Extra Photos

I was talking to a lady in my ward awhile ago. She is about my age and has nine kids. We were commiserating about some of the difficulties of the utterly ceaseless needs and demands, and chucklingly shaking our heads over the idea so many seem to have that because we have so many kids, we must be particularly capable (when, in fact, we are barely keeping our heads above water pretty nearly all of the time). 

She said, "Every time someone says how amazing I am or what a good mom I am I truly feel like, 'Well, I've successfully pulled the wool over another person's eyes'!" "Yes!" I exclaimed! "That's exactly how I feel!" And it is. Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate the sincere compliments and votes of confidence. But I feel like a great deceiver every time I hear them!  

My friend Marilyn (who, not only has children named Abe, Daisy and Goldie [and all of our separate Abes, Daisys and Goldies already named long before we even knew of one another's existence!], but who also has ten children [!!! what are the odds we would both exist in this world? and that we would discover one another?] wrote this several months ago about expecting her tenth child:

"[S]uch a blessing, ten babies, who could have ever imagined such a thing! But it was a difficult year as well. I told a similarly-situated friend that I could hardly remember a single day in months where I hadn't shut myself in the bathroom so I could cry unobserved. 'Is this what we have to look forward to for the next twenty years?' I asked her. 'Is this just what it means to have ten children?'

"Don't misunderstand: I don't think that the exclamations of other parents, the I-don't-know-how-you-do-it's and the You-must-be-a-saint's, have any weight to them. Of course parents of any number of children know love and confusion and heartache! But being the mother of a large family just carries a lot of…magnitude. Life starts to feel like a tightrope you might fall off of any minute. Perhaps the forceful independence of your young adults makes the innocence of your babies and the sweetness of your toddlers more precious through contrast, but the constant necessity of holding so many emotions at the same time—happiness for one child, fear for another, sympathy for another—is exhausting. It all swirls around in your heart at once: the helplessness of watching teenagers make dumb choices and wondering which ones sprouted from sins of your own omission or commission. The engulfing minutia of keeping the younger children alive, mingled with constant looming uneasiness about the suddenly-imminent futures of the older children. The tension between knowing a child doesn't mean to hurt you, and being hurt all the same. Add all this and pregnancy to a year full of change and uncertainty in our family's little world and the world at large—and I found that 'I contain multitudes' described me rather accurately."

All of the above reflections are, I suppose, one of the occasional disclaimers I feel I must put in this space--lest all the recorded images of happiness, and family, and funny kid sayings belie the full truth of this situation. It is hard. So hard. But, of course, there are many of these moments! And failing to see them because of the exhaustion and tears and whelmed-ness of it all would be an enormous shame. So. ...

 

Penny just finished up her junior high's The Elf production. A fun and cute little performance.

Mike took all (save Starling who I brought home to bed) of the kids to a movie Thanksgiving night.

A pretty view from the farm one day when Mike and I went up there to dream about the future a bit.

And there was this as we drove into Logan which seemed promising. (Though I should add, in keeping with my paragraphs at the first of this post, that behind these images were two little kids who got themselves covered in mud and cried and sobbed and demanded to be held the entire time we were there.)

And here are some pictures that are neither here nor there. (Starling flies into a rage if anyone else ever dares to wear that orange snow hat. Jesse sometimes forgets. And we all pay.)

Some readers and some movie watchers.

A beater licker.

A few extra photos I found from the night we decorated the tree. I don't know who took them. And everything is a bit cluttered, but they make me happy.

Some cousins making gum-drop turkeys on Thanksgiving.

Some Sunday game playing.

Abe excited about his first snow in three years. And Abe, who is teaching at the MTC, with his cousin Eli, who was a student at the MTC for a short spell before heading to his mission in CA. 

Daisy was tending Starling one night and texted me this to reassure me that the sobbing Starling began as I left did not last long.

And a few last misc. photos. (Starling is holding one of our Playmobil wise men on Anders' head. She insists the poor wise man is ... "pink mommy'.)

The End.