Parenting is a tag team sport. I am more convinced of that this week than ever. We have three small children. (6,5, and 11.5 months) We have been helping my sister in law and her boyfriend out by watching their two children in the evenings while they work, I have a fledgling fudge business, then a friends mother passed and I have been watching their small son while they make arrangements. Meanwhile Bobby is working crazy hours for this house that is being featured on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. On top of all of this, just to make life fun, Bobby wasn't feeling well today so when he wasn't working or sleeping he was laying on the couch looking pitiful. Then it happened. I should have seen it coming. All the signs were there. I'm a mom for goodness sakes. I've been down this road more times that I can count. I babysit kids who have a yucky cough and a runny nose and what happens? I now have a baby with a fever, runny nose, and what sounds to be a sore throat.
Normally this would stress me out and then I would tag Bobby. We have been doing this since the day Isaac was born. I go go go till I can't go any more than I tag him in and he is strong and does the job while I rest. This system has worked with our "deal" (I clean up poopy diapers, he handles all throw up), with migraines, heart surgeries, kids hospital stays, even when Chloe was in the NICU for a week. When I couldn't take it, he jumped in. The nurses said that's never happened before, a father staying alone over night with a preemie. Being able to fully count on him is such a blessing. I can not even tell you how much.
Now he's sick and gone, the baby is sick and I have more fudge orders than I can shake a stick at. Plus I've run out of containers. My back aches and I can't get to the bottom of the clothes pile.
Now would be when I would tag Bobby. He'd jump in, help clean he house, tame the laundry, find me containers, and nurse the baby while I got some sleep. Real sleep. He would do it all with the kids laughing and the baby well on the mend. He would deny all that of course but it's true because it;s happened more times than I can count.
So my thinking is: How the heck do parents do it either alone or where they operate as individuals and not as a tag team? I mean if you look at the Bible you can see something interesting. God instituted the leave and cleave command and then to enforce it He said to be fruitful and multiply. Yeah sure, ok it was to to help populate the earth, but by having kids you are kinda forced to cleave. You have to work together and work through things. There's a verse that talks about how if one man does something he can do so much and you would think that two would be able to do twice as much but it's not true. They are able to do so much more. It takes two baby.... and I am defiantly in need of my better half.
2 comments:
Hearing you!
It really isn't easy doing it alone. I spent large parts of the years raising my 5 children, pretty much alone as my husband worked away in logging camps etc.
I write about the years when the kids were teens at this site:
http://mothersjourney.shawwebspace.ca/
My kids were not allowed to attend the only church youth group in the small town we were living in because one or two of my kids were seen by some of the church people as what you describe as "punk" ...
I don't blame them, I guess.
Still it was hard.
Norma, I commend you for our faithfulness to God and to your husband. You are an awesome lady!!!!
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