Babies

A baby was blessed today at church.  As I watched the dad carry the baby to the front, I thought of the miracle of babies.  What is it that draws us to that tiny person?  

There's a feeling at the birth of each child that is unexplainable. It's always been amazing to me that the moment when that little one takes their first breath and makes their first cry such a strong feeling of love rushes into me. It is so powerful it has moved me to tears.  And it's there every time.  I've given birth eight times and you'd think after the first two or three it would become old hat, that when I heard that first cry I'd say "Yea, been there done that, now get me to my room I'm tired and hungry." But no, the nine month torture ordeal followed by even more torture at delivery pales and is forgotten when I hold that tiny bundle.  

We've all seen people before, we know that they are all pretty much the same, two legs, two arms some hair, a face but when gazing at a new born baby it all seems so wondrous.  It's amazing that this thing has all of those features and, when we are blessed enough that all of the parts are there and in working order, we wonder again. 

And then the hard part begins.  But that's a tale for another blog.  I'm so grateful and happy that I've been blessed with eight beautiful, healthy children.  

Laundry

This is a pile of unfolded, clean laundry. It is on the chair in my bedroom. It used to be on my bed but I moved it to the chair so that I could go to sleep.  It would have been back in the laundry baskets I carried it upstairs in but after I dumped it onto my bed, thinking that I'd get it folded to day, I took the launder baskets back downstairs.  You may think that I had a really busy day and just didn't get to this laundry.  But you would be wrong.  You may also think that this laundry was washed just to day.  Again you are wrong.  This laundry was washed on Monday and has been sitting in my bedroom waiting to be folded for a week.

Laundry and I have a long history together.  Having 8 kids means having a lot of laundry.  I have tried so many ways to get laundry done.  When I was first married, I tried doing it the way my mother and grandmother before her did the laundry.  I would sort all of the weeks laundry into piles on the floor in front of the washing machine and then work all day to get it done.  Well, when you have 4 kids ages 4 and under and you live in the city so you can't just say "Go outside and play all day." there are a lot of interruptions.  Needless to say, this method failed.  There were always piles of laundry on the floor, piles of laundry on the couch, partially folded piles of laundry in the living room and we won't even mention the huge basked of unmatched socks that we were forced to stir through every time we wanted socks.  One of my kids even took to just wearing the same socks every day of the week so he wouldn't have to mess with the basket of socks.

Then I graduated up to mesh sorting bags and as the kids were getting older they were required to sort their own laundry into it's proper bag and then I would wash a couple of batches a day. This solved some of the problem; there were no more huge piles of laundry on the floor but it created new problems. The kids didn't have all of their clothes back on one day and so it was frustrating for them to make outfits.

Finally I hit upon an idea that seemed to work out the best.  Every child would have a "day" on that day they were to bring their laundry to the washing machine and I would wash just two batches of their clothing:  one light and one dark.  Some of the older kids started doing their own laundry.  And now the only laundry I have to do is mine, hubbies and the two little kids.  I still can't get it done promptly.

I'm beginning to think that the problem is more of an attitude problem that a problem with a lot of laundry.  Because if you think about it...in the time it took me to take the picture of the laundry, upload it onto my computer and this blog and then write this blog, I probably could have had the laundry folded and put away.

(P.S. How to solve the problem of a lot of socks:  Each child gets only one kind of sock,  every child's socks are different from the other child's socks {it is possible} then the most unmatched socks any particular child can have is 1 and all of their socks matched or unmatched goes back into their rooms with their clean laundry.)

Hair, make-up and "looking married"

I had my hair cut today.  I never know how to get it cut because mostly I don't care.  I can never get my hair to look like I want it to look.  I also have no patience.  If I can't do my hair in ten minutes or less it's not getting done.  The hair dresser cut my hair and then styled it.  She also straightened it.  I don't have any idea how they do that.  I try and try at home and it still will look frizzy.  This lady was a nice Korean lady. I think she told me to put Silk Oil on my hair.  I don't even know what silk oil is.  As she was cutting my hair she told me that I should wear make-up.  She said I'd look prettier with make-up. I guess I could have been offended by this but she was right. And I do wear make-up sometimes...but again...not something I like to spend a lot of time on and even when I do I can't get the look I want.  It's hard to make my face look like a super model's.

I remember when I was in college and as our friends got married, my roommates and I would say "Yup, she is looking married." Meaning we could tell when the married friend started to worry less what she looked like.  Being the idealistic girl I was I swore that I would never "look married."  Well, as my mother likes to remind me quite often, I definitely "look married" most of the time.  Trying to put on make-up and doing hair gets exponentially harder the more kids you have in the bathroom trying on your lipstick and unrolling the toilet paper.  And then you have to come up with creative answers when they start asking questions about the feminine products they find under the sink. So I will admit that unless I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. I'm probably going to spend the day "looking married."