Do You Remember When You Were 17?

A few weeks ago, my dad stopped by to give me an old newspaper that featured me and my best friend, Devyn, on the cover. One of the perks of coming from a family of pack rats is that wonderfully embarrassing things from my past always have a way of resurfacing. As my dad handed me that crumpled, faded paper, I started to laugh. I remember how cool I thought it was to be in our local paper. My brother's band, Empire, was playing at a coffee house and Devyn and I always made sure to be in the front row of all their shows. But had that really been 14 years ago? The image I was looking at was of two obnoxious silly teenage girls dancing at a coffee house (I swear I wasn't doing the chicken dance (: ). But it kind of felt like it was just yesterday. Time has a funny way of allowing life to slip right past you.

It got me thinking about how strange it is that in 3 years I will have a teenager. How quickly the past few years have gone by. In a flash, I have gone from a 17 year old girl to a 31 year old woman. Every day occurrences go by and I forget. I forget how good it feels to dance to music, or to breathe in the sweet scent of my children after they've taken a bath, or how much fun it is to feel leaves crunching under my feet. This weekend I made a conscious effort to mark everything that happened in my mind. We enjoyed my most favorite kind of weekend- the kind where we stay home and do things around the house. On Sunday, we took the kids to the lake and we had a picnic and they played at the park. On the drive home, we went up and down the wondrous hills we have here in Missouri. I sat and listened to five kids laughing and squealing as their daddy zipped up and down the hills. And I thought, this is my memory. When I am old and gray and my children have grown, I will look back on this simple moment and smile. I won't always have a newspaper clipping to remind me to remember the simple things in life. But I'll remember. Oh, how I will remember.

"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." -Robert Brault 

I love Fall. I love when the weather gets cooler and the trees start changing colors. I love getting back into the school time routine and all of the fun activities that happen around this time of year. But I get kind of weird when it's Fall. I start preparing for Winter. I'm like an animal working diligently to store up for the cold days that are quickly approaching. Except I'm not gathering acorns. I'm cleaning out the garage so we can fit at least one vehicle in there. I'm packing up shorts and t-shirts and replacing them with jeans and sweaters.

My latest preparation for Winter was making an office in our bedroom. Last year for Father's Day, I made a little office for Nate in the laundry room. It was a fabulous idea and it looked great, but it just wasn't practical. In the Summer, it was too hot and in the Winter, it was too cold. So he couldn't use his nice little office. A few weeks ago, we moved the older kids down to our finished basement. And Ivan got their old room. There was a space in our room where his crib used to be that was just perfect for Nate's desk. So the unpractical laundry room office became a cozy bedroom office.

This space is perfect for Malachi to do his homework. I've been struggling with trying to find a way to get Malachi to be motivated to do his homework without me telling him every day to get his work done. I'm actually going to incorporate the dry erase board we used over the Summer to schedule in homework for the kids. For someone who is as unorganized as I am, it's critical for me to schedule things and have it visual so the kids and I both know what to expect for the day.

 This space is also great for Nate to work on brewery stuff. I love how cozy this little desk is in our room. I have lots of other things to do to get ready for the cold weather, but I couldn't be happier with the way the bedroom office turned out. When you have 7 people in a 2 bedroom house, it's always a huge success when you can find a way to utilize space in a cute, functional way! (:

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Mommy Stripes

As a mom, there are certain moments when I feel like I really earn my "mommy stripes". This past week was pretty hard for the Watson family. I got sick over a week ago. I can honestly say that I haven't been that ill for years and years. I was deliriously sick. My throat was on fire and my glands were so swollen I could hardly swallow. Thankfully I got sick on a Saturday, so Nate was home to take care of the kids. But by Monday (which was ironically a day off school for the kids), I still felt awful. I called my mom and took the kids over to her house. Even as an adult, I still need my mom when I'm sick (:  I hate going to the doctor and I was hopeful that I would get better on my own, but my mom made me go to the doctor. And it turned out, I had a double ear infection and strep throat. I think I've had the ear infections for a while, because after a week of antibiotics, I feel better than I have in weeks.

It's little surprise that the day after I found out I had strep throat, Aylah came home from school complaining of her throat hurting. So the next day I took her to the doctor. Sure enough, she had strep too. Two days later, I took Ivan to the doctor and he had strep too. While I was there, I had the doctor look at Aylah's neck. The right side of her neck was insanely swollen. The doctor examined her and said she was concerned that she had an abscess. Now, what the doctor probably said was that I should take her to the hospital to get it looked at. But, in my frantic mommy state, what I heard was that my child was critically ill and had to go to the hospital immediately. So I hurried home to give Ivan his first dose of medicine. Aylah had fallen asleep in the car and I rushed Ivan inside. Before I could give him the medicine, he said, "Mommy, I have to go pee." When a two year old says that, you know there's no waiting. I quickly took him to the bathroom and after he was done, he got that look in his eyes. I'm sure every parent knows that look. The "I'm going to puke and there's no time to get me to the toilet" look. And he puked everywhere. In that moment, I knew I would be earning some serious mommy stripes that day.

After I had cleaned him up, changed his clothes and given him his medicine, I got him back in the van and headed to the hospital. It's about 25 minutes from our house, but I have serious anxiety about driving on the highway. I've never been a fan of driving, but the older I get, the more I freak out about it. The whole time I was praying, "Please let Aylah be ok, please keep me calm, please help our van not to breakdown." And thank you, Jesus, we made it. But I was so frazzled that I went into the first hospital parking garage I saw. Which was on the opposite end of the ER. Two sick kids, one mommy and an enormous distance to where we were supposed to be. I put Ivan in the stroller, but poor Aylah was in so much pain she could barely walk. She ended up getting a ride in a wheelchair and we made it to the ER. After several hours of being there, the doctors told me that she had a severe case of strep throat which was causing her glands to swell so much. And it also made her have a muscle spasm, so she couldn't move her neck.

It took almost a week of being on the antibiotic for Aylah to really feel better, but she's better now. I realized how lucky I am that my kids have never really been sick before. Good health is something that I often take for granted, but there is no better gift than having healthy children. I thank God every day that I have five healthy kids.

I earned some mommy stripes this past week for sure. They've caused me to worry, experience anxiety and exhaustion. But most importantly, they've allowed me to understand how scary it is to have a sick child, and how precious it is knowing your child is ok. I will wear these Mommy stripes with pride.