Life with three children is nothing short of chaos. Someone always wants something, needs to be held, needs to go to the bathroom, is asking a question, etc. There aren’t many moments in the day when it’s completely quiet.
Growing up in a house with three other siblings, this type of chaos is quite normal to me (as strange as that sounds.) In college rather than going to a quiet place to study, I preferred a room with a lot of people and noise because that was what I was used to. It was comforting. Now the craziness has continued, but with my own little crew making noise and causing quite a stir in our household all the time. And this weekend they proved to take that to a new level.
Macks woke up yesterday morning with a horrible cough. A couple of hours later that was accompanied with a high fever and him pulling at his ear. I gave him a little medicine for the fever, but it didn’t seem to be helping so I took him to the urgent care center that was by our house. The doctor confirmed that he had a double ear infection and put him on antibiotics. Unfortunately those take a couple of days to kick in, so the rest of our day consisted of Macks on my chest either cuddling or nursing.
Despite him being sick, I was cherishing our time together. I was brought back to those newborn days when all he did was snuggle up on my chest, eat, and sleep. Our quiet time was brought short when Harlan and Avery walked into the room because they wanted to see him. Not fully understanding that he couldn’t play, they barged in calling his name and of course waking him up. Despite how many times I told them to go downstairs, they just kept coming up. And it always seemed to be right when I got Macks to fall asleep.
Finally after the girls went down for bed that evening I heard cries coming from Avery’s room. I walk in with Macks and see that she’s thrown up everywhere. When it rains, it pours, right? At this point Macks was wide awake and wanted to get down and crawl on the ground, Avery was crying, and Harlan kept saying “I just want some peace and quiet.” I felt like I was being pranked. I wanted to laugh because it was so chaotic and insane.
I bathed Avery, while Macks sat on my hip and MacKay cleaned up her bed. Shortly after, I put her down to sleep praying that she would sleep for the rest of the night. She did.
I went back to bed with Macks who was full of energy and didn’t want to go to bed. I didn’t want to put him in his crib because of his fever and horrible cough and I wanted to monitor him. Finally after two long hours of trying, he finally fell asleep next to me. Finally.
This morning I awoke to my cell phone beeping at me. It was a text message from Harlan’s school telling me that there was a delayed opening by two hours because of weather. My first thought was, “oh great how am I going to get anything done this morning?”
And then the girls walked in. They come in on each side of me and we cuddle in bed before heading downstairs for breakfast. We all eat together. There’s no rush to get clothes on for school, or to get lunches packed, or teeth brushed. After breakfast we sit on the couch and watch a couple of television shows. Macks is on my lap and Avery is cuddled closely next to me.
Amidst all of this chaos in our life, this is the calm that I needed. Even if it only lasted for a couple of hours, it reminded me that all of the craziness in my life is completely worth it for these few moments.
