Little by Little

 I've had a lot going on in my head lately. And there's been a lot going on in the world this year. What a strange year this has been. Sawyer has been the one bright spot for us this year. But even having him hasn't been a picnic. All of our time got sucked up with him. New babies are time intensive. I forgot how much they were. But add to our new baby 3 more kids needing care and attention and love ... it feels like a lot right now. And many days I feel like I'm barely hanging on. My patience has never been more unstable. Some days I feel like I manage very well, and then other days, I just give up. I give up being kind and patient. I give up on trying to get anything done. I give up trying to maintain order and rules in the house. "You want to spend 4 straight hours at Harvey's house? Sure. Go ahead."  "You want to watch 4 straight hours of movies today? Sure. Go ahead."  "You want to eat chocolate chips and marshmallows and peanut butter all day? Sure. Go ahead." And these things have really actually happened. 😂

I love being a mother. I feel like I'm living my fullest purpose right now, raising my kids. And I'm living my biggest dream. I had other dreams as a teenager and young adult. But I was always the most excited about getting married and having kids. Now, I may not be the best mother in the world. Certainly not the most patient and fun and adventurous. But I love my kids and I love my job raising them. I really would not trade it for something else. 

This transition has been a whirlwind, though. I'm all over the place, mentally and emotionally. Some days I can get a bunch done; some days, nothing. I started up the family economy with the girls after taking a couple month break. I revised it for summer, including reading time and scripture study. While I was at it, I made myself one. Not that I'm going to pay myself if I can get everything done. I just wanted a way to keep myself on track, and I thought it'd be a fun experiment. I thought about my life and pared everything down to what I consider the bare basics. Here's what that consisted of for me:

• Morning: scripture study and prayer, work out, make my bed, brush my teeth (I had to add that separately because I'm out of the habit), and get dressed (I didn't even include getting ready -- with makeup and hair and all; it's just not practical right now. But getting dressed should probably happen most days ... right?)
• Read aloud to my kids (I want this to be a priority. I read to them at bedtime, but I wanted to make it a habit of reading at some point during the day, preferably in the morning. I love doing it, and it's been proven to help kids succeed the most. Oddly enough, this is the one that almost never happens)
• Chore: Monday -- menu and shopping list, dust and vacuum upstairs; Tuesday -- shopping and laundry; Wednesday -- food prep; Thursday -- clean one of the upstairs bathrooms, rotate each week; Friday -- sweep and mop (this cleaning schedule doesn't seem outrageous to me -- it's barely anything, compared with what needs to happen in the house. Ideally, we'd have the kids help with other chores around the house on Saturdays, or throughout the week. I'll let you guess how much that actually happens. I'll also let you guess how many times I can get every chore done each week. A hint -- never. This just means that our house is often messy AND dirty. I cannot keep up at all.)
• Mommy Time: Monday - Sawyer; Tuesday - Jack; Wednesday - Camille; Thursday - Brooke (youngest to oldest. I want this to be a priority as well. Each of my children needs me to fill their buckets, and I think it's important to do that. Once a week isn't much, but I thought it would be more attainable. I'm not perfect at this one -- I've missed kids every week -- but this is the one that happens with the most consistency, along with my morning routine. Why? Because I have 3 little people always reminding me that they get Mommy Time!)
• Evening: Reset (have the kids help me to get the house tidied up and ready for the next day -- put the toys away, do the dishes, wipe the counters, sweep, etc. Just get it back to ground 0); make dinner

I mean, writing it out, it still looks like the bare minimum to me. Take care of myself (that's morning), spend time with my kids (mommy time and reading), take care of the house (chores and evening). I'm not trying to keep the entire house clean. I'm not trying to do everything my kids ask me to do every time they ask. I'm not even putting makeup on most days, and I haven't had a haircut in almost a year and a half. The above list is minimal. And yet, I can't keep up with it. At all. I get half of my morning things done most days. Some days I do it all! (that's rare) I rarely read aloud. I get laundry and shopping done consistently, because those are the things that won't give. But the rest of the chores I list are missed a lot. I can't remember the last time I mopped the floors. 🙈 Some days I don't make dinner. We'll have sandwiches. Chicken nuggets and fries. Leftovers. Which is fine. It's all fine. This is a season. It's a busy season for me. It's a new baby season. And things are just naturally going to fall through the cracks for a while. Most days, I can remember this and feel fine. But once a week, or twice a week, I feel completely overwhelmed. And I have to consciously remind myself to enjoy my new baby, because he's little for such a short time. And to enjoy my little kids. Because they grow up too fast, and soon enough, they'll be grown and gone, and I'll miss the messy house and the noise. And the peanut butter fingerprints. And the little shoes everywhere. Ugh, the shoes. I love them. Little shoes all over my house. It means I have little people in my house. 

 This has been my mental cue lately: your kids are little for such a short time. You'll miss their littleness when it's gone. So ENJOY THEM. Your baby is already almost 3 months old. Snuggle him more. Sit and hold him more. Stare at him more. Kiss his cheeks more. He's only a baby once, for a little while. I think of the last line of this poem that makes me cry every time I read it:

Babies Don’t Keep

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Author: Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

 It makes me sad just thinking about the day when they're all grown and gone. So I'm trying to enjoy the moments, and not let that sadness creep in. It's not easy, and some days I'm fed up, and some days I'm just sad. But I keep trying. I guess that's what it's all about anyway -- that I just keep trying to be the person I want to be and the mother I want to be. It'll come. Little by little. 

Camille

 Camille lately:

• Camille has been wearing the same black boots for months -- little soft fabric boots with ruffles. She's worn them so much the toes of the boots are completely thrashed, and they're totally falling apart.
• When I asked her what the ideal ice cream Sundae would be, she asked, "could it be a different day?"
• She loves to play with Brooke, and she'll let Brooke have her way almost all the time, even if it's different than what she wants. She likes to make her sister happy. 
• She loves to watch movies and tv shows. Lately, she and Brooke have loved watching Miles from Tomorrowland, The Lion Guard, Elena of Avalor, and new movies she's never seen before. A few weeks ago, I introduced the girls to the High School Musical movies, and they've been obsessing over them ever since. Camille loves to listen to the music 24-7. A few Fridays ago, I printed off some invitations for the girls and hung them on string in their bedrooms, inviting them to have a girls movie day to watch High School Musical 3 and paint our nails. It was a pretty epic time. 
• Lately, on Fridays, the girls and I have painted our nails together while we watch a movie. It's been really fun.
• I've let Camille use my old phone to listen to audiobooks and scriptures, which she loves doing. She is a bit obsessed with phones and screens; she just likes to do random things on our phones. She'll look at spotify songs or play with the emojis. But she has loved listening to books over the past month or so. She's been listening to a trilogy called "Guinea Dog". 
• Camille is a sweet little thing, with a sensitive little heart. She gets quite upset whenever I correct her for something; she doesn't usually take it very well. Often she starts crying or yelling, and stomps up to her room for a while. But she always comes out of her room when she's cooled down and feeling better. And very often, she'll come down and apologize to me for whatever it was she did. She's a good girl, and I think she really tries to do the right thing.
• I love Camille's artwork. She draws pictures almost everyday, and she always gives me some of her pictures. She and Brooke have done a lot of drawing with the Art for Kids Hub videos on Youtube, and she's picked up a lot of fun little tips for drawing. The details she includes on her drawings are so fun and cute: cutesy cartoon eyes, little frills and twirls, background decorations, etc. It warms my mommy heart every time she draws. 
• I took the girls to do Back to School Shopping on Saturday. We got new backpacks and new outfits for each of them. And I let them each pick out new notebooks and a pack of crayons. They were all jazzed about the shopping, and now they're both  more excited about school. The subject of school deserves it's own entry, really. But let's just say here that neither of them are very excited about going back to school this year. Camille is starting kindergarten, which has me all sad. She and I have been little buddies this past year, while Brooke was in school and during Jack's naps. We would hang out, and she is a true delight to hang out with, without the disruption of other siblings. We'd play games and color together and read and bake and do all kinds of things, and I loved it. I'm going to miss her this year when she's at school. Fortunately, she'll be going to school for a short time because of covid. But I'm still sad to let her go. I think she has mixed feelings about going to school. She kept saying she wanted to homeschool with me; but I think after our shopping trip she's a little more excited.
  
• Camille loves being in the kitchen with me. She likes baking with me especially, but she'll even come help me cook dinner. She probably comes to see if she can help me make dinner half the time. It's very sweet, and I love having her in the kitchen with me. I especially love when we bake together. It's most enjoyable for me when it's just the 2 of us -- then there's no fighting over whose turn it is to help and no squabbling over where each person gets to be, etc. But when it's just her and me, we measure and dump and mix and take snitches together. And then we get to enjoy the treats when they're done. 
• She's such a tender little soul. She wants so badly for us to approve of her, I think. Maybe that's why she struggles with me correcting her sometimes. And she wants her siblings to love her. It breaks my heart when Jack and Brooke are unkind to her, because I think every time that if they were just kind to her, she would love them back many fold. Sure, she will sometimes start fights with them (especially Jack -- those 2 struggle a lot); but I wonder if she got more kindness from them if her measure of unkindness would diminish and disappear altogether. I hate when Brooke snaps at her, or when Brooke and Jack gang up on her. She just wants to love them and for them to love her. It's hard for me not to jump in every time they have something. 
• Camille is still a spunky little thing. And she's our quirky little child. She's so funny about things. She dresses up to be the "maid" sometimes, as does Brooke. They put on dresses and aprons and go about cleaning up the house. Sometimes I'll catch them sweeping, mopping, tidying up, doing the dishes. It's so cute and sweet. Of course, it's usually only a half job, but still. She also dresses up to dance. I love that!
• She hates bugs and spiders, and she's scared of bees. Once she was outside and refused to come inside because there was a bee resting on one of the steps up to the house. She cried and screamed, and I got really frustrated. I'm sure the neighbors all heard our encounter. Eventually, I helped her step over the bee (which didn't move during this entire episode) and come into the house. 
• She loves hatchimal and shopkin toys. She and Brooke have both built up quite a collection. Camille has gotten a bunch for Christmas and birthdays, and she and Brooke both received some from our neighbors, the Kimballs. They've brought over 2 ziploc bags of toys for the girls. And Brooke and Camille both get so excited. They have built little hatchimal suites out of cardboard boxes and cartons from the recycling, and they play together with their little toys. It warms my mommy heart. 
• Camille plays the victim a bunch lately. We've struggled over the past several months a little bit. Sometimes when I ask her to do something, she'll jump right to it and help out (actually in recent months, this has been her reaction most of the time). But at other times, she'll whine and complain endlessly and cry that it's not fair, that she has to clean the WHOLE HOUSE, that she's SO overworked, that nobody likes her, that we all think she's stupid. It's interesting how quickly it escalates for her, and how hugely she blows things out of proportion. It was at it's worst a month or 2 before Sawyer was born, and right around the time he came. She's calmed down quite a bit. Transitioning to a new baby is always a challenge.
• Camille loves Sawyer. She pays a lot of attention to him when he's awake and around the rest of the family. She loves grabbing his little arms, legs, feet, fingers... whatever, really. Sometimes she's a little rough, and I have to remind her to be gentle. Sometimes she's a little overwhelming for him, and I have to tell her to back off a little. But she loves him so much, and she just wants to be around him and obsess over his littleness. Right when we came home from the hospital, the first thing she noticed and obsessed over was his tiny little pinky fingernail. She just couldn't get over how tiny it was. Funny little girl. I love how much she loves to be with him, how she talks to him and snuggles him. He's started babbling and making lots of noises, playing with his voice, and she and Brooke both, today, spent at least 20 minutes just sitting with him, listening to him talk and babble, and talking back at him. They thought it was the cutest thing when he was trying to talk to them. And I'm sure he loved their attention.
• I love Camille's cheeks. She's still so tiny, and she still has her chubby little cheeks. I can't help but pinch them daily, many times daily. She doesn't mind. And even comes over to me to let me pinch them. I'll say, "Camille, I NEED to pinch your little cheekies. Come over her so I can pinch your cheekies." And very often, she will come over and let me pinch her. It's so sweet and funny. She also comes to me when I need to hug her. She's very compliant that way!