Balance and The BFG
At this season in my life of Motherhood the hardest thing I struggle with on a daily basis and many days go to bed with guilt is balancing my time with each child. Before the babies were born Eli and I did school everyday. I had a good hour to hour and half to just focus on him and help him. This worked great because after that he was content to not have mom around. Lilliana would do a tiny bit of school and enjoy cooking, cleaning, or just visiting with me. Ari took the rest of the time with whatever help, cuddling, or tantrum throwing he needed. I mean reassurance he needed
After the babies were born for a good month I felt so sad because I just could not give the kids what they needed. They were sick at one point and I couldn't even take care of them as I was still healing from my c section and just needed rest. Everybody knows in this house I am the one that takes care of sick kids. Anthony always offers to help, but he has to work and I hate keeping him up. So I will get up 20 times to help sick kids. It was heartbreaking when I couldn't for me. Then I just couldn't even make them their lunch and other things. I had been practicing months before of them doing these things on their own, but when it happened a tiny piece of my heart broke. I was overjoyed as they were becoming independent, but I knew this is one step closer to not needing me or wanting me. I remember last month looking into all their eyes and realizing in the blur of babies and postpartum healing my 3 older children had lost more of their baby/child like appearances. They were maturing. I realized at that point I had to try to find a good balance to spreading myself to all five. I just couldn't miss any more.
I am still working on it and many days are more of a struggle than not. The babies are growing out of the constant crying in the evening so that helps. Ari requires a lot of attention. We put him down at 7:30 tonight because of over tiredness. In usual Ari fashion he just barely fell asleep at 9:45. Sigh! Lilliana hangs out with me most days helping with the babies, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and coloring. She just loves to be around me. The real struggle I found was Eli. He is such a helper, but I realized I was missing our reading/time together. I went to our library of books and found a book we never go to last year during school and a favorite of mine, the BFG. Our school books are pretty challenging and I am very picky about what I will read to them. I won't read what we refer to as twaddle. I want good literature and ideas entering their mind. The BFG might be considered that, but I don't care. We needed something fun just for this season and not a lot of mental work used It since has become our ritual to sit together and read and talk while Anthony puts Lilliana and Ari to bed. It started with me having a baby on my lap while we did this, but now we are down to just Eli and I. I was even more thrilled when we discovered the movie is coming out. He and I will get to go to the movie together. He loves to be read to, but is not the biggest fan of reading himself even though he is excellent at it. So, we work on this during that time also.
I let him take the photos tonight and in typical Eli fashion there was clown moments. A perfect example was when I was setting focus and asked him to wait a second, and he continued right when I was in front of the camera. His words, "I took a picture of your butt. HAHAHA." I know raising such a gentleman I am. We are working on it. The kid loves to antagonize!
I am still working on it and many days are more of a struggle than not. The babies are growing out of the constant crying in the evening so that helps. Ari requires a lot of attention. We put him down at 7:30 tonight because of over tiredness. In usual Ari fashion he just barely fell asleep at 9:45. Sigh! Lilliana hangs out with me most days helping with the babies, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and coloring. She just loves to be around me. The real struggle I found was Eli. He is such a helper, but I realized I was missing our reading/time together. I went to our library of books and found a book we never go to last year during school and a favorite of mine, the BFG. Our school books are pretty challenging and I am very picky about what I will read to them. I won't read what we refer to as twaddle. I want good literature and ideas entering their mind. The BFG might be considered that, but I don't care. We needed something fun just for this season and not a lot of mental work used It since has become our ritual to sit together and read and talk while Anthony puts Lilliana and Ari to bed. It started with me having a baby on my lap while we did this, but now we are down to just Eli and I. I was even more thrilled when we discovered the movie is coming out. He and I will get to go to the movie together. He loves to be read to, but is not the biggest fan of reading himself even though he is excellent at it. So, we work on this during that time also.
I let him take the photos tonight and in typical Eli fashion there was clown moments. A perfect example was when I was setting focus and asked him to wait a second, and he continued right when I was in front of the camera. His words, "I took a picture of your butt. HAHAHA." I know raising such a gentleman I am. We are working on it. The kid loves to antagonize!
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While I still don't have the balance thing completely down, and probably never will, it is getting better. I plan to make this BFG book a tradition for all the kids. The next person I have to work on the balance with is Lilliana and I am hoping to begin working on that this week.
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