Babies...and it's not me!

What a week of miracles this has been. My cousin gave birth to a 2 pound little girl after making it through a very dangerous surgery for herself and another cousin had a little boy yesterday. It is so odd to think of both of them as parents, but I know they will be wonderful. I am always so happy when people who either think they don't want kids or feel like they never will, get to join the club! Partly, because they will now understand why I haven't been myself for the last 9 1/2 years, but mainly because they had no clue what they were missing!

I was mentioning these births to my coworkers and made the mistake of starting by saying something about having a good "pregnancy" story for them. The looks on their faces was pure horror and there were even some gasps in the crowd. When I finally said, "It's not me", you could feel the wave of relief wash over the room and I finished with, "but it's great to know you would all be so supportive and excited if it was!"

I guess if number 6 ever did come along, we would just try to keep it a secret until the baby was here for everyone to love ! :) Right now, it is so hard to keep 5 kids healthy and happy. We have 3 different spelling lists to memorize, dance lessons, hurt feelings, soccer practice, fights for attention, drama class lines to memorize, laundry to keep up with, not to mention the daily struggles of just living in our society today!

I try to stick to my theory that children start off like rough rocks and it takes lots of tumbling around and against each other through their childhood years to get them to come out as smooth, shiny adults. I tell this to Shawn all the time when we both start to get frustrated with their fighting, talking back, bad attitudes, disagreements or hurt feelings from schools, and every other little mistake they make. The other day, on our way home from church, they were all being particularly fiesty and yelling at each other, crying, pushing, etc. All of this was made worse by the fact that we were all tired and trapped in a minivan together! Shawn was starting to lose his cool and I just reminded him that since our kids have to deal with so many other personalities 24 hours a day, they are going to be REALLY smooth adults! Yep--shiny, smooth adults. I'll just keep telling myself that! LOL!