Counting it all joy

I was brought up Catholic, which means I know about a thimble-full of Bible verses.  So I did what any hack of a writer does....I stole my title up there from my friend K who's blog is called Count It All Joy.  And then I had to google the actual scriptural reference.....but it boils down to this:

Count it all joy whenever you face life's hardships and difficulties because being tested makes you stronger and increasingly able to persevere, so that you become a better person.  

I saw another friend who blogs last night at my daughter's school.  Her blog is very earthy and sweet;  I usually feel like the world's biggest curmudgeon and sad sack of a mom when I read her posts about making fairy houses with her daughter and picking berries near their home.  So I told her how much I enjoy her blog and all the neat things she writes about since I just spew venom on mine.  And she told me she tries really hard to write about the good and sweet because so much of her time is spent like mine, feeling overwhelmed and tired and often beaten down by motherhood.  

So between my 2 blogging friends and their efforts to find good and delight in the sundry, I thought it was high time I write about some of the joys I find in mothering my kids.

*I still nurse M at night, and even though I would really love a series of 8-hour stretches of uninterrupted sleep, a part of me really doesn't mind nursing him, feeling his soft skin, his chubbiness.  Tonight as I was changing him into his pajamas, he laid his head on my lap as he sucked on his pacifier and I rubbed his back and thought, "Gosh, I will really miss this."  The softness of baby skin.  The way he crawls across the floor to me and just plops his fat ole self into my lap.  

*G was in desperate need for a nap this afternoon and had a grand mal fit in the car.  Once he had calmed down a bit and was slightly less hysterical, N asked him if he wanted her to hold his hand.  He said yes, and she talked gently to him, saying "It's alright buddy."  It brings me great peace when I see her being sweet to him, trying to make him feel better.  It makes me hopeful that she has learned (or just been inherently blessed with) a sense of empathy for others.

*And G does the same to her when she is upset.  The other day, after one of our rows, N was up in her room crying.  G followed me when I went up to check on her and asked, "N, you ah-wight?"  And then he climbed into bed with her to snuggle.  

*I meant to write this down in G's journal, but I don't think I ever have.  When I took him for his hearing test at the audiologist's office, I had to hold G on my lap in a soundproof room while Dr. B had different sounds come on in different parts of the room to see how and when G turned his head.  The whole thing unsettled G a little bit because he would hear a sound, turn his head toward it and say, "Sop! (stop)"  Another sound would register, G would turn his head, hold out his hand (palm facing forward like a traffic cop) and say, "Sop!"  He did this over and over again throughout the test.  I couldn't help but find this extremely sweet.  

*When I took the kids to iHop this summer, N found a small writing pad I keep in my diaper bag to jot down notes or reminders for myself.  She wrote, "Im so glad we went here Mommy thank you."  It is nice when she shows that she appreciates some of the things I do to entertain her.  

Sometimes I swear I feel seasick from all the emotional wave riding I do as a mother to 3 young children.....angry, happy, sad, content, miserable, delighted, frustrated, guilty, proud and overwhelmed.  I think of Steve Martin in the movie Parenthood during the children's play....on that roller coaster ride.  I think I need to remember more often what the grandma said:

Grandma: You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster.
Gil: Oh?
Grandma: Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride!
Gil: What a great story.
Grandma: I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just so interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited, and so thrilled all together! Some didn't like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing. I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it.