I Hit The Wall.

I am sure that this will come as a surprise to many of you, but I am bothered by a lot of noise. This is very interesting even to me. I was raised in a large family. I had loud friends. I was loud. I liked my music loud and my fun loud. I worked as a youth minister, where noise is a must. One morning, however, I woke up to the noise of four little girls. My daughters. The main problem is that I can't send them home. They have to stay. They all like to talk all at once. One of them likes to sing any song, other than the one that is on the radio, at the same time that we are all trying to enjoy the one that has purchased air time. One of them screams every word that comes out of her mouth and one of them whines every word that comes out of hers. One of the girls is extremely dramatic and likes to yell phrases like, "Fine! I won't play then! It's too late!" The problem is that none of the things that she yells is contextually appropriate for the issue that she is responding to. Tonight all of these children made mush of my brains. I texted a friend of mine to see if she would watch the precious angels for one hour. I didn't hear back from her. One of my friends called, who is the mother of three, has a wounded leg & had had people at her house all day. When she VOLUNTEERED to keep the girls for an hour I was a little hesitant. But, that didn't last long. I took the girls over there and Greg and I went to Chili's for one hour. In the car on the way to her house it reminded me of the Sunny D commercial where the parents are starring into oblivion and the teen aged girl is singing off key while the brother is playing a video game. By the time that we dropped them off we were literally like, "Let's not say a word...Let's just be quiet and press delete." After an hour we had regrouped and actually went back to the house where we had left our children and picked them back up. That to me is the amazing part of parenting. One always goes back. Huh.
After we got home, Greg put the two little ones to bed. If your house is like my house, for some odd reason all of the children seem to obey the dad a little more quickly than the mom. We made some coffee and sat down to watch Collision, which I strongly recommend. We pre-ordered this several months ago and have been anxiously awaiting its arrival. GREAT way to end the night. LOVE a great debate. All of us need to re-think our beliefs. We all need to ask ourselves difficult questions as well as welcome difficult questions from others. Inter-acting with new ideas should not scare us. Other people doing things differently than how we ourselves do things should not make us feel insecure or stir up self doubt. Answering the why questions should lead us to a stronger understanding of what we truly believe.
I am so thankful that I have Greg. I am so thankful that I have my children. I honestly do not know what I would do without them....except sleep...I would sleep. I am thankful for family, friends, coffee & grace.
Lucy Grace has started saying something new. almost every morning while stirring her "PICK" of the flavored oatmeal, she says, "Mommy, this is the best day of my life." Oh to be that thankful. To open a box of variety oatmeal, where only Peach has been left to choose, and to still think that this is the BEST day of your life- that is real gratitude.