there are days

Today was a great day. My great husband had a birthday today, his parents took the kids so we could drive to Seattle and have lunch with my family. That meant about 10 hours in the car, going into a restaurant, shopping at Costco, and two stops at Starbucks without any emergency potty breaks, any Strawberry Shortcake theme songs, any diaper changes, and most of all no interruptions.

It was amazing. I am still smiling.

If you haven't noticed, I am an optimist. I strive to be someone who finds the good and tries to avoid talking about negative things. I guess I just figure that talking about it, at least in this format, doesn't really fix things for me. So, I tend to tell the funny things, or the heart warming things that happen around here.

This week though, I just wondered if maybe it would help if you knew that I had a rough go. There were lots of choices to be made this week: to be kind to my children, to actually listen to my husband as he told me about his day, to not get angry at the perpetual cycle of mess that my house seems to stay in.

We were fighting some kind of stomach bug all weekend. Three of the four kids were throwing up in the night. This is, for me, the hardest thing about taking care of kids. I handle it in the moment, but oh man! I just hate vomit and changing sheets and watching the kids feel so gross. It is also the lack of sleep, and not knowing how long they will be up, or if anyone else will be up. Then it is an hour of sleep here and there, with a looooonnnnng, tired day the next day.

This was the story on Wednesday. None of us had much sleep for a couple of nights. It was also Shawn's first day back to work, after a lovely summer filled with day trips and vacations. Having two parents, and other family around for a few weeks was glorious. But...Wednesday morning came, and it was just me.

And all 4 of them.

One of them is teething. My Isaac, when in pain, howls like a little wolf. He wants to be held. He walks around like a gorilla with his hands in the air waiting for me to pick him up so he can howl right in my ear. He must think I cannot hear him unless his mouth is two inches from my ear.

Alina and Emma were overtired, and they missed their dad.  There just wasn't enough of me to go around. They wanted to colour, paint their nails, fix their hair, have a snack, all at once. When these requests were not answered within the correct time frame, the request came again only louder and repeatedly until I answered (through gritted teeth) that "there was only one of me, and I can only do one thing at a time! Right now that thing is listening to Isaac yell in my ear! Grrrr".  I looked at the clock....

It was 8:30. Awesome.

With great effort I dressed each of them, packed a snack and put them in the car. I was in a full sweat by the time every one was in, but they are Harvey's and they like the car, so things started to calm down. I called Shawn, we have hands free in the car, so Emma heard the conversation.

"Mom? Are you sick?"

"No babe, just a little overwhelmed today"

"Cause I can help"

My sweet, insightful little girl. Who in one moment can be a dictator can, in the next moment be just what the doctor ordered. I love it when she is kind.

I guess it is easy to feel like I am overlooking important things, maybe missing the mark, or not being as deliberate as I want to be when I am with the kids. I used to feel like I was failing all the time, thankfully I don't really feel that way as often now. But I do worry that sometimes I am not being the best version of myself, or that the kids are not learning the virtues that we would like for them to practice.

Then Emma says something like that. "I can help". Where did that come from?  Empathy? Compassion? Either way, I felt like I got a big pat on the back by a recently turned 4 year old. She sees, and she feels what is going on around her, and she is trying to offer solutions.

That is a good life skill - things are looking up!

One of the strangest things that people say to me, is that I am making this look easy. I am glad I guess, since I don't like the alternative. I want to assure you that no matter what it looks like on the outside, this is not easy.

So if you are a mom, and you are having a hard day,

Or if you are just a human and you are being hard on yourself,

I want to say to me and to you:

Love never fails.

This is my go-to phrase. I say it all the time, to myself, and to anyone who will listen.

I fail every day, and you do too I am guessing. But love never does. It is love that reaches into places I can't touch in my kids hearts and lives. Even when I am being too hard on myself or them,

Love never fails.

In the end, that is all that matters. I am loved, I don't have to be perfect. I can have hard days, I think I can even have days that I am not the best mom. But it is love that makes up the difference, for every inadequacy, and every mistake.

Of course there are hard days that I wonder how I am even going to make it to lunch time. Somehow I make it to lunch, to dinner, to bedtime..and up to do it again the next day.

This is a marathon, and we are running it. My hard Wednesday morning turned into a beautiful day at the park meeting up with friends. Our kids all played well together, then all four of those little faces fell asleep in the car for about an hour while I drove in silence, prayed and asked for help to figure out the mess that was happening in my brain.

I got silence, even better peace, on a day that was spiralling out of control.

It does get better. We are in it together.

And hey Moms...if you love your kids (and I know you do) you are giving them the best gift they never even asked for.

camping

We just returned from a 7 day camping trip.

Let's be clear: I LOVED being away, and I enjoyed camping.

But, it is strange. Even if you are an avid camper, you have to admit, it is strange.

Our first destination was near Leavenworth, Washington. This was camping at it's finest in my world. They watered the lawns when the spots were empty, so there was lush grass and our campsite led into a little hole in the trees that opened up on to the cutest little stream. Cold water, straight from the mountains babbled sweetly to us the whole time we were there. For the kids, there was a  pool, for Shawn and I there was a nice little fire pit that we could sit by at night time and read our books. There were cute little towns to visit during the day and fun little shops where we could buy early Christmas presents. Harvey's and Buchanan's: Stay tuned for a wide assortment of jellies, BBQ sauces and salsas made out of cherries.

I was as happy as a gal could be.

I didn't mind that the campsite next to us was about two feet away. The back of our trailer hid their laundry and they kept to themselves. They didn't seem to mind that our trailer almost overlapped onto their picnic table, and we didn't ask.

We left my new found paradise after two nights. We exchanged the cool evenings in the mountains for a desert spot in the middle of Washington state. Things were about to turn.

It is important to stop here and explain some things.

When I was growing up, camping happened wherever we parked. We had a Volkswagon van, with a pop up top. So, we would take that van and go find a mountain somewhere and park in the middle of a field or something. But there was always an ice cold river near by that we would be talked into washing our hair in. Headaches always followed. My job was to pick wild flowers for the table. I see now that this was my mother's code for "go away for as long as you can so I can actually get something done or sit by myself without someone talking to me non-stop".

I am sure there were bathrooms at some point in my formative camping years. I don't remember any. I do remember learning to do my business by trees and trying to avoid getting poked by pine trees in my sensitive areas. This has all proved to be crucial information now that I am an adult. There was no complaining on these trips. We were there to have fun, and that was that. We did have fun, lots of it. In fact, the goal for all of us (Dad, Jamie and I) was to see who could make mom laugh so hard that she wet herself. She didn't appreciate this game. Not to brag, but I always won.

My dad had an incredible knack for finding a camping spot with a strong tree. As soon as we would arrive, he would set to work finding just the right branches to fashion a swing for my sister and I. This was a stroke of genius. We would play with that swing for the entirety of our time in the woods.

Shawn and his sister also have vivid memories of head aches from freezing cold streams. Theirs is a little funnier I have to say since, for sure, their water was glacier fed straight from the North Pole.

So, maybe this provides a bit of insight into why the next leg of our journey was a bit of an adjustment for me.

We arrived in our desert destination at the hottest point of the day. It was HOT. I am a bit of a heat wimp these days so I don't really like it. I was sweating within seconds of standing outside of the vehicle. When I looked around, I was surrounded by boats, inner tubes, RV's bigger than my house, and lots and lots of people.

I am talking to myself. "It will be ok. We will get set up, go for a swim, cool off, stretch out...it will be fine."

We arrive at our site to see that it is about 10 feet wide. We are parked next to a site with at least 15 teenagers and some kind of huge moving house they would call an RV, and no joke...a golf cart.

Ok.

We park. We unhook. Shawn takes one look at me and says "want to go for a drive?"

Um. yes.

Ok, so we drive to Coulee Dam. So cool. There is a great museum, lots of fun things to look at, and other than Emma picking up a sample of a big spoke from the dam on her foot and screamed blue murder in the otherwise quiet museum, and Alina wetting her pants on the ride in, things were looking up.

I am talking to myself. "It will get better. It is just not what you are used to. Shawn is happy about it, it will be ok".

We get back. I promise Shawn I will be much better after a good night of sleep.

At 2:30 in the morning, the room in our trailer lights up like a disco. What on earth? So, I open the door to find a family of 6 setting up their tents in the campsite next to us.

When I say "next to us", I mean like if I walked 10 small steps in Mother may I? I would be in their dining room.

At this little moment, in my nice trailer (which, yes, would be cheating in my past camping life), I am thinking "what in the world are we doing? This is so weird. Why are we sleeping within spitting distance of complete strangers???"

I kept trying to imagine this scenario at home. That someone would come, and set up a tent right outside my bedroom window. Then make breakfast and live their lives right there. Does anyone else think this is weird?

Our neighbors got set up. We went back to bed. I guess the joke was a bit on them when our girls got up at 7:30 and were ready to run free in nature.

The next day did get better, and the day after that, and so on. I decided to rely on good old Abraham Lincoln's knowledge when he said "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be".

I made up my mind to be happy, and friendly with our new roommates. They were nice and proved to be quite helpful when a storm kicked in a couple of nights later and our awning flew up and almost off of the trailer. The dad popped right out of his tent and made sure that Shawn didn't need any help. See, you meet the nicest people when you camp.

So, we swam and rode bikes and made yummy food. We introduced the girls to Go Fish and Old Maid. Emma loved Go Fish, Alina just loved saying Go Fish, but she never could quite figure out why she was saying it. Emma wanted to play Old Maid again, but without the Old Maid, she didn't like the part that she lost if she still had her, so she figured it was best to leave her out all together.

The highlight of the trip for me came yesterday. We were walking, my Emma and I, down to the pool for our second swim of the day. She had her cute little bathing suit on and a turtle floaty toy wrapped around her waist. She grabbed my hand and said "Mom, you and me? We are best buds right?"

Yes, oh, yes we are my darling girl. And I told her to tuck that little truth deep in her heart so that even when she grows older and wonders who loves her best, she will know it is me: her best bud.

So, now we are home. We left our little boys in the very capable hands of Shawn's mom and dad. It was so good to hug their little necks and to let them lavish beautiful little hugs and kisses on us.

Now, we clean up and do laundry and get ready for the new school year. But,  I have hidden a little camping spot in my heart where my girls are jumping to me in the pool, laughing at their dad, walking around half-naked in the woods with chocolate all over them, and my husband's smile with his handsome, tanned face.

My own little paradise, that I shared with 500 people and their dogs, and bikes, boats and moving mansions.