All of the EMOTIONS

This may be a little scattered, but there are some many emotions running through my head and my heart.
I've spent a great deal of time talking about my children and the blessing of children in general in preparation for my girls' baptism next week.  I have always know that I have wanted to be a mom with a huge family.  I don't know if it is because I came from a large family, five girls and two boys; or if God was preparing me early for the career path that my life would take. It may have even had to do with the mothering roles that I had to take very early in life particularly with my younger sister, or even my friends. Its all related.  God has plans and they are not always what we think that they are going to be or even what we want them to be.  It looks like God's plan is for me to have these two precious girls not the huge brood always in my mind, maybe this is his way of leaving more of my heart open to the children I encounter everyday at work.  My two precious gifts are God's greatest blessing to me.  No matter how much I may struggle, and this week with football camp it may be a lot, it will never change the fact that I cannot look at one of their sleeping faces without feeling how precious this cargo is that God has entrusted me with.  I just hope that with some help I can do them the justice that they deserve.
Church this morning was a very emotional experience.  I come from a family that does not really talk about whats going on inside it or what we've been through.  Im trying to break that cycle but sometimes it seems like the less I know people the easier it is to reveal the struggles that I have been through.  I also have recently had a revelation that I am very good at appearing to be open with people, probably because they do not know me as well, yet I don't actually tell anyone the important stuff.  The feelings behind it are so much harder to talk about, the personal hurts are so much harder to share.  We have all been through them, but its so hard to strip your heart bare and reveal all of these emotions.  We heard a very touching and inspiring testimony this morning that strikes very close to some of the hurts in my family.  It also struck me how vulnerable she was willing to be to not only talk about the hard things in life but the feelings.  She laid it all out there for us through her strength and her commitment to the Lord.  I am hoping to learn from that.  Another emotional moment at church came when I learned people are paying a lot more attention to me and my life than I thought.  One thing that I have experienced since we, as a family, started attending this church is that there are people who don't even know you who are willing to love you and pray for you.  Celebrating the good times and supporting you in the hard times.
For a long time I have been one of those people who kept my emotions very tight to the vest.  It seems that little by little God has been preparing me to shed that.  I have never been much of a crier, it just never was part of my personality.  With the birth and life of both of my babies and with the death of my father that has started to change.  I don't tend to bust out crying at the drop of a hat, but I have been watering a lot more lately and church this morning was no exceptions.  I think this is just to show me that God is preparing my heart for something, though I am not sure what.  I guess that I will just have to wait and see why this is the journey that I must walk and where it is taking me.

They're not all Bad Days

One thing that I am trying desperately to do is to take each day as it comes good, bad, or otherwise.  I don't know about you but I tend to harp sometimes on the good days and gloss over the rest and sometimes on the bad and don't notice the good.  I'm trying.  The past two days have been so busy and so tiring but good.  My girls are smart, beautiful, and mostly well behaved.  I am very thankful.  It also proves that God knows, he knows when its been too much, when you need a break.  It also seems that we have figured out why our youngest is so cranky, and as the mom especially this removes a great deal of guilt.  She's hungry.  I know I know thats usually the first thing you check, but I swear this child does nothing but eat so it never crossed my mind, but she is considerably happier.  We've had some fun moments the last two days where I can just see how much my two little ones love live and I try to take something from that I try to remind myself to have more joy and to ask in their joy, some days it works and some days it doesn't.  It and me- all a work in progress.

Is it supposed to be this HARD?

Is being a mom supposed to be this hard?  Its 8:30 on a Sunday night and my husband left me home alone with the girls to go hang out with a friend.  When he left the youngest was asleep and our oldest, as is her nightly ritual, she was tucked in in her bed reading to her doll babies until she falls asleep.  I am sitting here trying to have the only alone time I get all day.  This is the time of the day that I exercise  (when I can make myself do it, not tonight), I try to read my bible (this is what I was in the middle of doing), I do my daily devotional, and then maybe read a book before bed.  This should have been a piece of cake for a "veteran" mom like myself.
Maybe 20 minutes after he left my 1 year old starts screaming.  For a little while now when she wakes up or is trying to go to sleep she screams like she is in physical pain it is excruciating.  Also last night she was up every hour or two all night.  As I am trying to go get her my 3 year old, who is not supposed to be getting up again, comes walking out of her door.  She wants a different book in her bed.  I tell her its too late to go back to bed.  I pick up my youngest and take her to rock her back to sleep.  My  oldest come back out asking for the book waking her sister back up and this time I yell at her.  She runs back in her room slams the door and proceeds to scream. I get her sister to sleep then I lay her down in her crib and she starts screaming again.  (We have tried to just lay her down and let her scream but 30 minutes later when she was not even letting up we gave up.)  I got her to sleep two or three more times for her to wake up just as I am leaving the rom and for her to scream again.  In a last attempt I am rocking her in a chair in her room.  She is just laying there one hand clutching on to my shirt for dear life and I'm crying.
I don't know what to do.  For days now she has been irritable, nothing serious but this screaming at night and just being extra clingy.  I don't know if there is something wrong with her, or is she going through a phase, or is she just having a bad couple of days.  I have already asked my husband if he thought that we should run her by the pediatrician just for a check and the only response I can get as usual is "I don't know".  Responses like that and the expectations that I feel like that puts on me is such a heavy weight.  I'm the mom so I am supposed to know.  But I'm also the one that has to deal with the crazy looks when I take her to the dr. and can't tell them whats wrong it just doesn't feel right.  On the other hand when my chid never cried but had a double ear infection I was the one that got those looks when I finally took her in that day too.  The I thought about how I have an 8 o'clock appointment in the morning, but my husband is pulling double football duty for morning and afternoons this week so that leaves me to try and squeeze in her appointment, if i decide to take her.  Also I have to figure out how to pay for my appointment and if I take her we have a huge balance at the pediatricians right now.  How much of me that I don't have to give will they want too.
I'm trying to be a better person and to lean on God in moments like this, but its so hard.  And you just feel like if you can't do any of this right do you even deserve His strength.  I know deep down that I do, but in these moments all I can really do is ask- Is it really supposed to be this hard?

The Hard Choices

I've thought long and hard about scaring this struggle with others and here it goes.  I realize that I am a very lucky girl and God has blessed me beyond measure.  I have two wonderful and beautiful girls that the Lord has blessed me with.  However when my husband and I always talked about our perfect family, the one that we wanted together, it always had the two of us with three kids, but now I'm pretty sure thats not going to happen.
With both of my girls it was so easy to get pregnant.  I gave birth to both of my girls within a year of starting to try to conceive.  I am well aware of how impressive that is and I am thankful for it.  I will never know the pain of not being able to have a child, but I will always know the pain of not being able to have a child that I want, a large part of me still really wants that third baby.  There is a huge part of me that just cannot imagine never carrying another life, never felling those kicks and hiccups from the inside.  Especially since I was not prepared.  I did not get to go into my last pregnancy knowing that it would be the last time for all of that.  The last time I would hear the heartbeat for the first time and I would finally believe those three- four pregnancy tests I took, the last time I would catch that first peek of my baby on the ultrasound screen, or even the last time that I would hold and snuggle my newborn for the first time.
You may wonder why I feel like I have to live without baby number 3 if we had no problems conceiving.  Well my first pregnancy was easy just like the conception.  I had all the regular pregnancy symptoms, but they were mild and my pregnancy was easy.  Besides the fact that I was leaking my water for days and had no idea, which lead to endometritis, and and unscheduled induction.  My little girl was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and not breathing.  Thank God about five minutes later they were able to tell me that she was breathing again and healthy.  My second pregnancy was nothing like the first, they say that they never are.
My second pregnancy was traumatic.  About four to six weeks after I found out I was pregnant my dad passed away and I knew then that this would be a difficult time, but I had no idea.  I had morning sickness that would not end, even after the first trimester.  That was just the beginning.  Around 14 or 15 weeks I started having problems.  Around 17 weeks I was taken out of work indefinitely, just a little secret I wouldn't go back until after her birth.  At about 19 weeks after seeing a cardiologist I was diagnosed with something called POTS.  This meant that every time I stood my heart rate would shoot up and my bp would bottom out.  I came very close to passing out numerous times.  I can even remember holding on to the walls at school trying to walk down the hall and not pass out.  Well the cardiologist was not comfortable giving me any of the meds to combat this while I was pregnant, so I had to deal with it the best that I could and stay out of work.  No one knows why this happened to me all they were able to tell me is that my body had a hard time handling my pregnancy so it responded to it like it sometimes does to a major trauma and that was the POTS.  This pregnancy was horrible from the beginning to the end.
The doctors don't know what made my body respond this way and they do not know whether or not it will happen again.  I cannot risk it.  This condition has a tendency to worsen and last longer, maybe not even going away, with every subsequent pregnancy.  I cannot risk another debilitating pregnancy. I cannot risk not being able to care for myself or the two children that I already have.  As much as I want that third baby what if that baby makes it so that I cannot care for that child or the ones that I already have?  My girls don't deserve that.  I feel like my last pregnancy was God's way of telling me that this is it for me.  He has other plans for me and it doesn't involve me having another baby.  I am still waiting to see what his plan is and I am constantly praying that God will remind me that this is the best and the right decision for my whole family and sometimes he does that in little ways that I cannot help but notice.
I feel certain that when I get those little nudges that is him following through on those prayers.  Like when I had a moment this morning where I was trying to figure out why I was so tired.  Well my one year old still doesn't sleep through the night.  Maybe this is God's way of reminding me that what I have is enough and one day if another child is meant to find its way into my life by whatever means that God has planned it will happen.
Some days I am completely ok with this decision and some days especially now that my baby is already 1, I have a yearning so deep I don't know if I can stand it.  Life is all about the hard choices.

Summer Time Life and My Kids

For the next three weeks my life is just a little bit easier than usual.  We are still in the middle of summer time and as a teacher that is my down time.  However looking at the calendar yesterday I just realized that we have about three weeks until football camp and that is when my life starts revving up for the next couple of months and does not slow down until about December.  One of the things about being a coach's wife, even a JV football coach's wife is that life is all about football.  Our family lives for those Friday (and Thursday) night lights.  Just to let you know how this works.  In two weeks my husband will go away to Coach's clinic for a weekend.  The next week he will spend five days living at the high school for football camp.  The week after that we as teachers go back to school.  Then the next week the students start back to school and its time for football.

I am trying to go ahead and catch my breath right now because did I mention that we have two little girls.  They are 1 and 3.  They are 26 months apart in age.  I have a 3 year old, Quinn, who is a spit-fire little diva.  She pick out all her own clothes and accessories.  She sings, dances, and runs around the house constantly. The definition of a threenager, she just recently started slamming doors.   Also she thinks that she is the mother of her sister.  Now my one year old, Rorey.  She is a complete and total drama queen who already throws herself on the floor and tools there every time she doesn't get her way.  Did I mention that she turned one a couple of weeks ago and still isn't sleeping through the night.  Wow, I'm still tired.

Who am I?

I am probably the most typical small town girl that there is.  I am 29 and I am married to my high school sweetheart.  We both live and work in the same town that my husband has lived in his whole life.  My husband and I both teach at the local high school where he also is one of the JV football coaches.  We have two beautiful little girls, both of them are all personality especially considering that they are 1 and 3.  Our family of four are working on becoming active members of one of our local church's that we just became members of.