Skip to main content

Parenting 101: Lesson 1 - it's hard

My parents failed to mention that parenting is hard.  Obviously they had it pretty easy, or this little oversight would never have happened.  They are responsible adults after all. 

Five and a half years in to this parenting gig, and the reality that it is hard continues to hit me on a regular basis.  For a hot second, we thought we were getting the hang of it with our two vivacious boys.  God doesn't let pride take hold for long I've noticed.  Just when we started patting ourselves on the back, He helped us back to our knees with the addition of two more...girls.  

We don't do girls.  

Or at least we didn't.  God decided to dismiss that idea as well because let's face it, we were pretty proud of the fact that we didn't "do girls."  And now we do.  

Luckily, I've found that dinosaurs and flowers go together and pink matches camouflage just fine.  And while we are still getting the hang of wiping "front to back," we are also decidedly okay with our new additions.  

It turns out, parenting is hard no matter how many mouths you are feeding.  The challenges don't necessarily grow with the numbers, things just get louder.  And that's why we won't be selling parenting advice anytime soon, but we did just invest in Mack's Ultra Soft Noise Reducing Ear Plugs...

Cheers!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sheltering in Place

In the past three months Corona Virus has more or less turned the world on its head.  I feel almost guilty for not being more stressed or put out by the whole thing.  We have been extremely fortunate. What we thought was a most impractical move on our part, wound up being a huge blessing.  With our two boys and our two newborns, we moved out of our house with no yard in the city limits and into my parents' house in the country while waiting for our new house to be completed.  The weekend we moved "quarantine," "social distancing," and "shelter in place" became the new mantra of our state.   Moving in with my parents meant ten plus acres of play space and two extra able bodied adults to help even out the score with the four kids.  Win for the St. Clair's!  Unfortunately, my parents are beginning to realize they may have made an error in judgement.   Yesterday, Sawyer gave their cat swimming lessons.   Last week th...
1 comment
Read more

Bump in the Road

 If your kids aren't annoying you at least occasionally, then they probably aren't doing childhood right.  Ours are winning at childhood.  Actually, we came to the conclusion the other day that if they are annoying you all the time, then you probably aren't doing parenting right.  And when I say "you," I mean "we."   We weren't enjoying our kids recently, and we wondered if that meant other people were also finding them unenjoyable.  It made us finally pause and take a long hard look at what was bugging us about our kids.  We felt like we were in a perpetual state of irritation.  Once we made our list, and it was lengthy, we noticed a theme: attention.  Our kids were begging for our attention with every behavior.  It was annoying, but it was our fault, and it was fixable.   We started putting down phones and brooms and laundry and giving undivided and intentional focus to our kids throughout the day.  It wasn't a huge...
Post a Comment
Read more

Advanced Placement

 Not to brag or anything, but I think we are raising some very advanced children.  At two-years-of-age, our girls have already worked out the art of manipulation and deflection.  It's the antithesis of endearing.   They went missing the other day - the girls did.  That's never a good situation.  They were in the house, and I knew they were in the house, but I couldn't see or hear them.  Silence is the loudest alarm system.  Fischer took action and found them both in my bathroom.   "MOM!" I met them in the hall.  Carter was covered in clumps and blobs of hand cream. "Emi did it," was her unsolicited response.   "No," I told her.  "I think you  did it." That night I got ready for bed and pulled out my one "self-care" splurge - my face cream .  It was in my drawer where I always keep it.  The lid was screwed on.  And it was empty, wiped clean.  "EmmmeerrrrrSON!" Guilty.  They were both ...
2 comments
Read more