Looking Back

Is it wrong to admit that sometimes I find myself longing for the good old days when it was just my hubby, myself and our one son. Originally, I had wanted five children. These days, I think I would be dead if we had five children. I know plenty of other people who do fine with those larger numbers. In fact, I'm blown away by how many other people do fine with those larger numbers. It can make a mother think, "what's wrong with me? why can't I handle the demands of three children, for goodness sakes?!"

Then, I find myself wondering if my PARTICULAR children present more demands than the average kids. Do other children find quiet things to occupy their time and remain contentedly focused on what they are doing? I can remember my parents taking us to work (they were Salvation Army officers and we spent a large portion of our days at the church building). They would pull out a small mattress for the floor and we would lie on our bellies with a large plastic bin of crayons in the middle and a stack of coloring books. We colored for hours on end. We listened to records with stories. We played games with one another. I don't remember hounding my own parents every two minutes to come and see what I had drawn or come and set up a different game or come and watch me play a song on Guitar Hero or come and rescue me from my brother.

Then again, probably the problem lies within. Is it my age? Am I just too old for this gig? My husband has a theory (and one I'm none too happy to admit, because I can see it rings of truth) that I would find things to be unhappy about no matter how many children I had. Perhaps that is what sets these other mothers apart. Those mothers whose faces glow with love and enthusiasm for their broods of small children. Those mothers who admit to being a bit out of sorts when their youngest one is no longer a baby.

Today was one of those days where I was wishing for a less complicated, less chaotic home. From the moment the boys awoke, it seemed my name was being yelled from every direction of the house. I literally think my MS managed to say "Mom" over a thousand times today.

My ES was gone for the morning, and I kept hoping to find a brief window of time where I could get the little boys busy with something and manage to slip into the shower for ten minutes. Finally, when I picked up ES at noon, I explained that when we arrived home he was not playing Guitar Hero (Rock Band is out, since his foot pedal broke in half last weekend), he was not going on the computer, he was not even cleaning his room (that would have been first on my hubby's agenda for him). He would be taking the little boys downstairs to play in the play room (I had already straightened the upstairs rooms three or four times only to discover them pulling whole buckets of toys out - just for the pleasure of seeing everything on the floor, I think) while I took a shower!

At least when my husband returned home from his half day of work, I was clean and presentable. However, it didn't take long for more damage to be assessed. Apparently, YS pulled a whole shelf of books off the bookshelf downstairs (these are MY books, not children's books). Plus, someone (????) toppled a small pile on my desk, knocking off a double frame with my twin nieces' pictures. The glass in the frames shattered. The little boys were ushered upstairs.




These photos of the play room show that one end is theirs and the other end is, supposedly, mine. Ha!

After a nice nap for YS and myself, I went down to clean up the mess. I keep my books - at least my fiction - in alphabetical order (see, I'm not a complete messy!), so I began to put them in order on the shelf. As I did so, I was noting several books which I had started but never finished. One was a book that has recently been buzzed about because a movie was made (The Secret Life of Bees). Another was Stones from the River. I opened this one to find a makeshift bookmark (another messy habit).

It was a stapled set of Amtrak ticket stubs from a trip I had taken with my ES in June of 2000. He was four and still loved trains. We decided to take an Amtrak train from Naperville, Illinois out to Kansas City, Missouri to visit my parents. What fun we had taking that train. During our visit, we visited another train somewhere nearby, and the conductor even let my son go up into the engine and pretend to drive it. It was no effort at all to pour all of my energies into seeking out adventures according to his interests. He, and his favorite things, had my undivided attention. I seem to recall having much more energy then, too.

Well, something tells me I better end this nostalgic look back to the days of our family of three. They are all quiet right now, sleeping soundly. This is my favorite time of the evening. But perhaps I love it a little too much. Perhaps I wouldn't be wishing for the simpler times of a family of three, if I would put myself in bed the minute they go to sleep. Perhaps the problem isn't the kids and isn't me. Perhaps, I just need to give up this whole blogging experiment. There is a strong likelihood I would have enjoyed my family of five a bit more if I had gone to bed before 2 a.m. this morning. Then, rising at 8 to meet their demands might not have seemed so overwhelming.