thought was such a distant memory I just can’t really imagine how wonderful it would feel. I digress, so yes I woke up ready to conquer the day. Then reality hit that sometimes life in our household is a three ring circus. Case in point.

I decide I’m finally going to make my traditional Valentine’s Mississippi Mud Cake. Yeah, I’m a few days late, but I felt like I was on death’s doorstep this weekend! All the kids were gathered round “helping” me and Jenna was crying because she wanted in on the action. So I put her chair in the sink and asked Bella to help her with her bottle of milk. (Another digression, I was still exclusively nursing Jenna until this weekend when I got so sick that I literally had no milk to offer her. She can technically drink regular milk since she’s a year, but was refusing. After much weeping, wailing and fit throwing she finally succumbed to taking a bottle of milk from Chuck. It was her first introduction to a bottle so she doesn’t really understand how to hold it yet or more likely she just wants someone to feed her. She’ll drink water out of a sippy cup, but refuses it with milk. It’s been bittersweet that I now only nurse Jenna just before bed, just lost the milk supply so quickly when I couldn’t keep any liquids down.) So while Bella’s helping Jenna, we get most of the way through the recipe when I realize I’m about ¼ cup short of flour. I run downstairs, but I’ve already used up all my supply of white flour, even the flour I’d canned. I guess I have too many incidents of unexpectedly running short of flour! It would be wonderful if I had a neighbor to call for flour, but such is not my situation. So much to the dismay of the children, the project has to be put on hold until daddy can bring us flour during lunch.

So it's on to the next task - making the kids lunch. I take Jenna out of the sink, but now she’s really upset because she wants me to hold her and she’s hungry so she starts crying. Then Bella finds out I’d put her special pink plate in the sink and she’s storming around crying and in tears too. I try to tell her I’ll wash it, but she’s not going to be consoled at the moment. Then I hear Isaac start to cry as well. I think to myself well, at least it’s not all 4. I figured Isaac and Samuel had just got in an argument about something so I just let him cry while I was still trying to take care of the crying girls. Then Samuel is at the top of the stairs trying to talk really loudly over Isaac’s crying. I finally make out the words, “I told him not to jump”.

Through all the noise I finally gather that Samuel had been jumping off from his slide bed and Isaac decided he wanted to try it too. Samuel said he tried to warn him he shouldn’t do it, but he tried it anyway. Now Isaac can’t jump very high, he’s a rather big kid, so he didn’t quite clear the “safety” bar. So according to Samuel’s vivid description and reenactment of the event Isaac basically belly flopped right onto the floor. I’m just really hoping it hurt bad enough that he’ll think twice about trying that again!

So yes, sometimes we have to do hard things – juggling the kids without losing it. But I must say the day got a lot better, in fact it was actually quite pleasant, we finished the Mississippi Mud Cake and it’s absolutely delicious!