Feeling Defeated

That is how Dave and I felt the last two days. Perhaps having 5 is catching up with us... although it is the other four that are testing our patience lately. It seem with every stage the children go through they bring with them new challenges and the worst part is after having four one would think we would have allowed the others to pave the road for them, break us in so that we can handle anything that comes along. After all we have "been there" already, right? Well, this I suppose is what makes having "yet another" a whole new adventure because just when we think we have it all figured out we have the next coming up behind them to prove us wrong.

We have never had a new baby that caused sleep loss. Hard to believe I know with having 5 of them, but they have always slept perfect through the night so when other moms would complain of the sleepless nights with a newborn I could not relate. That is until now. Even though Ozzye is probably our best sleeper yet, he has caught the horrible cough that has been going through our house. So every night now he wakes up coughing so much he either throws up or turns blue or both. It makes our hearts break every time he coughs.

Since the boys have been home from school it seems like the competition between the two of them is at an all time high. Aubriel has lost the ability to speak clearly, she only seems to remember how to whine everything she needs to say. Brody, well Brody there is too much to say, his days of turning "easy" only seemed to last about a month. I guess he tried it on for size and it just didn't fit him too well because he is back to the little trouble maker we all know and love.

So the other morning after getting very little sleep, Dave, Ozzye and I are trying to sleep in, trying being the key word here. We can hear all the kids are awake but no one has entered our room yet, of course no sooner than we think that and Brody comes crashing through our door. Then he leaves and moments later Aubriel comes in to inform us that Brody is peeing in Gage's bed. So Dave gets up to go do something, although I am still not sure what since Brody was later found naked when I got up and he didn't take the sheets off the bed. I am thinking he probably just threatened the children to gain a bit more sleep.

He comes back into our room and just as he is closing our door Gage tries to come in to use our bathroom since Aubriel was in the other one upstairs. Now we have two other bathrooms in the house so Dave continues to close the door and tells him to go use a different one. And this is when we really should watch what we call into our lives because just as he lays down he mumbles under his breath "I should have just told him to pee in his bed, it seems like everyone else is today." No sooner than his butt hits the sheets we hear Aubriel screaming "Gage is peeing in his bed!" So Dave once again gets up to double check and it happens to be true. At this point Dave and I are wondering where we have gone wrong.

So later in the day when we are feeling like horrible parents we ask Kain if we are. He asks us why we think that (actually that was kind of nice of him to not just agree with us before allowing us to bleed our case). So I say that him and his brother have been fighting a lot and Aubriel is whining more often and Brody is just crazy. Kain's reply- "Well, he can't help that" as he laughs to which Dave and I just start laughing too. So there we have it, once again infinite wisdom from my 9 year old, I guess we can't help it.

My friend once asked me another time when I was down on myself about feeling like a bad mom "why do you take that on?" I guess I still don't have an answer for that. I guess because as parents we feel responsible for every little thing our kids do so in turn we have to be perfect, right? But I suppose if we were perfect what would they have to improve on when they were older, right? Isn't it our job to try to do the best we can, better than what our parents did on some things and still screw them up enough to be normal?

I guess I like to think that all parents no matter how perfect they may be has moments like these... I guess we will just get twice as many. But if we are taking the bitter with the sweet that means we should get twice as many of the sweet moments as well. Which we did make up for later in the day. Dave and I took the kids to the bay to throw rocks in the water and played at the park for a while. I of course forgot the camera or I would have pictures of some of our sweet moments but like I say with anything I forgot, "at least I remembered all the kids (so far)!"

So many people embrace parenting as a learning tool not only for themselves by teaching their children but by allowing their children to be some of their greatest teachers. I suppose if we all embrace this way of thinking we could maybe forgive ourselves the way our children always do and the way we forgive them because after all we are all learning something new!