Some good progress, some psycho toddlers, and a memory from last fall

I've decided that writing this blog at the end of every day is kind of a bad idea. By the time we make it through a day, and all the way through getting everyone down for the night, I'm more or less dog tired, out of motivational feelings, and wondering what was so bad about my calm, mellow life with Jason long before we decided to take the one-way plunge into parenthood.

In any case, I'm writing this after another bedtime circus, so it might not sound as upbeat as it would have if I'd written it three hours ago.

But things are looking somewhat up around here. A couple of nights ago I was truly at my wits' end with everything, and then yesterday by midday I got a bit of a reprieve. Though Cora is still struggling to beat this virus, she seems to have turned a corner and is getting slightly better instead of slightly worse. We're having fewer scary episodes and more smiles. We ran an errand at the mall!

Meanwhile our other kiddos are acting like periodic psychopaths. I think we may be experiencing the after effects of so much chaos and such a strange lifestyle for a prolonged amount of time. Who knows exactly why, but they are both acting out and pushing us to the limits, every day, almost all of the time. I know that everything is a phase (I hope everything is a phase), but the current phase of perma tag-teaming us and behaving like twerps is a tiring one. They never act out toward Cora; just toward us. I'm hoping for a new phase soon.

Lately I've been fantasizing about last September when Jason and I went to Kauai for five long, luxurious days, all alone. Well, Cora came along for the ride, but she was in that very quiet, very portable phase. All we did for those five days was lounge on chaises by pool and the beach, read our books, sleep, eat, and swim. We didn't even snorkel. It felt like too much work.

I have often gone back to that place in my mind and reflected on how unaware I was of what was coming. I knew our lives would change with a third child, but I truly thought it would be easy-breezy, no big deal whatsoever. Third time's the charm. It was as though I was laughing with friends in a casual conversation about nothing, strolling along on a Sunday afternoon, and suddenly I fell into a manhole.

Thank goodness we can never know what's coming. We'd spend our whole lives filled with fear, and we'd always underestimate just how much we could get through.

Whenever I get overwhelmed I think of the advice a good friend gave me at the beginning of Cora's life. I was confiding in her some of my fears about how I was going to be able to raise a child with issues, and wondering how I would walk through everything that was coming. That day she told me something that stuck with me. She said, from where you're sitting today, you can't do those things. You don't have anywhere near the tools you'd need to make it through those scary things. But you do have the tools to make it through today. And when you get to tomorrow, and to the rest of those scary things, you'll have the tools then too. But you can't get them in advance. That's just not how it works.

When I feel like I can't do it, I remember that I am, actually, doing it. Right now. This is what "doing it" looks like. How I wish it looked more like a greeting card! But instead, it looks like a big, complicated, beautiful, horrifying, embarrassing, love-fest. Just a big old soup of life. And no matter how tired or frustrated I am by it, it is still pretty delicious.