There are only 5 of us. Daniel, the dad is 43. Me, Lori the mom is 38. Breanna, the oldest is 17 (will be 18 in 2 months) Serena, middle child is 13. Keenan, the only begotten son is 9.
Now, normal dinner times at our house have certain elements that are usually gonna happen
1. Someone is going to tell a story that makes us all laugh really loud, not usually because the story is as funny as the way it was told or some weird noise they made, or poor use of wording, or mix up with punch line. But some unfortunate soul is going to be the butt of the jokes that night. We all take this in good fun, cause we know that it is dished out equally. I could go on for quite a while with examples but most of these are “on-location” type jokes that don’t really re-tell well.
2. Someone is not gonna get their way. Something is gonna come up that 2 people want a different way, if we are discussing plans for later, who should clean up, the price of tea in china, whatever… we are going to have to work out a compromise.
3. Somebody is going to get too loud and annoy someone else. You never can tell who this is going to be, everyone has a different tolerance level on different nights for volume. This explosion is lurking on the horizon at any time!!
4. Now, not always, but a lot of time, we are gonna have a mess of something, something will spill, be knocked over, poured out, overfilled, ya know the usual. Which, you would think, with our kids all being older that wouldn’t happen as often as it did when they were 2,6 and 10 but it does!
So all these things are fine and good, at home, but they all happen out in public too!! I say this because the other night our little family went out to eat to Pizza hut. We were seated about a few minutes after 2 other families of 4 and 5 and then another family came in after us of 4. We were seated in the dead center of the restaurant (lucky us). We ordered, as the other families did and then we began to just do our normal thing, ya know sit and talk to each other. We were laughing, yelling, pouting, compromising, arguing, laughing more and overall just carrying on as normal. Then I began to notice as I looked around, that the other families were just sitting there staring at each other in silence. (I don’t know if it was because we were being loud, and I don’t know if we were being like annoying loud, or just like regular volume, because we were caught up in our good time). I started wondering, if we had something other families don’t.
Our family isn’t perfect. My kids argue. Keenan and Serena get along well cause they share interest, but she is 13 and is maturing past some of those, and this confuses her brother, who worships her, so this causes strange and wild fights. Breanna is 17, and the oldest, she is put in charge of the other 2 a lot, so when she puts on the parent roll Keenan doesn’t appreciate “the sister” being “the mother” and does his best to make Breanna want to hang him from the roof by his feet. Breanna and Serena do the girl thing, with nasty comments and hateful attitudes. So I am not saying they never fight. But for the most part they get along good. They laugh a lot together. They genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company. And so that makes it more fun for us (the parents) to be around them too. They make me laugh like no one else can. I truly enjoy this stage we are in, in our little family. I really miss the days when they were little babies. When they toddled around the house in diapers saying funny little things, taking sweet naps, letting me rock them to sleep and when they would snuggle on the couch to watch movies. But this stage is fun too, where we can have “inside jokes” and when we can go out to eat and laugh so much that the rest of the place thinks we are crazy!
I think it is important to enjoy every stage of your children’s lives. Not to miss the baby days so bad you can’t enjoy the preschool years or beyond. Or hate the teen years so much you can’t wait for them to get out of the house. Every stage has it’s challenges and it’s precious moments. I have heard so many people talk about how they regret not doing this or that with their kids. I don’t want to live that way. I will do the best I can with each day, then try tomorrow to do better. I don’t want to ever beat myself up over what I didn’t do, just learn from it and from what others have done and try every day to be the best I can be. Motherhood can be a life of guilt, never feeling like you have done enough for your kids, but overall my kids are happy, fed well, get along with others and love God. So far so good…… I’m gonna keep doing what I am doing and leave the rest up to God.
