My thoughts on five children, donuts, and graduation

Since I wrote about what was really weighing on my mind and heart yesterday, I have spent the majority of today wondering what I should write about next. Around 1:30pm I told myself I just didn't need to worry about writing. Around 1:35 pm I realized that excuse was never going to fly with my personal conscience and I needed to come up with something.

So I did what any woman does when she is stuck in a bind.

I asked my best friend for help.

He told me he wasn't sure what I should blog about and I would think of something. He said, "I look forward to discovering what it is and reading your blog post."

I responded by saying, "I'm not going to blog today. I have nothing to write about and you are no help. Love you."

To which he said, "Ouch. I could give you some suggestions, but they wouldn’t be worthy of a blog post."

And I said I would take them anyway.

ScottyDawg delivers, every time. These are his writing prompts for today, which turned out better than he thought they would be.

You could blog about your feelings of me being done with my bachelors, or you could blog about donuts (I told you they wouldn’t be that good), or you can blog about your experience with 5 kids this week.

 

Here goes. I am going to address them in reverse order.

 

A Mother of Five

Once upon a time, a palm reader at Lagoon read my hand and told me I was going to have five children. Since that time (more than ten years ago), I have just planned on having five children. But over the past four years, there have been a few kinks thrown into that plan. My diabetes and other health problems, for one. Two, after one scary pregnancy and delivery, I am really doubting my body can physically and emotionally handle doing that five times over. Three, dollar signs--adding up--probably we couldn't afford that--our insurance covers birth control for free--TMI, okay, I'm done.

 

Then, on Tuesday, I volunteered to help watch my three nieces and their little brother (only a month younger than Kevin) while their parents were on vacation. Five kids under the age of seven. One already exhausted Mommy. One two-bedroom apartment. Six hours.

 

I survived, but only with lots of help. Scott came home for lunch. He immediately picked up our nephew, which set Kevin off screaming. She was not about to let any other baby have her Daddy. Funny, she never cared when I held the little guy, only when Scott held him. I thought her jealous rage adorable. He just started worrying and wondering what she was going to do (far into the future) when there is another baby around in our house full-time. After he left to go back to work, I carried the two babies and the three other girls lugged a picnic blanket across the street and we went to the park. It was cold and windy and those babies are mobile so we only lasted about 20 minutes. My arms got quite the workout (these Fowler babies are solid chunks of baby goodness). After returning from the park, I was in the midst of pouring chocolate milk into three little cups when my mother-in-law called to check on us. The three-year-old had just spilled her cup all over our coffee table and carpet when Grandma asked if I wanted her to come over and help.

 

Normally, I would have said no. I am stubborn. I can do things by myself.

 

This time, I said yes without hesitating.

 

And by the time she got here, the spill was cleaned up, my baby was asleep, the other baby had finally decided he wanted to eat, the toddler was watching a Barbie movie, the first-grader was reading her chapter book, and the five-year-old was listening to me read her a story. I felt quite accomplished. Things were back under control.

 

And after Grandma helped us get through the last two hours, I realized that maybe we needed to rethink our family planning. The kids were awesome for me--really, so well-behaved--but I was tuckered out and it took me a while to recover. And I thought, "three's good. I'll be fine if we only have three."

 

But there is a reason that children come one (or in some cases two) at a time, so you can break into mothering slowly, adding just a little (that feels like a lot) at a time. So, perhaps I will be able to handle five children on my own after all. Someday.

 

That day is not today.

 

Donuts

I really like fried things. Like practically an addiction. But yesterday I walked by donuts at the grocery store and I didn't buy any. The saltwater taffy was a different story. And when I got to the frozen foods section and saw that box of Creamies on sale, well, I got homesick for Cache Valley and bought the biggest box I could find.

 

Anyway, I don't have much to say about donuts per se, but I do have something to say about healthiness.

 

Scott and I have been rocking the exercising this week, even if we haven't mastered the eating well part of healthy living yet. He's been doing much better than me, but still, we've done more exercising in the past week than we probably did in the whole month before that. And we are proud of that fact, but we didn't put it on Facebook. You probably won't ever get a weight loss report, a picture of our super healthy dinner (because they don't exist), or an update on our marathon training on Facebook from us ever.

You can thank me for that.

(But I can't guarantee I won't blog about it.)

Graduation
How do I feel about Scott finishing his Bachelor's degree this week?

FREAKING WONDERFUL.
excuse my French.

School is hard. Putting a spouse through school has been even harder for me. Why? I miss homework (sometimes). I get jealous of his homework sometimes, but I don't ever do it for him (occasionally I help edit and revise a paper and that makes me homesick too). I miss learning new stuff and having things to work on. I miss the feeling of accomplishment after turning in a big paper or project (I don't miss the anxiety in the days leading up to when the paper is due). I don't think Scott shares these same feelings exactly. He loves to learn and he loves figuring out new things. But he is not a big fan of homework, tests, or especially writing papers.

The past three weeks have been pretty harsh. He's had one assignment on top of another, and we've had a lot of family events going on, so he's had to get even better at managing his time (he already rocks at that, seeing as how he has worked full-time and gone to school full-time simultaneously over the past four years). And now that we see that light at the end of the tunnel and I've pulled the stiches out of the makeshift hem his grandma put on my oversized graduation gown from last year so that he can wear it, we are breathing a sigh of relief and trying to forget that he has to start studying to take the GMAT in a few weeks. We are going to give ourselves a week to ignore the fact that we have two long years of graduate school ahead of us.

In the meantime, we are going to practice walking.

Scott is going to walk and receive his diploma that he so deserves and enjoy the fact that he is one step closer to being done with school forever.

I am going to walk and get some exercise and keep improving myself and learn how to learn outside of a classroom.

And Kevin is going to work on taking more than one step at a time without holding onto our hands.

Truth be told, though, we don't mind that she is still holding on.

Have a very happy Thursday, friends!