Randoms

I feel so great! I should complain about things more often, because apparently my blog likes to make a liar out of me! I posted on my blog about sleep frustrations last Saturday night, and this week has been amazing! Daniel has slept for SIX STRAIGHT HOURS every single night this week, and Jill has gone to sleep really easily for her naps and at night time.

Amazing.

I have also been able to do some gardening, and that feels really good. Well, mostly good. I accidentally . . . cough. Sigh. I cut a bush in half. :( Bush killer. It is not really dead though. I've just taken it back a few years in becoming a grand bush. I thought I was pruning off the dead stuff, and I thought I would save time by cutting it in half rather than cutting off the individual branches that I thought were dead. But after cutting, I noticed that the middle was actually green.

I have been discovering that there is apparently a lot of green hiding in the middle of dead brown branches.

Is anyone else thinking "wick"? That word keeps bouncing through my brain as I've been gardening. I want to watch and read The Secret Garden again. Such a lovely book. And movie. It's even a great musical!

Get jealous a lot of you! Saturday and Monday should both in the 80s! :)

Spring is so inspiring.

If you have a blog, do you ever look at your stats? I do sometimes. Interestingly (well to me at least), my blog stats say that this week there have been 47 views from people (or haha one person many times) in South Korea. I looked at the all time views from South Korea, and it was only 58. So, yeah, I wonder what on my blog the South Koreans are looking at. How do you even find blogs from other countries? I would love to. But even when I blog hop, I have never made it outside of the United States. Any advice?

Let's see. What else has been floating through my brain? I guess the topic I have been thinking the most about is how intimidating it is to be a mother. I keep stressing out about how my children are going to grow up someday. The thought of sending them to school and trusting other people to be kind to them is terrifying. And then to imagine them as teenagers and dealing with that. Completely terrifying. And then to realize that who knows what the world will be like by the time they actually are teenagers. I know I shouldn't stress out about it when they're 2 and 0, but it keeps coming back into my brain.

But when my biggest decisions of the day are about what to make for dinner and if vacuuming is necessary, my brain cells have a lot of extra space and time to worry about things that won't happen for another decade.

I wish everyone could just be nice.

Determining family size is really tricky. I was reading various blogs today, and one author stated that she believed that large families are really in a decline. That received many interesting comments. Like that 2 is the new 4, 3 is the new 6, and 4 is the new 8. Some attributed smaller families to selfish adults. Others said that our lives are more complicated now. Some said that it is due to financial burdens like laws about booster seats and expectations that all children should go to college.

People always ask (and I'm sure I've asked others), "how many children are you planning on having?" Well, my original response was always "4 to 8." That gave me a lot of leeway. Recently my answer as been "1 at a time." (Although haha some people are surprised with multiple births!)

It is . . . intimidating (?) scary (?) to think of having more children than can fit in a vehicle.

One commentor (commentator?) on the post brought up a point that I hadn't thought about: population control. There are an awful lot of people on this planet. I had honestly never considered that when thinking about my family size before.

So, yeah, I really don't know how many Jeff and I will have. I can promise this though, haha, it won't be any time soon. One baby at a time please. Especially when I feel like (some days) that Jill still is a baby.

The original post was from the C Jane blog.

Mostly though, when I think about family size, I just feel incredibly grateful and blessed to already have two healthy children. I always assumed growing up that I would become a mother and have healthy children, but pretty much every day I am confronted with the reality that I am blessed and cannot take for granted the children I have.

Haha, something else about growing up. I also used to have a goal to have 4 kids before I was 30. Hm . . .

Oh, to make you even more jealous about the sleep. Three times this week, Jill and Daniel have both taken three hour naps. AT THE SAME TIME. I was able to read, sleep, fold laundry, and now blog. If we ever move Daniel out of our bedroom, I might even sew. (My sewing stuff is in the bedroom.) Because spring really is inspiring. I feel like I can do anything!

This post is really suffering from not having been thought out beforehand. I'm jumping all over the place. And I'm too lazy to go back and edit it. Pathetic me. But my next thought is about gardening again. Jill loves gardening with me. She doesn't wander away or run near the street. She stays right next to me and asks me if it is her turn yet to hold the tools. She sadly does step on my tiny green plants who are valiantly pushing up through the dirt. But hey, she's not even two yet. I give her a break. She hasn't picked any of my flowers yet. She was about to the other day when I told her that she was supposed to just smell it instead. That has satisfied her so far. We'll see if it lasts.

Daniel's smile is brought to you by sleep, infant gas drops, baby acid reflux medicine, and mommy no longer drinking milk. I really miss milk. :( But I love that smile!!

Jill is really, really ready to swim! Her Boling grandparents have given her the birthday present of swimming lessons at our YMCA. She started next week! She is ready to start now though. Ha. So we went and practiced in the bath tub. And by "we," I mean she. Ha.

Today is glorious. The high today was originally 69, but it's currently 77 outside. The window next to me is open. Birds are singing. The sun is shining. My little plants are working their way up. Soon my babies will be awake and happy. And in an hour or so, Jeff will be home! Life is very, very good.

Comments

  1. It's supposed to be 77 tomorrow. So I'm going to try not to be jealous of your excellent weather. We really haven't had that bad of weather, and next week it should be really nice, in the high 50's and the 60's.

    When I was about 20, I wanted 9 kids. Not sure where I got that number. Then I worked at a daycare, and had to watch 9 kids under 2 1/2 at once, at which point I started to reconsider my position. But I think whoever said that increasing costs of child rearing has cut the number of kids in half (like 6 is now 3) is probably right. When I was a kid, babies and toddlers had a car seat, and then you used the lap belt. Now seat belts have shoulder straps, so then they had to make booster seats. And your kid has to sit in it until they are like 8. Really, eight? Lame.

    Also, it used to be that moms could stay home with the kids, living off their husband's salary (which people still do now). But it's harder to find a good job like that, just having been to college isn't always enough. And when both parent's work, it's harder to take care of the kids, and you get the added expense of childcare.

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  2. Man I thought it felt like I have 8 kids! Should have known :) I definitely agree with all of that though. Life is demanding and hectic. I feel like I hold my older kids back by having a new one.
    I am so glad you feel like you can conquer the world! I never get to that point til my kids are like a year old. I can't wait though!
    So fun Jill is learning to swim! We will have to spend a lot of time at the pool together this year :)

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  3. Lovely spring blog, makes me very happy others are enjoying nice weather, I actually did work outside today but I still wore my winter knit cap.

    Regarding family size, the only item where my pondering has seemed out of the mainstream is regarding the population of the planet. When I was younger the politically correct position was to have zero to two kids so you would not contribute to the population explosion.

    I found myself thinking I need to have a lot of kids; because somebody has to have kids that are going to solve problems and not just be problems.

    Ah yes, I have been prideful for a very long time.

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  4. Your thoughts on family size is very interesting. Three years ago I was anxious to get engaged, get married, have a year to ourselves as a married couple, and start having children to be finished by the time I was 30. Now I'm nearly 25, still selfishly want to have a year (or two) before I have children, and I'm realizing I may not be finished by the time I'm 30. For some reason that makes me nervous because I don't want to be an "old" mom.

    I have always had population control on my mind when I consider famiy size and the fact that I'm now going to be an old mom makes me want to have less children. Ever since I was little I have said I was going to adopt babies, because there are so many children without parents and it seemed selfish of me to have children when I could take in and provide for someone else's. Kyle wants children and isn't quite as fond of the idea of adopting (although he isn't completely against it). He wants 3 or 4. I say lets not let them outnumber us, lets keep it at 2. We will see what happens though. :)

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  5. I really did have something to say to this post but now I can't 2remember it, so I will just say that Jill looks soooooo c.ute0..3

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  6. cv zxzx ./ v ,]dr]2 BN ;; xVVVCFTY5Y6.TUT,56Y


    Hanna wanted to help me with my comment so I thought I'd let her leave her own. Just so you know, this isn't spam.

    Love you!

    ReplyDelete
  7. cv zxzx ./ v ,]dr]2 BN ;; xVVVCFTY5Y6.TUT,56Y


    Hanna wanted to help me with my comment so I thought I'd let her leave her own. Just so you know, this isn't spam.

    Love you!

    ReplyDelete

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