Monday, February 21, 2011

Every moment is precious

My little boy has been sick. 
I am fortunate.  My world could stop.  I could spend my days cuddling and rocking and wiping his little nose and kissing his cheeks and stroking his blond hair.  For the first time in his almost-9-month life, my little son wanted his Mommy.  He chose me over everyone else.  When he knocked over a lamp last night, he crawled so very quick over to me, and got scooped up in my arms, and kissed all over his little face.

And I whispered, again, Thank you.

It is no secret among my friends and my coworkers that I have a hard time with serious pediatric calls since giving birth.  Every child looks like mine.  Every child that darts in front of a car, or slips on ice, or falls into a pool unseen while reaching for a toy--that could be my child.  Do I do my job as a paramedic?
Yes.

Do I go home and let my son stay up just a bit later and, after he's fallen asleep in my arms, do I stay up just a few more minutes and watch him sleep and marvel at the precious gift I have?
Yes. I do.


Do I sometimes whisper thank you thank you thank you?All the time.

There is another mother.  She had a little boy with blond hair.  Her little boy looked a lot like mine.  Her little boy, Matthias, though, died last December in a freak accident at home.  She is a homeschooling mom with several children, and I have long enjoyed her blog(click on the link to read it yourself).

Her little Matthias would be 2 years old on Wednesday.

Would you pray for her and her family?  Her name is Dana.  I have never met her, I don't even know where she lives.
But every time I read her blog, I hold my own blond-haired, blue-eyed son just that much closer.

Every moment is precious. 

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Kiss away the pain

I am becoming quite positive that Josh knows when his Daddy has just left for a 48 or 72 hour shift, and chooses that exact moment to start cutting another tooth.
And usually it's when Mommy needs to go to bed early in order to make her 7-7 shift the next day, or be at class by 8 am the next morning(an hour and a half away). 
It's never when Daddy is going to be home or Mommy can sleep in.


Yet tonight I was happy when he started sobbing, instead of falling asleep, after being put into his crib.  Not happy that my little boy was in pain, but that he wanted to stay up.  Tonight was the first night my baby really seemed to want to cuddle or find comfort in his Mommy's arms.  Maybe we're just starting seperation anxiety, but he wailed tonight whenever I left the room.  All Josh wanted tonight was to be held and snuggle himself with his head on my shoulder.  Josh is not a cuddly baby, but tonight he just wanted Mommy.

I loved it.
I hadn't seen him since yesterday evening, so I treasured those few hours tonight he stayed up later than usual.  I kissed his blond hair, which sticks straight up, and rocked and walked and sang and finally crawled into my bed and tucked him next to me.  Josh was fine, you see, as long as he had his Mommy.  

For such a short time, he's going to believe that I really can kiss away pain.  That I really do hold the magical powers to keep his world safe and happy. 
For just a few brief years, I get to be Josh's Mommy.  I get to be the one he wants when it hurts.  The one whose bed he runs into to be comforted from a bad dream. 
I get to be the face that Josh looks for in the crowd.

So maybe I won't get a lot of sleep tonight.  That's okay.  One of these tomorrows, a tomorrow too soon in the coming, Josh will be too old for me to pick up and cuddle and kiss away the pain.  So tonight, I will be thankful for every one of these fleeting moments.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Finding balance

There are toys strewn all over my living room. I've been meaning to vacuum the upstairs for days....um, weeks.  I have thank you notes to write, clothes to sort through, things to sell on Ebay, menus to plan and meals to make.  I have a family to take care of, and I feel like I'm failing at it. I'm behind on everything...
and my job in Ovid wants me to add on 8 extra hours a week.

Only temporarily.  And I have medical bills looming for my eye specialist and the procedures they want to do, not all of which insurance will cover.  And Rob's hours are up in the air; some weeks he can pick up overtime, some weeks he can't.
So the money sounds fantastic.

Working 50 hours a week while my home falls apart around me doesn't.

I'm not going to turn this into a treatise on women working.  I don't believe in cookie cutter families.  I'm not ever going to tell another family that their choices, unless clearly harmful, aren't right, just because they are not choices I would or have made.   But I do believe some things.  I do believe the Scriptural command to women to be keepers at home is not a necessarily cultural command, as it appears more than one time.(I'm not going to get into hermeneutics, either, but I generally fall into the camp of using easier, clearer parts of Scripture to analyze the harder parts)  I don't believe that it precludes women from holding jobs outside the home, as evidenced by other Scriptural passages.  What I do believe is that the spirit of the passage is telling women that their primary focus is to be at home.  In modern terms, you might rephrase it as don't save the world while your own household falls apart.  

Except that right now, I feel like mine is. 
That we're eating out way too much.
That I'm stretched so thin between work and class and teaching labs at the EMT class that I don't know whether I'm coming or going. 

And then Josh got sick.
Really sick.
Coughing, wheezing, temperature, needing-Mommy-sick.
Too-sick-to-go-to-day care-sick.

So I switched hours at work, with my sister coming in to work for me tomorrow morning and I will go to work for her Tuesday.

It gives me a lot of time to think.

And I need to cut back on work.
I need to find balance.  And balance is something I've never really been good at finding. 
I know what I need to do, but it will take a few weeks.  I need to probably quit one job and keep the other one at twelve hours a week for now.  I need to focus on my baby and my husband.  I need to clean out our cupboards and decide what we're going to eat.  I need to keep my house clean, and I want to open up my home and be hospitable.  I want my husband to be able to focus on working on the house instead of helping me catch up on laundry.

I want life to be different.
So hopefully this week, Rob and I can sit down and map out how this is all going to work.  And then make it work.