Loving the little years...

I had this book, Loving the Little Years, suggested to me right before Hudson (H) was born.  The book is 17 short chapters on loving your littles, even in the midst of chaos!  The author should know since she herself has five (going on 6!) children all under the age of 5 or 6 years. (Though whichever phase I have been in with one, two or three there are always opportunities for chaos)  And yes she had time to write a book with that many little ones.  I should take note of that since I just got out of my pj's and it is 2 in the afternoon!

I have a feeling it will be one of those books that I will reread, over and over, to get the sweet blessings that she shares on caring for your babies.  But this is one of her ideas, concepts, blessings, that she writes about and it has been being put into practice in our lives...

Picture this lovely scenario.  H eating, N playing quietly on the big red chair, and L climbing on the back of the same chair.  Sounds pretty nice and serene?  I should mention that I had just dealt with a whole lot of potty accidents but I would rather give you a scenario of peace and quiet and poop free.    Sadly at this point L falls off the back of the red chair, hits his head on the window ledge and cracks open the exact same spot as before.  Bye bye glue, hello blood spurting forth.  Craziness then ensued, L running around screaming (he is a tad bit dramatic, totally Kelly's side of the family) with blood dripping everywhere, H crying because he has been ripped from his sweet meal, and then N decides that now would be a great time to open the freezer and help himself to some ice cream.   I was trying to calm L with a very sweet, STOP SCREAMING!  While cleaning his head up and the blood on the floor, so what does a frantic mother do?  She decides to call my dear hubby hoping by some miracle he would drop what he was doing and come running to help.  Ok, maybe not, rather he laughed and thought that whole thing was hilarious!  Which to top it all off I turn around to find L had picked up H, because he does that a lot and I mistakenly told him, good job, the first time he did it and now he thinks he is doing a good job by picking up his three week old brother and carrying him around the house over TILE flooring!  Goodness help that poor sweet boy.  Enter whichever one necessary.

So why this story you say?  How does the book tie into your craziness?  Because the author writes about her own moments of crazy chaos, where everything seems to be falling to pieces, and you begin to question why you have so many children?  Or maybe that last bit is just me.  Here is what she writes:

"Instead of spending time telling yourselves stories in which you are given too much to do, come up with some simple coping tactics.  In that same early and intense phase with the twins, I developed the twenty minute rule.  If things started seeming really out of control, I would look at the clock and note the time.  Then, I would tell myself that in twenty minutes this would be over.

If I just kept my head down and did the work, twenty minutes was all I needed....the storm would have passed in twenty minutes if I was cheerfully getting things done....

A moment.  It passes.  But when it passes, you will be very glad off all you did was work right through it.  No self pity, no tears, no getting worked into a dither. "  Rachel Jankovic, Loving the Little Years.

And this is what ran through my head today.  You see I am prone to tears, tantrums, shouting, maybe all of the above, in the midst of these moments.  Yet her advice, her words, rang in my mind as I was in the midst of this time.  20 minutes and it will be done.  20 minutes to get the wound cleaned up, the ice cream put away, a child disciplined, a baby fed, a crying boy settled.  No grumbling, no complaining, no phoning my husband (oops), but head down doing the work cheerfully.

May I be faithful in loving my littles...

Heidi