Dinner Conversations...

Tonight at dinner my dear husband secretly recorded us talking.  Yeah, he's sneaky.  Below you can listen to what is, indeed, a pretty typical kind of conversation at our house.  Yep, you'll probably feel normal after listening to us.  In fact, there's a lot of me talking.  So maybe I'm the really weird one in the family!

Listen here!

3:30 in the Morning

Well, I wonder how many other houses have this much action at 3:30 in the morning?

Cast of characters:

ME!
A - Andrew (the baby)
J - Jake (8 years old)
B - Becca (10 years old)
K - Katy (13 years old)
C - Cousin Jordan (also 10)

So, last night, J and B beg to have C sleep over.  C is homeschooled, too, so sleepovers on school nights are not a big deal.  Me and the hubs say yes.

The night starts like this: at 9 pm, J, B, K, and C spread out their stuff in the living floor and start a movie.  K is on the couch.  B is on the love seat.  J is in the floor on a pallet.  They have dragged B's mattress into the living floor and C is on it.

Just before 11, movie ends.  K leaves to go sleep in her own bed (no surprise there).  B moves to couch.

Within 20 minutes, B leaves couch to sleep in her own room.  I don't realize until later how weird this is, because, B has no mattress in her room.  C is sleeping on it in living room.

At 3:30, A wakes up.  I get up, feed him, put him back down.  All big kids are sleeping soundly.

Five minutes after I lay A down, he is back up.  I can tell by the sounds he's making something is up, like a burp or gas type of thing.  So I get him and rock him and pat him for 20 minutes, and he's still fussy.  So I think, well, maybe he's still hungry.  I go to kitchen to make another bottle.  It is dark.  As I start to refill bottle, A lets out huge burp.  In the dark I can't see it, but the splatting sound lets me know some spit-up has just hit the floor.  Clean spit-up.  Decide against bottle.  Go back to rocking.

At this point, A is now wide awake.  I'm trying to rock him (in our creaky rocking chair) without waking J and C who are sleeping in living room.  J is obviously disturbed by the creaking because he keeps moving around.  Bony little knees and elbows on hardwood floor = noisy.  So finally I say, "Pssst, J, why don't you go get in your bed, or at least move to the couch."  So he moves to couch to sleep.

Soon after (A is still wide awake), I hear noise from the girls' room.  Out comes K.  Headed to the kitchen for a bottle of water.  On her heels is B, headed to the bathroom.  A thinks its great fun watching them.  Finally both girls are back in bed.  A is starting to look sleepy.  He's half asleep when TINY KITTEN decides its time to tackle the box of drawing paper.  Much noise ensues.  A is wide eyed again.  J is annoyed by cat noise and packs up his pillow and blanket, headed for his own bed.  I threaten kitten with harm if she doesn't be quiet.  She understands me.  Or she gets bored with it.  Whatever.

4:30.  A is asleep again.  I lay him down, shoo cats of the bedroom.  Kiss a half-asleep J good night.  Move one drum, one toy gun, and one Buzz and one Jessie doll off his bed onto floor quietly as I can so he doesn't kick them off and make loud noises to re-wake A.

Somehow, C has managed to sleep through the entire thing without ever moving.

I sneak back through the house to bed.  All is quiet til kids wake up around seven.

So, we started out with:
K on couch
B on loveseat
C on mattress
J on floor

We ended up with:
K in own bed
B on floor in own room because
C on B's mattress still
J in own bed.

I was talking about this and B and K looked at me like I was crazy for wanting to write it up.  "That's boring," B says.  "Not to moms, it isn't, " I say.  "Moms will find it hilarious."  Because at some point in time, everyone's house has been this crazy at 3:30 in the morning.  And it's better to laugh about it than to cry, LOL.

In the Midst of the Storm

It wasn't a storm, really, just some steady spring rain.  But the wind was from the south, which mean the rain tap, tap, tapped loudly against our southern windows.  In the room that our boys share, the big windows face south.  Andrew, just two days away from six months old, has really never experienced the sound of rain on the windows before.  He was born into a mild autumn in which only sprinkles fell, followed by a mild winter.  Now spring is fast approaching and with it comes the rain.  

It was three in the morning when he first woke up.  One time up in the middle of the night, though not exactly normal for him any more, is not really abnormal, either, if that makes sense.  On occasion he'll wake up once, eat, and go back to sleep.  So, I thought he would do that this time.  But he didn't.  Twenty minutes after I laid him down, he was up again.  I was still up, too, sorting through some troubling thoughts in my head and spending that wonderful middle-of-the-night quiet time alone with God with we mothers sometimes have to take advantage of.

So I got him out of bed and rocked him back to sleep.  Again and again, I would lay him down, a little while later, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, the wind would pick up, blow the rain loudly against the windows, and he would wake up again.  And again, I would pick him up and rock him back to sleep, singing every lullaby I could remember as well as lots of old hymns (I'm a true Southern Baptist, so that means all four verses, LOL).

This last time as I sat rocking with that sweet little warm body cuddled up against me, I thought once again how much parenting can show us about God.  Oh, how often we are troubled by the storms of life.  Sometimes they are real whoppers - the tornadoes and hurricanes of life. Sometimes they're just a little rain but the wind blows around and makes them seem far worse than they are.  But, lovingly, patiently, God picks us up time and again and holds us close to comfort us.  Isn't it a beautiful picture, to think that God holds us as we hold our babies?  To think that the sweet comfort we can offer them is the same comfort God offers us, if we'll just relax against him and trust that he will take care of us and protect us?  

I like it.  But right now, the baby is up again.  And I'm going to go hold him.