Back in Time

I just experienced going "back in time": for three days, I was a mama of only a three-year-old and a one-year-old with a husband on the road again. Flash back!

While Chris took John and Mary to the priestly ordinations of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter--to which they didn't make it because Chris has the worst cold we can remember in years!--I had plenty of time to ruminate on the difference just a couple of years makes.

'Hello, Mama, I miss you," with each family member labeled by initial

Way back when, I enjoyed a dear friendship with a woman whose oldest was a mere four years older than my oldest. We talked and emailed daily--before our lives as homeschooling mothers simply became way too busy for such indulgence--and I didn't see how my difficult life would ever become easy in certain ways as hers was.

In the midst of the day-to-day slog of homeschooling four children, I sometimes don't notice how much has changed. But a sudden trip back in time illuminates the changes for me! For the sake of any of my readers who still have all children under age five, I share with you so you can have some hope of things to come. For my readers who have so soon forgotten what it used to be like, I remind you so you can be grateful--like I am feeling!

When Mama has only a one- and three-year-old, she's barely starting to see the first child learn obedience, she's wondering if she's doing anything right as concerns character development--are any good or bad behaviors flukes or the result of good/bad parenting?--and she's starved for rational conversation or a companion who can ever sit still. And this is typically the time when a Catholic mama accepting babies as they come will conceive her third baby, which can lead to a time of great doubt and darkness as her parenting is at a real point of difficulty, she doesn't have much visible record of success to look back on (although reality is there is much success), and God is sending yet another bundle of joy.

Joseph (16 months) now climbs the ladder and descends the slide by himself,
so my time of sitting in a chair to supervise is over for about the next six months.

Mamas of such little ones are doing 100% of the homemaking duties themselves. Just a few years later, I have such big helpers! For example, on Thursday I clean bathrooms, and nowadays I send the seven-year-old to clean one bathroom by himself and the five-year-old to clean the other bathroom herself, while I do the third one: it takes about 15 minutes. But this Thursday, I had to clean all three bathrooms by myself with a one-year-old and a three-year-old who kept pestering me, following me about, and getting into mischief, so took even more than the expected 15 minutes times three. It took a lot more time and patience, trust me!

For several days, I had no one to help me with emptying the dishwasher, clearing tables, laundry, making beds, vacuuming, and the list goes on.

To mamas of those five and under . . . in just a few years, you can assign your chores to each day of the week, split up chores among you and your older kids, and fly through the jobs!

Daddy and the kids found this neat field of satellite dishes in Virginia

Mamas of such little ones have tots hanging on their ankles all the time. Boy, have I been reminded of this. Say I had to strip the sheets and take all the bedding downstairs to launder. Normally I'd just do that and leave all the kids upstairs: the baby wouldn't even notice I had disappeared for 60 seconds and, if he did, he wouldn't care because he'd be playing with his siblings. But with only one- and three-year-olds, the baby won't let me out of his sight. I can't carry a bundle of bedding and a baby down the stairs safely, so I have to trap the baby somewhere--where he wails piteously--while I dash the bedding down and dash back up to get the baby. And that reminds me of having to do that with a big ol' pregnant baby while waddling during pregnancy #3, which was certainly straining.

In just a few years, kids five and seven can provide a good deal of occupation and babysitting while mama dashes here and there throughout the house.

Going on walks with Margaret to smell the flowers

Tots of such a young age aren't very interesting. Now, I say that with love. Clearly I found them interesting enough to spend those early years reading approximately a zillion books on young children and writing a blog about their antics. But even a bright three-year-old can converse about only so much. I remember feeling so anxious to get to read 'real books' to my young children.

Now that I have a five- and seven-year-old, we are currently in the midst of reading "Black Beauty" (listening on CD in the car), the Lambs' children's version of "Hamlet" (read in the afternoons in the den), "Treasure Island" (read a chapter at bedtime) and "Mary Poppins" (also read a chapter at bedtime). (Clearly, I'm teaching my children my scattered habit of reading many books simultaneously! Now that is interesting. Sometimes my eldest asks such sophisticated theological questions, I have to pass on the inquiries to my priest! Many more interesting things start happening with a bit of aging from the children.

Margaret (3 years 3 months has decided she wants to learn her letters, so this week began asking me how to write each letter. She can copy almost every letter, which tells me she's primed and ready! I love this stage. She's "writing letters" to family members and leaving pages with random alphabet letters all over the house, just like Mary used to do.

Mamas of such little ones have a different schedule. With half my family gone, I found myself going on errands, in the morning no less! This reminded me that I spent a good stretch of years going out on spontaneous errands in the cool morning weather with bright-eyed tots. No longer, believe me! I now live by the rule that we do not leave the house in the mornings because we have to be home in order to homeschool. If we don't school in the morning, there's no way we're going to get to it in the afternoon. Plus going on an errand with four children is quite exasperating and I try to avoid doing it. So, now, my husband does most of our errands for us, which is a gift to me but also makes me yearn to see the outside of these four walls more often. Taking kids one and three on errands is relatively easy, they're interested in the happenings, and they're sweet as long as it isn't meal or nap time.

So, mamas, enjoy your many errand outings during these earliest of years! I hear errands become easy again when mama has teenagers as built-in babysitters.