When I Grow Up

It's humbling needing help, accepting assistance. In my experience as a mom, even a mom of three young children, I found I could do most things myself. I became quite independent, and the kids and I functioned as a fairly well-oiled machine. Then came little Manly Mouse. Four children on one parent was my tipping factor, I guess. Even with the incredible amount of help that big sisters Miss Mouse and Sunny offer, there are just times that I cannot.do.it.myself.  That's humbling for me.

However, it's not as discouraging to find I need help as I thought it might be. It's been truly ENcouraging and inspiring, in fact.  Being the needy recipient of assistance has led me to decide that when I "grow up", that is when my children grow up, one thing I'm particularly excited about is being able to offer help to others. The children really don't have to be all that "grown up", either, to start being helpers themselves, and that's one thing, as I treasure these evenings of rocking my tiny baby and these days of walking hand-in-chubby-little-hand with Mighty Mouse, that I am very, very excited to share with the kiddos.

Here are some examples from my past year:

*Last fall, just as I was definitely beginning to look and feel pregnant again, Mighty had a wild night in church. He wasn't being naughty as much as just exuberant.  Well, his exuberance tipped over his "non-spill" bowl of Cheerios. They went flying, several pews back. Of course we were right up front. Ugh. I decided to wait until after the service to pick them up, but before I could start, the family behind us had them all picked up. The two oldest children in the family, who I think were around 8 and 10, and their father had picked up our entire bowl of spilled cereal.

*Last spring we attended a going-away party for the family who picked up said Cheerios. Manly Mouse was three weeks old, and it was basically our first time out in public as a family of six. Mighty Mouse found what his sisters termed "the playground" at the house of the people hosting the party, so Mike was supervising him while I attempted to balance the car seat and plates of food for myself and each of the girls. A friend whose daughters are around our girls' ages and a bit older refused to let me get the food myself and instead waited on me, bringing us everything we needed to our table. On our way home from the party I told Mike I thought that would be one of the best things about having children who are a little older. So many times we focus on how they aren't "babies" anymore, but how fun will it be to teach them to help out other people?!

*Our second Sunday at church as a fivesome (Mike was down south, and the girls had had just more than enough of skipping worship "because Daddy's not going to be there today".....I wasn't being let off the hook by them any longer!), Mighty did great through the entire sermon. Then came Communion, and I honestly had no idea what to do with the wiggly toddler who needed mama to carry him up for Communion (because he was actually really needing mama to put him down for a nap) while I also was holding a sleeping, 7-week-old Manly Mouse.  I figured I'd manage, but then as I attempted to put Mighty's shoes back on one-handed while holding Manly (we do outdoor worship in the summer, and Mighty had managed to squirm out of his shoes during the sermon...it was good entertainment for him for that portion of the service...), a friend stepped in and asked to take Manly. I happily handed off the sleeping bundle-of-snuggles and was able to hold Mighty and get myself and the "big three" up for Communion. Manly joined our friend's family to be blessed that Sunday. It reminded me of the phrase that "it takes a village to raise a child". I was thankful for my youngest son being cared for by "the village" so that I could give a little more of me to my other little boy who needed more of me that day.

*The other day we needed groceries on perhaps the hottest day in July. It was stifling hot, but we were out of almost every snack and basic food in the house. Sure, we had lots of frozen meat, but that was really about it!  So, after Mighty's nap, we headed to the grocery store. We have a very particular system going for shopping these days. It involves Miss Mouse pushing the cart; Sunny sometimes takes a turn. Mighty rides in the stroller; Manly rides in his carseat in the stroller, while I push the stroller.  We are thankful for the drive-up option to pick up our groceries because I don't allow Miss Mouse to push the loaded cart in the parking lot. Neither do the store employees. I had planned to have her try it one day last spring, and the young men at the check out line decided they would not let her do that and instead carried our groceries out themselves (for some reason the drive-up was closed)! Very sweet!  Anyway, that particular hot day reflected Mighty's mood perfectly. He was grouchy. We got near the watermelon, and he started saying "apple". I explained they were watermelon and that we'd have to pay for them. Things went downhill from there, so we shopped the produce section with a toddler shouting "apple! apple!" in the most pathetic "please-can't-I-have-an-apple" tone that you ever did hear. I stayed fairly calm on the outside but had made the decision to get a few produce items and beat it out of the store. Until we got over to the grapefruit/orange section and an elderly woman leaned down to Mighty, who was in tears, and told him his shirt was "sure nice" and asked him where he got it. As Mighty's tearful shouts of "apple" subsided, my tears nearly fell because the woman reminded me of how my grandma might have calmly talked to a little person in a store. Mighty didn't answer the lady, but he smiled and calmed down after she visited with him. I guess he just needed his mind taken off the forbidden "apple". We ended up getting our entire list, thanks to that kind woman who helped out a sad little boy instead of just staring and shaking her head or something. I hear other people getting that kind of reaction, and I wonder if I just don't notice when it happens to me or if I'm just somehow blessed to find all these really kind people in my path!  Either way, I want to be like that elderly woman someday.

*Today we proudly gathered up a summer's worth of library program projects and headed to the library to fulfill our program requirements. The girls spent hours and hours on this for the reward of having their pictures in the paper. When we got there, Manly had not yet fallen asleep for his carseat nap the way I had hoped and planned. While the girls waited in line to turn in their projects, I walked Manly and Mighty around in the stroller, hoping Manly would close his eyes and have a cat nap. No such luck. We waited behind a family trying to get a library card, and then we let a young mom go ahead of us to rent a movie; her baby and husband had already gone out to the car because apparently that baby wasn't taking his or her carseat nap either! Finally it was our turn. The girls proudly laid their drawings and coloring sheets and projects on the counter along with wallet-size smiling pictures of themselves.....and were promptly told that they hadn't done everything they needed. The young man at the counter obviously was not a parent...nor probably an uncle...or a babysitter, even, and he just insisted that even though the "challenge question" sheet said, "parent may tailor to child's ability", it had to all be filled out in order to qualify. He didn't look at the drawings the girls had spent two entire afternoons on. He didn't ask what "special powers" they gave their robots that they were supposed to come up with. He just insisted and insisted that the spots they'd left blank - that were blank because I followed the instruction allowing me to tailor the questions to their abilities and ages - disqualified them from completing the program. He suggested I go google the answers and have them write them in the blank. Never mind that I had intentionally NOT let the girls just google the answers to these questions because I try to teach them that the best research is done by reading books rather than trusting wikipedia; never mind that we had a baby who had begun to fuss his little heart out; never mind that Mighty was standing, by this time, in his stroller trying to figure out why his biggest sister had alligator tears dripping down her face; never mind that in my opinion, my googling the answer and then writing it in for them, because that's what I'd have had to do with the limited time we had, constitutes cheating......It was really horrible. Miss Mouse was sobbing by the time we reached the computer kiosks, which it turned out I didn't even know how to log onto; I was crying by the time I figured out how to log in; Manly was screaming bloody murder by this time.....Into the middle of this, a kind woman who'd been in line behind us came over with a scrap of paper on which she'd written the author and name of a children's book series that she said her now-grown children had enjoyed. She quietly said how sorry she was and how she could tell the girls had worked so hard on their drawings - the drawings the librarian hadn't even looked at. I told her I'd never have expected them to be able to leave blanks on their sheets, except for that little note about parents being able to make it age-appropriate for their children. She just nodded and said again how sorry she was and how she wished she could do something. I pulled myself together and thanked her for the book suggestions and her kindness. We left the library without having been able to get the girls' sheets filled out. Miss Mouse cried so hard I didn't have the heart to take her on the grocery store run I had planned. In attempt to show her some "solidarity" or something - perhaps my own silent protest - I refused to turn in my adult summer library program sheet that I'd brought with in order to win a cool water bottle. That'll show...somebody...something. Or not.  In all it was a really awful culmination to an entire summer's worth of effort, but the sting was softened so much by the kindness of a person who could have easily looked at us and wondered why in the world I would bring a fussy baby into a library to turn in half-complete sheets. I want to be like her when my children are grown; I want to offer the mom of younger children suggestions for fun books, and I want to see beyond the appearance of chaos to the carefully drawn and colored pictures, works of art from the hearts of little girls.

I'm planning to email the children's librarian about the situation, but rather than spend more time than I already have fuming about the situation, I decided to incorporate it into this post that I've wanted to write for quite awhile. Because really, it ended up being a lesson for the girls and me about how to be kind to others when they need a friend; and maybe that lesson is even more important than having one's picture featured in the paper......