Consider this as a sort of snapshot of what life feels like right now - a little State of the Union for our family.
We are coming to the end of our first school year, and there seems to be a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel. But - I've got to be honest here, we are tired. You are probably sick of reading that, but the good news for you is that you can always stop reading. Unfortunately, I haven't stopped living it yet, though I am hopeful that there is rest on the horizon. This week I've found myself irrationally angry at people when they have asked us for anything. This is not their fault - it's mine, and I know it. It just feels like we are responsible for a lot of things, and I want to quit addition and only work on subtraction.
John and I often liken being at home with our kids to a Koi Pond. Anytime there is any food out or anything going on, you get swarmed. Actually, you pretty much get swarmed by children any time they are awake. That is just the stage we are at, and it takes a lot of energy.
As another indicator of what things have been like here, Violet had been struggling for weeks with bad eczema and allergies. I had a follow up appointment with her allergist and had been really looking forward to what we would find out. When we got in to the room, he asked how her regular meds had been going. That's when I realized that he had prescribed stuff back in November that I had never once given her. The prescriptions were filled and sitting in my kitchen cabinet unopened and had been completely forgotten. I felt like an idiot and a terrible mother all rolled into one. The doctor noted that those things would probably really help her.

Also this week, we were cleaning out the mini-van and discovered mouse droppings. It is easy to see why mice would be drawn to our car - there are regularly left over crumbs for them to devour. So, when the Bug Man came to our house yesterday, I mentioned this to him, and he set a trap in the very back corner of the car where we had found the droppings. When I got to a play date today and went to get the stroller out of the back, I saw it. A stiff little mouse body.
I died a little on the inside and tried to keep it together, because I had my three youngest and one of my friend's kids with me. Thankfully, my friend is a braver woman than I, and she fished it out of the car. We did manage to dispose of the wretched thing (#reasonsyoushouldalwayshaveplasticbagsinyourcar), and now I am praying that it was a very lonely mouse with no mouse friends who liked to party with it in our van. But, John has already said we need to set another trap. Sick.
I promised my friend that I would post a picture of her with it on the blog if she did the deed. Thanks, Jenn. Friends don't let friends drive with a dead mouse in their car.
Between the Koi children at home, pests in the car and life pressures pressing in at every turn, life feels a little daunting. So, when life feels like this, what are we to do? Well, it dawned on me the other day that we have everything we need to make some changes. Sort of like going to the doctor and realizing that we had the medicine all along. We can slow down. We can regroup. We can continue to ask the Lord to guide our decisions with how we spend the time he allows us to have. Some of this is just seasonal, because we will not always have two year old twins who think that any moment not spent eating or looking for food to eat or throwing everything everywhere is a moment wasted. I am hopeful that we can make some of these changes and be able to enjoy the good things about having young children.
The other thing I personally need to do is continue to look outside of myself. As John has reminded me in just the last week, "We got everything we asked for." And we did, and I am truly so thankful. So many things are so sweet, and I have a choice about how to think about them. In the meantime, I am asking the Lord to work in my heart continually. To align it to see things through his eyes. To truly view all of the resources at our fingertips as his and to not want to hoard any of them for ourselves. I know there is a balance somewhere in there, but I think there will always be a healthy push and pull here trying to walk in a way that is pleasing to him. It's like a tight rope that I will regularly fall off of, but it's not far from the ground, and the Lord will always catch us. He's good like that.
So to sum it all up - we are tired, but God is good. And I don't like mice.