ON BEING PARENTS THIS WEEK

Today when I was meeting with a 23 year old friend of mine, I mentioned that John and I slept in this morning.  We didn't wake up until 8:30 a.m., when we started to hear our little friends rustling.  That is what a couple of later evenings and new black out shades got for us, so that was a major win.

She sort of giggled and said, "You slept in and got up at 8:30?  8:30 is pretty early."

That's when it hit me.

Life is really different now.

Our morning continued to unfold in a classic parent fashion when we wanted to bring the girls to our bed to cuddle with us for a while before we ate breakfast, which is a hit or miss strategy at best, because you never know if that is what they will want to do.  John went to get Bella from her crib, because we could hear that she had climbed out (a new and tragic development of this week), gotten her noise machine that is an old iPhone, climbed back into her crib and was watching Veggie Tales to ring in the new day.

Then he said, "Plans have changed.  You're going to need to come here."  Those are not words you or I ever want to hear through the monitor.  Upon my arrival, I discovered what John was referring to.

You see, last night we heard Bella coughing around 11:00 p.m.  She didn't cry, and she immediately went back to sleep.  Usually I go and peek in at the girls before going to bed, but since we stayed up late watching Downton Abbey (finished Season Two), I didn't check on them.

Bella had thrown up.

And then slept in it.

Gross.

I hadn't saved her from that fate, which left me feeling sort of failure-ish.  It didn't phase her.

So, morning plans for cuddling were put on indefinite hold, and a morning bath was immediately put into action.  It should've been a shower, since the crusty vomit chunks proved to be quite clingy.

John and I were able to agree that cleaning up dried puke is better than cleaning up wet puke, so that is one positive takeaway.



And that is what being parents is.  We may have gotten to sleep in, but vomit was what we woke up to.  Thankfully for all of us, it seemed to be a weird fluky puke, and she has not acted sick at all or had any other symptoms.  In fact, as John and I were working on things this morning, the girls were so rowdy that it felt as if there was omni-shrieking.  It's amazing how the noise multiplies when you are indoors, and I cannot begin to fathom what it will be like when there are two more children in our home.

Loud.  It will be very loud.



When I was nearing the end of my pregnancy with Bella, I had a strange man at Wal-Mart ask me, "Do you know what the Good Book says about children?"  Because I was annoyed at being talked to by a stranger and very pregnant and very tired out by my other small child, I thought I would try to beat him to the punch and just say, "Yes.  I do."  Strange man was not deterred.  He said, "Children are a blessing from the Lord."

And while that is not how I like to have truth delivered to me, it is, indeed, truth.  I am thankful for the two blessings that we currently have in our home and the other two we have in our hearts.  Parenting means regularly dying to self, something that I fail at.  A lot.

So, this week, even though being parents has inevitably hard moments, I am so thankful for our children and the time we have with them.  It goes quickly.