Update

I've been working really hard on getting better the last month and controlling my anxiety.

First, we finally moved Zora out of our room and into a room with Rex.  He sleeps like a rock and I sleep better when I can't hear her every movement.  I've also started making her take 3 naps instead of 2 and she's finally sleeping more than 2 hours at night.  I also take a nap every day.  Other moms read or look at their phones or do whatever else they need in the in middle of the day to regroup.  I sleep.  If I try any of that other stuff, my kids still bug me.  But if I'm asleep, or pretending to be asleep, they seem to understand better not to bug mom.

But even with more sleep, my anxiety sky rockets as the sun sets.  The walls of the house slowly close in on me.  Mostly I think I work myself up over how many times Zora will be up at night.  So one of my old young women and I tell each other two good things that happened each day to each other.  It's actually helping quite a bit.  So that as the walls are closing in, I push them back out with little bits of gratitude for my day.  Because really, I have a pretty cushy life.  My children are generally well-behaved.  Greg works from home so he actually helps out with them a lot, especially in the afternoons when he forces them to play with him (yes, force.  How many kids do you know who complain about their dad wanting to spend too much time with them?  My little ingrates do.)  It's a funny thing that Anxiety and Depression do, they let you window shop at how good your life is but don't let you touch, they make sure that window stays there and then make you feel guilty that you just can't reach the near-perfection that is your life.  They really are mean little suckers.

Here are some of the good things that have happened:

During Christmas Break I took the kids to QT and then to Wal Mart to spend their Christmas money.  I had to consciously tell myself to stay calm and let the kids enjoy their shopping.  And we did.  Then we came home and played with more new toys.  Though I did get in trouble for taking the kids to QT.  Apparently Greg wanted to do that.  Oops.  But he was off hunting or something like that, so it's not like he was slaving about while we partied.

 We also went to Defy Gravity with the Baker cousins one day.

 Rex fell and hit his jaw on his knee and cut his tongue with his teeth.  My brother in the law, the doctor, told us to skip the ER and Urgent Care because they would just refer us to an oral surgeon, so I called our dentist for a recommendation and it turns out she's an oral surgeon.  Well that worked out well.  Rex was super nervous to get the stitches but a little laughing gas and some lies about what the dentist was actually doing and he did great.  He got 5 stitches in his tongue.  So that was a good thing--the dentist was nicer and cheaper than the ER.

 Rex is also really into baking lately and I enjoy watching him.  Although he does get a little territorial over the kitchen and won't let the other kids in because he wants to do it all by himself.

 Henry is still a major menace, but something about his destructive behavior just melts my heart.  He is so naughty, but I just love him the more for it.  Probably because everyone else just yells at him and I feel so bad for him.  He just has low impulse control.

 Aside from Zora not sleeping, the thing that causes the most anxiety is my kids being bored.  I worry about it constantly--what are we going to do today?  what are we going to do after dinner?  why can't my kids just play quietly like other people's kids?  I know I shouldn't worry about it and just let them play.  But my kids don't.  They just jump on the couch and then I worry about my kids and their bad manners that they think they can just jump on the couch and then that they don't listen to me when I tell them to stop.  As I'm typing this I can hear all the older moms say, "It doesn't really matter" or "This too shall pass"  and I try to tell myself that, but in the moment, at the time, it just stresses me out, which is why we need  playroom where I can't see what they're doing and they can just have fun.

 One day they all put on their aprons that Alice made for them and worked together to make cookies.  It was sweet.

 Zora thought her first sink bath was pretty fun. If my sink weren't always full of dishes I'd let her do it more.

 Alice really wants it to be her birthday day so she insisted that we have a bathroom photo shoot.  She struggles with being younger and shorter than all the other kids in her Primary class.

 This week started off with cancelled basketball on Saturday, followed by cancelled church on Sunday, and no school on Monday or Tuesday due to snow and ice, which wasn't as magical as it usually is because Anxiety was worried too much about how to entertain the children for so long.  I know I'm not supposed to be the entertainer-in-chief at my house, but Anxiety just can't let it go.  The children must be 100% entertained at all times or they just get naughty and whiny and are wasting their lives away and they will die.  Anxiety is so irrational sometimes.

 We ended the week with a few 70 degree days so I put chores aside and played outside with Greg and Zora while my kids whined about it being too hot and went inside.  The sunshine and physical activity destroyed Anxiety those days.

Most days I feel pretty good.  I talk myself out of a lot of things and remind myself that dishes don't always have to be done, and kids don't always have to be entertained, and that reading with my kids cuddled up on the couch is one of my favorite things, and I've started asking Greg to put Zora to bed more often and I feel good most days.  The dark is still not my favorite and I still wish we had a playroom for the kids, but I have at least 2 good things happen to me every day and I tell my young woman that and she tells me hers.  And I'm thankful for that.

Christmas 2016

So we Christmased.  Two weeks ago.  And it was ok.

I know I'm a bit of a downer but Christmas is not my favorite holiday.  I really want it to be about Jesus and I try to make it be about Jesus.  We have special family nights every week of December where we talk about the prophescies of Christ's coming and his birth and all those who visited the baby Jesus.  I read and reread the accounts in Luke and Matthew and 3 Nephi of Christ's birth and this year I had some really interesting insights about Mary (That she is the epitome of faith--she accepted her role as the mother of the Savior of the World without fully understanding what all that entailed).

But in the end, Christmas is about gifts.  And now that my kids understand that they're getting a bunch of gifts their expectations sore, along with my stress.  Who can look at a child's face, bright with the anticipation of Christmas and not worry about crushing all his little dreams?  And to make it worse, this year Alice didn't even ask for anything so we just had to guess at how to maintain her innocence.  It's just too stressful.  If I mess up a holiday like St. Patrick's Day or Valentine's Day, no big deal.  It's a small holiday anyway, but Christmas is the big one.

Add to that the postpartum stuff I had going on and December was a rough a month.

But we got through it and the kids enjoyed Christmas.  Although Alice was disappointed at the number of gifts she got.  Maybe it's time to re-evaluate our Christmas gift policy.

Here's the break down:

Christmas Eve morning I ran a 5k since this is the first year in a long time that we didn't host dinner.  I was really sad not to host this year, but with the number of Bakers there are in the area now plus Emma and Travis drove out, it just didn't make sense to do it at our house.  That afternoon, we went to Allen and Sahar's for dinner, Bingo and the nativity, which was the worst nativity I've ever put on.

Greg's aunt sent this super cute outfit for Zora for Christmas Eve

Cora as Mary with Wesley as the shepherd.

Rex as Joseph, Cora as Mary and Alice as Anna.

Henry was the angel this year and stabbed Mary with his star.

Matching the Robins cousins who were all in Seattle--Rex had just thrown a royal tantrum about not liking his Bingo prize, being tried, not having friends at school, math being too hard etc etc.  Being a mom and know when and when not to react is hard.

Santa came.

Christmas Day the kids were up at 6:30, which isn't bad.  We left them look at their presents from Santa since Santa doesn't wrap gifts at our house and open their stockings before getting ready for 9 am church.  After church, Greg had to write a few checks for the Bishop so Alice threw a tantrum in the car on the way home about having to wait longer to open presents.  We barely had time to put the traditional baked french toast in the oven before Greg got home.  We opened presents.  We ate breakfast, or at least Greg and I did.  We played with presents for a bit.  We drove up to Greg's sister's house in Greensboro and spent the rest of the day just hanging out.  We drove home and went to bed.

Santa brought Henry a bike with pedals

The highlight of the day was the QT gift cards Santa brought

Christmas morning j

 Sunday Best:

 Opening presents:

Mountain Biking Widows

A few weeks ago, Greg some how talked me into driving 2 hours by myself into the mountains to meet him to go hiking with him after a day of mountain biking.  Now, I hate driving.  Anything over 1 hour that I will have to return on the same day is just...I wish I knew how to insert the steaming red-face emoji with smoke coming out of its nose.  I just don't like it.  And I couldn't find the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Greg.  And then the amazing sandwich we had gone for was only mediocre.  I couldn't even finish it.  And then Greg said he wanted to go do more mountain biking with the other guys while the girls took all the kids on a hike.  I was not happy.  But I put on my good wife cap and let him do his dumb ride while we went hiking.  And it didn't turn out that bad.  I have the best friends and any time spent with them is fun and a blessing (yes, sappy I know, but you don't understand the pit of despair these ladies pulled me out of).  Once we got hiking, I enjoyed myself. The company.  The weather. The view.  The physical movement (though I was sore the next day from carrying Zora and Henry up some pretty steep hills). But next time, I'd like to a.) go somewhere closer, b.) stay over night or c.) go somewhere with fewer deathtraps/waterfalls.  It was a little crazy with 11 kids, the oldest being 7.  I did make Greg drive home.  It took us 3 hours to get home.

A Post About Prayer

Honesty Hour: My mom is a liar.  She said with her mouth that raising children is difficult but even when we were all little and my dad was working in San Jose while we were still living in Rialto, she made it look easy.  Let me hand make all the Halloween costumes and Christmas dresses and Christmas jammies for five children, every year.  Raising children seems so effortless for her that I thought it was.  And, let's be honest, three children is pretty easy.  Even when we had three kids I thought it was pretty easy.  But four is a different story.  Four is hard.

I have felt like I'm walking through molasses; like I have rocks on my shoulders; like my head is full of cotton; like I will never get anything done or never get enough done; like the walls of my house are closer in on me; like the dark is taking over; like all I want to do is sleep; like my life will never get any better because once my kids are out of the kid stage, they become teenagers and by all accounts that's worse than now.  You've guessed it.  I have a bit of postpartum depression.  It's a bit late setting here, but here it is.  The main culprit: lack of sleep.  While I go to bed between 9:30 and 10 every night, I sleep in 15-20 minute segments, sometimes, if I'm lucky, up to 45 minutes.  Zora is a terrible sleeper.  Really terrible.

So last night, as I'm rocking Zora to sleep at 2:30 am, after she'd woken up at 1 am, and am having sleep-deprived hallucinations of the kids putting plastic bags over Zora's face, I decided it was time to pray.  So I did.  I asked Heavenly Father to help Zora sleep.  And you know what.  He did.  Not right away but He did.  I finally got her back to sleep at 3:30 and she didn't wake up until I woke her up at 8:30 to go to church.  I had to get up at 7 (after hitting the alarm a few times), but that's still 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep!  I woke up happy.  My head was clear.  The cloud was gone.  Today was a good day.  

This wasn't the first time this has happened.  (Well Zora sleeping yes, but answers to prayers no).  I've had to pray every day for energy and motivation to get through the day.  And every day I remember to pray, Heavenly Father blesses me with energy and motivation and insight on how to change so my days are less chaotic--until about 6 and the sun sets and the walls start closing in again.

Today's revelation: I need to not be doing stuff all the time.  When I would usually start telling the kids to get ready for bed, I sat on the couch and nursed Zora while watching the other kids play.  And I let my shoulders relax and enjoyed watching them play.  And it felt good to sit and enjoy and not get things done.  And guess what?  The dishes still got done and the house still got cleaned up.  And now I'm posting to my blog.  Life did not end because I enjoyed it for a while.

New goals for this week: get out more and spend more time with my friends.  The more I've felt my house closing in on me, the less willing I've been to leave it.  But the Spirit gently reminded me this week, that I feel better when I get out more.  So that's the goal for this week--stop stressing about the train wreck that is taking 3 kids anywhere and just get out.

I also took a 2 hour nap after church today.  I'm feeling pretty good.

Advent

Do you remember way back in the day when I first started this blog in 2010 and I had the time and energy to do a post for every Advent activity?  I barely remember it too.  I do remember being bored out of my mind with just one kid at home and my aunts and older cousins telling me to enjoy it.  I haven't been bored in years.  Except while playing cars.  I hate playing cars.  I will play anything except cars.

Alas, back to Advent.  We are once again doing Advent.  But this year is different.  We having to do most of our activities in the afternoon or cut them short so we can get the kids in bed for school or run off to this practice or that.  I wonder how many more years we can keep this up.  I am not looking forward to the super busy teenage years.

The first day of Advent, the kids got Christmas jammies and our new Christmas book, Cajun Night Before Christmas, which Dad has been wanting for years.

 We made our annual visit to the Speedway Lights.  The light show as super fun but it was also super cold.  Zora was not impressed with her Ralphie outfit but at least she was warm.  Henry just cried because he refused to wear a coat.

 We made salt dough ornaments one day, which I then burnt while trying to make them quickly dry out and painted them the next day.  I think they turned out cute.

 For Family Night, we've been studying all the different people who recognized the Christ-child and talking about how we can recognize Jesus in our lives.  One night we used the Fisher-Price Nativity to act out the story.

 We made snowman pizzas for dinner on Thursday.

And now we're down to a week until Christmas and all the gifts are wrapped and ready to go.  Except Greg's.  I still have to make his.  I think I turn it into an advent activity and have the kids help me.