Three Years Ago.

Three years ago Nathaniel was born. It was an amazing day for our family as our world completely flipped on it's head.

I went into the hospital early in the morning on the 13th of July (I think it was 3am) because my water had broken. After three hours of trying to convince the nurses that my water had indeed broken, I was finally admitted into the hospital. Since my water had broken and I was barely dilated they started me on that dreaded pitocen.

12 hours later I was still barely at 1cm and I was in a ton of pitocen pain so I got my epidural. That made things a lot more bearable for me, but it still took me 12 more hours to reach 10 cm.

At 7:00 in the morning I was ready to push and Nathaniel made his debut into the world at 8:46am weighing a whopping 9 lbs 1.3 oz. I happily held and kissed my little baby boy and watched as the nurses took him away to clean him up. I encouraged Sam to stay with Nathaniel as my doctor dealt with all of the "after" effects of giving birth.

My joy quickly turned into terror, pain and then sweet unconsciousness as I had complications from delivery.

I woke up two hours later to the nurses laughing at me because I was snoring in my sleep.

From that moment on, I have been a mommy.

Happy Birthday Nathaniel! I can't believe how fast the years have flown by.

An Unusual Evening.

Tonight started out like every Friday night. We went over to our friends' house for dinner and then we went to church to hear the Kenya Missions Team share about their trip (and eat ice cream!). It was a pleasant evening and it was great to hear about what God is doing in Kenya. I got the boys home and in bed by 9:00 and quickly headed out to get my mail.

This is something I do almost every evening. I tuck the kids in, go out quickly-locking the door behind me-and run out to the mailbox. It takes about three minutes total and is much quicker to do without the dawdling three year old who marches to the rhythm of his own drummer.

I was near the fountain in the front of the complex thinking about the kids who were swimming unsupervised in the pool. I was wondering where their parents were and was hoping that nothing would happen to them because it's useless to tell them that they shouldn't be in the pool that late at night without an adult. At that moment I saw a young woman come running out of an apartment. I thought to myself, "Oh dear, there must be some party going on! I'm so glad I live towards the back!"

Then the woman approached me asking me if I had a phone. My phone had died earlier today and it was at home charging so I said, "No, I'm sorry, I don't have a phone on me." Then I noticed that the woman was crying and looked scared to death. She said to me, "Please, you have to have a phone! They are after me! I'm so scared I think he's going to kill me!"

Holy Crap!

So, I quickly looked around, saw no one coming at the moment and said, "Come with me, I have a phone in my apartment. You'll be safe there." And then I hurried her as fast as I could back to my apartment, hoping that whoever was after her wasn't going to then be after me.

I got her upstairs and immediately called the police. After getting off of the phone with the police I asked her some questions and tried to calm her down. Turns out that her and her boyfriend were fighting and he turned on her and started choking her. She had marks on her neck, bruises on her arm and her shirt was torn.

I talked with her and asked her lots of questions, trying to get her to calm down a bit until the police arrived (at this point both boys were asleep, thank goodness!).

When the police arrived they were such butts. I really can't think of a non-curse word to describe these officers so I have to stick with "butts". There was one really tall one who was asking all of the questions and he wouldn't sit down with her. He just kept asking her the same questions and wasn't even really listening. He asked her her date of birth and then asked her how old she was (hello! Math much?). When she said that her boyfriend was choking her and that she was screaming he said, "Well, he mustn't have been choking you that hard if you could scream." What the hell!?

So, the officers left to go find the guy and then came back because she gave them the wrong apartment number so she had to go and show them which one. They said that I had to give a statement too (which is fine, throw that guy's booty in jail!), but I don't know if they are coming back or not now. It's been about 40 minutes since they left.

How surreal is this? I'm so glad I was there to help this woman (Maria), but I wish that the cops were a little more compassionate.

I was all ready to blog tonight about how excited we are that Sam is coming home tomorrow and that Nathaniel is just like Sam when it comes to music, but this is much more thrilling to blog about.

I really hope everything turns out okay for this woman. I hope she gets up the guts to leave him and get a better life for her and her daughter. I'm glad that I was in the right place at the right time tonight.

Bullet points of life.

Since I've been kind of lazy with updating lately, I thought I would put some bullet points of what's going on with us.

• Sam is coming home for 9 days. He will be here on Saturday. We are so so so so so excited about this I think I might pee a little. Seriously, I am thrilled to death about seeing Sam and introducing him to his little boy. Even Nathaniel is bouncy-happy about this!
• I am almost ashamed to admit this, but obviously not too ashamed since I'm blogging about this, but I watched the Michael Jackson memorial service and cried a couple of times. My theory behind the tears is that he was such an icon and it was sad to see his family truly mourning. Plus, I find that lately I don't emote like I ought to so I have to find other ways to let out my emotions. So, it probably wasn't a bad thing that I cried when Usher sang, "Gone too soon."
• Speaking of finding other outlets for my emotions, tomorrow I'm going to see "My Sister's Keeper". I read the book, but I heard that the movie is way different. I'm bringing kleenex and a friend and am really looking forward to having some time away from the boys. We're also getting pedicures so, I'm really "girling" it out.
• Did I mention that Sam will be home on Saturday?
• Nathaniel is doing better with his attitude. Time outs have been less of an occurrence. Thank God! I was so tired of replacing him in time out.
• I have officially lost all of my Aaron weight! Woot for the Wii Fit!
• Sam's home on Saturday, can you tell I'm excited?
• Nathaniel will be three next week. We're having a Pirate themed party for him on Sunday. I can't believe my baby is three!
• We are also dedicating Aaron at church on Sunday. It's going to be a big day for our family.

That's about it here. I know it's all random, but whatever. At least it's an update!

Did I mention Sam's coming home on leave?

Maybe I'm doing something right?

Nathaniel has hit a new stage of rebellion. He is bound and determined NOT to listen to me. It's even gotten to the point where if I force him to do something he will deliberately go against me. The new thing is peeing all over the floor when I make him go to the bathroom. I still put the diaper on him at night because he doesn't always wake up to go and I was tired of washing pee sheets every day. But, for Nathaniel, the diaper means he gets to be lazy and pee in it while he's eating breakfast. So, the first thing I make him do when he gets up is take the diaper off and use the toilet. He always throws a major fit and then, while he's sitting on the toilet, aims for the floor and pees everywhere. It's one of those times where I can only yell STOP!!! and then make him clean it up and go into time out.

There has been a lot of things like this lately. Some days I feel like we spend more time dealing with discipline issues than we do playing. It gets discouraging.

But, yesterday I saw a glimpse of the young man Nathaniel is growing up to be. I also see glimpses of the budding relationship between Aaron and his big brother. During bath time Nathaniel was singing the songs from music camp. It does my heart good to hear my son joyfully singing about the ten commandments (This is rock solid, written in stone/ From the hand of God He made His Law known/ Not to keep things from us, but with blessings for us/ 10 of them in all. These are God Almighty's Laws). Then he wanted me to sing all of the commandments while he shouted the numbers.

Then, when he went to bed he wanted a book to look at. Normally I don't let him read at night, but since he took a 2.5 hour nap yesterday I knew it would be awhile before he fell asleep and I really wanted to work out. So, I handed him Dr. Seuss' ABC book. Nathaniel handed it back and said, "No, I want the Bible." Then he looked at his picture Bible until he fell asleep. His favorite story from it is the one where Jesus heals the blind man by putting mud on his eyes. I think it's because of the mud. Nathaniel thinks that everything has music so he's always asking me to sing the song about the mud and Jesus.

Also, Aaron and Nathaniel have been playing nicely together. Aaron is always kissing his big brother and trying to get him and Nathaniel is very tolerant.

Overall, things are tough right now, but I know I am raising Nathaniel and Aaron well.

Music Camp and the sickies.

Nathaniel had an amazing week at music camp last week. It was so cool for me to see him running around with the other preschool aged kids, singing and dancing and playing. It's awesome to see him grow up (as well as a little sad to see him no longer being my baby).

It was such a clever show too. How amazing is it to teach strong theology to kids via songs? The name of the musical was GPS: God's Plan of Salvation and it was really clever.

Unfortunately, Nathaniel was not able to perform at the show on Sunday. On Saturday Nathaniel woke up with a fever and he's been battling it ever since. It goes up to about 103 and then goes down to 99. A couple of times it's gone away and fooled me into believing Nathaniel was all better. Then, while we are out running errands, it goes back up and Nathaniel gets really weepy (I don't blame him). This is the hardest part of not having Sam around is the sick kid. I really need to go grocery shopping and I can't because I can't take a sick kid out like that (although, this morning I thought he was all better and we left to run errands and ended up having to invade a friend's house because Nathaniel's fever came back and we couldn't come home until after 4 because they painted my front entryway's stairs). I tend to get a bit stir crazy.

It's been hard to see Nathaniel so pitifully sick. When his temp gets up there he gets weird. He sleeps a lot and then wakes up crying for/about random things. For example: This afternoon he woke up from his nap saying, "I want to be like a doughnut!" I had no idea what he was talking about. Did he want to be filled with jelly? Did he want to be dunked in a cup of coffee? I kept asking him what he wanted and meant and he said, "I want to be like a doughnut, like this!" and curled up in a ball on the couch. Okay...

He seemed to be better without meds this evening. I'm hoping the worst is over.

I'm also hoping that I don't get it and that Aaron doesn't get it. Fevers are the pits!

My children, the trouble makers.

This week is the week of music camp that the children's program at my church holds. It is really impressive because in five days time we bring in 100 students aged preschool through 6th grade and teach them a musical, which they then perform on Sunday evening.

Since I don't have much going on schedule-wise I volunteered to help out. Also, since the program is run by a bunch of the mom's of the kids in our program, there is childcare available on site. It's great because it gets us out of the house and I get to try something new (leading around a bunch of 4th-6th graders).

Today was a funny day for me as a mom though. First of all, when I dropped Aaron off in the nursery today I laid him down on the blankets next to another baby and gave him a toy. He dropped the toy he had and looked at the baby next to him. They both kind of rolled toward each other and Aaron gave a little grin and reached out and took the toy from the other baby. What a hoodlum! It's so fun to watch him grow and reach milestones! Grabbing toys is awesome! Too bad it was from the other kid.

Then, later the kids were up on stage. They had combined music with choreography and my group was with the preschoolers. So, I got to see Nathaniel up on stage. The preschoolers are only doing two songs and out of those two songs the kids only sing a very little part since they really can't handle any more than that.

It was precious to see the little ones up on stage. It was also hilarious because they were just so squirrely. I mean, it was right before lunch and they are 3 years old. I watched as Nathaniel and his friend Kaatje held hands and jumped around. Then they kept egging each other on and it turned into an all-out silly fest. They were playing drums on their stomachs and were dancing around being silly and were just not paying attention. Of course, Kaatje's mom and I were laughing and thought the kids were just so cute. Then, their leader came over and separated the kids from each other. Nathaniel was moved for being distracting.

Awesome.

So, today I had one child take a toy from his playmate and another one get moved for being distracting.

It's a good thing they're so cute.

I can't believe I'm blogging about this!

I watched Jon and Kate Plus 8 tonight. I'm ashamed that I'm even blogging about this!

But, I started watching the show when we got cable because I had heard so much about this family and I had to see what it was about. Then, it was like a train wreck. I couldn't help but watch. Sam and I would watch it together and couldn't believe how Kate talked to Jon and totally emasculated him on t.v. for everyone to see.

Then the rumors started and the tabloids got all over it. Jon's apparent cheating, Kate being a shrew, etc. All I could do was hope that they would pull the plug on the show and focus on their marriage and getting it back on track. Because, seriously, if I was that sick of paparazzi hounding my family and rumors being plastered all over the covers of magazines I would take my family and run far away from the public eye.

So, when TLC said that tonight was going to be a special announcement from Jon and Kate I was hoping that they were going to say they were quitting filming. That they realized that their family and their marriage was way more important than any money that people would pay them.

Unfortunately, I was wrong and they are getting a divorce.

The thing that got me was when they were talking about how the kids always came first and that everything was always about the kids. That was why they moved and why they started the show in the first place. While I'm all about making my kids a priority I think that we do our kids a disservice by not making our spouses and our marriages our number one priority.

This is something I've been thinking about for quite awhile. My mind has more freedom to wander now that I'm not in school and it sometimes fixates on the weirdest things. But, with Sam being gone right now my life is my kids. Their needs are always met before my own and they take priority over everything. But, when Sam and I are on Skype talking, Nathaniel needs to learn that I am talking to Daddy and unless he is bleeding or choking or something is on fire, he is not allowed to interrupt.

Why? Why do I think that my relationship with my husband is more important than my kids? I think this for many reasons. First of all, if Sam and I aren't happy, our kids are going to know and ARE going to be affected. If we bicker and fight and disrespect each other, our sons will think that is what a relationship looks like and that won't help them in the future. Second, our kids are eventually going to move out, but our marriage is supposed to be until death. I want to be happy with Sam when our kids move out and still be crazy in love with him just like when we first got married. THAT is why I make my marriage a priority.

Do I neglect my children? No. Do I love my children more than anything? Of course! But, part of that is showing them how much Sam and I cherish each other and making sure that nothing gets in the way of that.

I only wish that Jon and Kate could have focused on their marriage in the midst of their children. Of course, I don't have 8 children, so I don't know what that's like.