I love my kids

Really, I do. But this is the time of year when I really question myself. I am trying, really, really trying, to enjoy them. To do "fun" things with them. But 20 minutes after they are awake, I am ready to pull my hair out. Is it really that difficult to get dressed in the morning? Is this a new task I am asking them to complete? Didn't I teach them how at one point? Didn't they used to throw tantrums insisting they could do it by themselves? Mind boggling.

I just don't think I was cut out to be a "Family Fun" type of mom. We just spent FOUR hours making PRETZELS, and now I am so exhausted I sent them out to play because I can't take the nagging it would take to make them help clean up. It looked so fun in the magazine. And now it's almost time for dinner. yippe. I get to cook some more. Then family night. Oh good. More time with the kids for an activity. It's always this time of year when I remind myself why I don't homeschool.

It's kind of like the day I finally realized that I love my kids more when I'm not with them all the time.

It was when we only had 2, and Jared was traveling constantly. (Well, kind of like now, only with 3 less) Jared and I decided to "blow the wad" and hire the first babysitter in 2 months. I clearly remember coming home 4 hours later, seeing them, and thinking, "Wow. I actually think you're cute, and I really do love you." (Meaning the kids. I suppose Jared, too) It was the first time it dawned on me that maybe its okay that I'm not with them constantly.

Of course, there are those older ladies, who I know by the way, I will turn into, who say, "Treasure this time. It goes by in the blink of an eye." So I come home, cross my fingers, and rapidly open and close my eyes to no avail.

But seriously. I do love my kids. Sometimes I wish I had a built in video camera tape moments I could not have seen coming. Like the look on Ethan's face as he calculated how much he would have to earn for a squirt gun, and the earnestness with which he applied himself to his chore. So, I'm posting an article I cut out of the Deseret News five years ago that I read every year at this time. It is the best expression I have found of my feelings this time of year. I hope you enjoy it, and the last few precious days of summer there are left.


"Precious Moments slip by"
Ann Cannon August 2001 Deseret News

You Fold another blanket left in the middle of the floor after last night's TV watch-athon.
Wipe up a puddle of melted popsicle from the kitchen counter
Answer the telephone at midnight becuase someone is calling for one of your kids.
Survey the skateboards and scooters and bikes and other wheeled objects strewn throughout the entryway.
Search (dripping wet) for a clean towel in the linen closet, then remember that one by one, day after day, they've all been left at the swimming pool.
Look at your youngest son and wonder when the last time was that he changed his shirt. Begin to wonder the same scary thing about his underwear.
Glance at the pile of unread Baseball Weeklies by your favorite chair, stacked there in the hope that you'll eventually read them and realize nobody (including you) has read anything except the back of a Cap'n Crunch cereal box since school ended.
Walk outside where you feel defeated, depleted, demoralized and done in by the heat.
And then the moment comes-like it always does-where you say to yourself that even though summer is by far your favorite season, it's time for it to end. You start looking forward t the things you won't have to do again until next year-pulling slivers out of tough bare feet, picking up junior high kids from friends' houses night after night, going to the grocery store a dozen times a day because the food you thought you had in the fridge (surprise!) isn't there anymore. Swatting houseflies the size of hummingbirds in your kitchen.
Yes, you'll say to yourself the night before school starts, no more sleepovers in the middle of the week! Then you'll remember that scene in the novel "Open House" by Elizabeth Berg where a mother looks at her 11-year old son, wondering how she will break the news that his father has left them and remembering the days of innocence when he was small enough to sit in her lap.
"I don't hold Travis anymore," she says,"not to read to him, or for any other reason, either. I wish I'd know that the last time was going to be the last time. But of course that information would have been as painful as this moment."

Life is full of last times. If you sit on your porch tonight with the moon rising and the night air shot through with the scent of honeysuckle, just like it was those summer nights when you and your gifrlfriend Gigi slept in her grandmother's back yard, you can try to list them in your head.

The las night before you became your husband's wife.
The last haircut you gave your son before his light fine hair began to darken and turn coarse. The last time he asked you to play "Candyland" with him, and the last time he wasn't embarrassed to be see eating hamburgers at Hires with you.
The last family vacation you all took to the beach before the oldest cousins began leaving for college.
The last conversation you had on a hot morning in Liberty Park with your girlfriend before learning about her husband's illness.
The last time you walked across a grassy field while the scent of the game that was just played there still lingered.
The last time you nursed your last baby.
Some of these tings we prepare for. We take pictures. Write in journals. Mark their passing.
Some of them we don't. They end so quietly we hardly notice them slip away until one day something happens and we are suddenly reminded of the thing we no longer have in our lives.
The trick, of course, is to notice. And to love it while it's there.