I want to call him or drop by and see him. I want to sit across from him at the table and talk about anything and everything with him. I want to see him talking to my kids and imparting his life experience to them. I want to joke with him and hear his laugh.

Most of all, I miss him in my Mother’s arms. I miss them together. I can’t really express in words how hard it is to see them apart. The pain in her eyes. The knowledge that as much as I am hurting, the pain is a million times harder for her.

Yesterday I was reading a blog and it asked for prayers because their daughter in law was being moved to hospice. She had fought her brain tumor once and it had come back. She was losing her battle with it and was near the end of her young life. She was leaving behind a six year old son and a husband. I want to shake my hands and yell, why them, why that young mom? Why my young father? Why are these souls taken so early.

There are no answers . . .

When we arrived we went to our room to get settled. The room was HOT! We called down to the front desk and they said they would send up an engineer. We waited a half hour, which felt like a couple hours, and there was no engineer. I called back down to the desk and they told me they were having cooling issues and would we like to be upgraded. Of course we did.

The new room was twice the size and had a balcony overlooking the pool, best of all it was ICE COLD. We decided that we wanted to have dinner at Frank & Albert’s, made reservations and decided to just relax for the afternoon. Just relax, no kids asking us for things, nobody calling us needing anything, nothing. Just us relaxing. At first it felt so foreign and then it came back to me.

I had been reading the book Women Food and God since the beginning of summer. I was only about 1/3 of the way through it. I closed the book at 11 pm after having finished reading it completely! It was wonderful to be able to read the book! It is a great read, one I will write more about in another post. 2/3 of a book done in one day, I cannot remember the last time I did that. I would have to say when I was on bedrest with Annie was the last time I sat down and read a book cover to cover.

Bill and I talked a little about how weird it was to have all this free time. (By the way it was only about 20 hours, but when you haven’t had free time in a long time 20 hours feels like an eternity.) We wondered in amazement what we used to do when all our days were like this.

Dinner was amazing. We sat, talked and ate at a slow pace. It was nice. After dinner we took a stroll around the resort and went back to the room to watch a movie on cable, since we don’t have that at home either. (Which after having cable for only 20 hours I know why we don’t there is so much crap on there!)

It was a great getaway. We had a very enjoyable time. The kids loved their time with Grammy and I think Grammy liked it too. We are blessed to have such a great woman in our life. Grammy always takes good care of all of us. Thanks Mom for taking the time. I love you!

It is also a sign that the kids have been shopping with me a lot. We have so many cereal varieties down there! The shelf above it is lined with bags of chips and pretzels. And no we are not huge mayo consumers. This tired Momma must have picked up another jar just in case we were out.

I want to work hard to dwindle this down. I need to be much more organized in food planning and preparation. I want to challenge myself to use as much of the pantry as I can in a month. Come 9/20/10 I will take another picture of my pantry. Hopefully there will be a decrease in the amount of excess we have.

Tuesday is Elizabeth’s birthday. She isn’t here. Every year this date opens that wound and makes my heart ache.

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.” ~

“Will you love me for the rest of my life?…… No, I’ll love you for the rest of mine.” ~quote from the movie Phenomenon

There is no love like the unconditional love of a parent. My Parents gave me unconditional love. Even Bill, who loves me with reckless abandon does not have the same love. He could pick up and leave me tomorrow, a parent would never do that. (Or at least mine wouldn’t since I do know of parents who have done that.) Bill could get so angry or frustrated with me that he would never speak to me again. My parents would never do that.

Nobody will ever love me like my Father did and being without that love hurts. I used to have two people who loved me like that and now I only have one. A while back my Mother shared with me a page from my Father’s journals. It was a page about when he found out he was going to be a Father. Since I was the first child born to my parents that meant it was a page written when he found out about me. It talks of dreams and hopes for me. I won’t share the entire letter because it is just so personal to me but I will share the last lines of it.

Of course I did learn all those things and I do, in fact, value love over anything else.

As readers know I struggled to build my family. To create a unit of people that I would love with this unconditional love. I am now consumed with the knowledge that one day I will leave them too, just as my Father left me. It will hurt them. There will be a hole in them that I will not be able to fix, that nothing can heal. I won’t be there to help them move forward, they will have to struggle with it just as I am.

These are facts of life, but it doesn’t make them any easier. Perhaps being a parent myself makes this even more hard.

I actually never thought I would be up for the job of stay at home mom. I never thought I would be able to give up my career and my independence. Then when the first two kids were born I really couldn’t imagine another way. It stunned and shocked me and honestly I have been having an inner conflict for the past 6.5 years over this discrepancy. (Really it didn’t come to a head until a couple of years ago. The first couple years I was so busy I didn’t have time to think about not being fulfilled.) There is a part of me who never wanted this career.

I have struggled so long and hard through this. Battling feelings of inadequacy and contemplating my life’s purpose. It isn’t that I feel inadequate as a Mother because I feel like I do a pretty good job balancing all that I have on my plate. It is just that I want more, or rather I wanted more. I felt inadequate about my productiveness or things that I would be able to accomplish in my life.

Just recently I have come to the realization that motherhood is my career. Whether a catalyst for this was my Father’s death or whether this would have happened through my constant metal evaluation, I don’t know. I do know that with reflection on the old hippie adage “happiness is a choice”, which my Father had said to me on more than one occasion, I decided to find happiness in my life. Instead of seeing mothering as a stepping stone I decided to be more fulfilled by it. I chose to see the glass half-full rather than half-empty.

Changing my outlook on mothering has made a huge impact on my day to day life. I no longer avoid and dread the dishes, resenting the fact that they were my duty. I no longer walk over clothes or things out of place on the floor, I reach down, pick them up and am happier for it. I am seeking new goals, like keeping the house clean instead of the type of goals I used to reach for.

When I felt like this was just a stepping stone, or rather a stepping stone to the side, I was unhappy. I was consumed with debating what I would do when the kids were out of the house. This would lead me to focusing on the other things I wanted to do like further education, writing a book, politics, or learning web design, just to name a few. Then I would be upset and disgruntled that I wasn’t doing those things. It was so very foolish and I am embarrassed to admit that it took me 6.5 years to figure out what was really at play here.

Bottom line is I was thinking mothering was temporary. Imagine a mother of four thinking this was temporary. No wonder I wasn’t satisfied with it.

My new goals center around my career. Just naming it as such has improved things greatly. It was such a relief to not be upset about having to wash the dishes one more time. It was liberating to allow myself this as a career. Knowing that there are things I still want to do but placing this at the highest level of importance, just like anyone who has a job. The job must be king but there are other interests that the person can do in their free time.

Now there is a crux in this situation and that is with a different job someone has time off later. Mothering never takes a day off, unless I literally leave town and my family behind, which I do on occasion because it is good for me. However, my three older girls will be in elementary school in a couple month full time. Paul will be home with me for another year or two. I can do more things with just one child around and eventually even he will go off for six hours a day.

I am working on finding the balance in all these things. Defining Mothering as my career, who I am with and without this, and my interests is a delicate balance. One I know I will find askew from time to time. One that won’t always be fulfilling and where I will have to dig deep to make happiness my choice.

I see people all around dissatisfied with their current situation, as if being upset with it would make it better. I was like that, though not as upset as I see many. It wasn’t a good thing. I want to always chose happiness. I want to find the joy in each day. I don’t ever want a day to go by where I haven’t found that joy because you never know when you are experiencing your last day.

I am sure that my Dad thought he would have a health scare and get a second chance. He didn’t. You don’t always get a second chance.

Make sure you really live every single day of your life and don’t count on a second chance to really start living.

Tonight I went shopping at the mall with the kids and my Mother. We had a delightful time. We ate dinner, walked around window shopping, trying on clothes and purchasing some stuff. We had simple and pure fun, but it was bittersweet.

My Father should have been there with us. He should have been egging the kids on to drive me more batty, like he always did. He should have been telling my Mother she looked fabulous and she should get the clothes she was looking at, like he always did. He should have been there laughing with us, like he always did. He never would have wanted to leave us.

I think that this is the hardest thing right now. I know he never wanted to leave, but he couldn’t help it. I know he would want to still be here, but he isn’t. I am surrounded by moments that make me wish he were still here. Life is hard. You love someone so much that they are so much a part of you. When they leave you a part of you is gone, but you keep living and being reminded of the hole that remains.

Father’s Day is approaching and this will be the first time my Daddy is in heaven for the occasion. Normally right now I would be scrambling to try to find the perfect gift to show him how much I love him. This year I am just trying to figure out how I can celebrate Father’s Day without him. Certainly will be a bittersweet day. Bill is the best Father I could imagine for my children. My Father is the best Father I could have imagined for myself. I miss him terribly.

First and foremost I have lost my Father. Not a day goes by that I don’t shed a tear over this. Not a moment goes by that I don’t wish he wasn’t still here. My life is never going to be the same without him. Just recently I have moved into the angry phase of my grief. I want to know “why him.” Of all the people on the Earth why him? What am I supposed to learn from this? What is my Mother supposed to learn from this? How do we move forward without him? I don’t have the answer to those questions and I still grieve for him daily. I don’t think I will ever really get over it. In fact, I am pretty sure I never will.

The Gluten Free thing has me spiraling. Every time I turn around there is another thing we have always done that we cannot do. Breakfast out, drive thru ice cream cones, baking Christmas cookies with my children each year, learning to bake bread, and the list goes on and on. I am grieving over the loss of my normal life. There is no way for the rest of us to continue on eating gluten when Paul cannot have it (except in rare occasions). We all have had to adjust to becoming gluten free. The pancakes we had this morning were grainy and unlike the pancakes we had last week. These may seem like little things but they represent the loss of my normal life. I am sad, overwhelmed and feel very defeated by this diagnosis.

In addition to the food issues of the gluten free lifestyle there is another side to it. I don’t want to be that Mom. I am a very laid back person. I don’t like to interfere with my children. I don’t want to hover around Paul all the time to ensure that he is not eating gluten, yet that is what I have to do. We aren’t talking about an allergy where he just gets an upset tummy or has a little diarrhea. We are talking about an allergy where if he eats gluten he doesn’t grow. If he eats gluten it will take several days for his villi to recover and in those days he will absorb less nutrients. If he absorbs less nutrients he doesn’t grow. He hasn’t grown in a year, this example shows me how dire this transition is for us. I have to be the “in your face” kind of Mom that I can’t stand. I have to make sure my boy can grow and keep him gluten free.

I just want my normal life back. I know that I will move more into acceptance at some point but today I just want my Father to be alive and Paul to be growing without all these restrictions. I want my children to not be so accustomed to me crying that they don’t even ask or wonder why I am crying.

90% of the time I am upbeat about it all. I accept that things happen for a reason and that this is all part of my life plan to make me the person God wants me to be, but somedays I just get sad.

Fear not, a redesign is in the works!!!!! I am so excited! I have a nice and bright banner designed for the top. Hopefully after this the facelifts will be more often.

I have lost my Father. He passed away peacefully at 9:15 am on April 27, 2010. Though he is in heaven and I will meet him again, I have lost his daily presence in my life.

I have lost my innocence. While it seems crazy that I am 35 and claiming I have lost my innocence it is a true feeling I have. This sort of innocence has to do with being in a state of unknowing. I knew people died as a matter of life but until I felt this death to the depth of my soul I didn’t really know it.

I am at a loss for words. There isn’t anything I can say to suggest how my life is impacted by his death. There isn’t anything anyone can say to me to take the pain away. Words escape me during this time. My Father always said that when he was sad or upset he couldn’t be creative, I have found the same to be true about myself.

If you knew my Father or want details about the memorial for him please email me at sandi@fivebrowns.com.

My Father had a massive heart attack. He then suffered from strokes rendering him unable to come back to us. Never were there words so hard to hear.

His life has impacted mine in amazing ways. There isn’t a way to write everything he means to me except to say that he will ALWAYS be a part of me. I am who I am because of things I learned from him. I carry him in my heart always. Many things I say or do have a bit of him in them.

I am so glad I witnessed his love for my Mother. While they had differences they are soul mates. His love was so strong for her that with his last conscious efforts on this Earth he held her and told her he loved her, pulling her in as close to him as she could. Nothing was more important to him than ensuring she knew he loved her.

My heart aches and aches for my Mother. While Bill is my husband and I love him dearly nothing compares to the love of parent and child. Just like my Father—she is part of me. I am who I am because of pieces of her I carry with me. I want him to get up and be by her side once more. I don’t want her living with this pain.

Over the past days I have had some alone time with him. While they were so hard emotionally they are moments I will treasure. He is my Dad, I love him more than I can say.

I don’t know when he will pass but I pray that it will be peaceful.

My life will never be the same. . .

The first one happened about 5 am with my Mother. I met her in the hospital waiting room to discuss the massive heart attack my Father had just had. As I sat there with her I found it hard to process the complete situation. Anytime massive preceeds another word it carries a lot of weight and this time the weight was very heavy. My Father was already in surgery surrounded by professionals trying to save his life.

As I sat with my Mother she tried to remain calm even though every fiber of her being was on overdrive. She was so strong standing in the face of adversity. Her world was on hold, my Father was not there to hold her up. They are like peas in a pod, sure they fight and bicker, but they are each others world.

As we sat there waiting for the update on his surgery we talked. What we talked about isn’t something I can recall. The words massive heart attack were swirling around in my mind making it hard for me to process much else.

The surgery didn’t go as hoped and he is now resting in the ICU. He remains in critical condition and awaits the next surgery.

I talked to concerned family and friends today retelling each one the same news. It wasn’t easy to discuss so often, but I knew they were asking out of love and concern. These too were difficult situations but not as difficult as the ones awaiting me when I picked up my children.

I returned home to take care of the kids. As soon as I picked up Annie and Kimberly from school the questions started rolling in. Another very difficult conversation occurred as we were walking home.

How do you honestly answer your child’s questions regarding their beloved Papa without scaring them? How do you comfort them but be realistic at the same time? These are not easy questions to navigate, especially when you yourself don’t know the answers.

Later when Bill arrived back home we decided to sit them all down and discuss the situation. They were definitely concerned, their little minds trying to figure out this situation. They had dozens of questions, questions we didn’t know the answers to. We did our best to guide them through it.

As we were ending the discussion Kimberly said “tonight I am going to make a wish that Papa is all better”. If only it worked like that! Oh how I wish it did.

I remain in a state of shock. I have prayed countless times today, knowing the prayers are being heard, but not knowing how they will be answered. I am anxiously awaiting answers and clinging to hope.

Our older girls are all well aware of the rules and limitations around our house and they do things with a much more deliberate intent. We know we have to give bigger punishments if we expect for them to learn, but we find ourselves having a hard time sticking to it.

Punishments like going to your room for a good amount of time or making them miss things that are important to them are the much more painful to them and by extension more painful for me. I know I must do it or chaos will reign, but it is hard.

I thought about my children and the impact this might have on them and I was overwhelmed with positive thoughts. I believe that this will show them the great value I place on life. I know if I, or anyone I loved, were the ones needing bone marrow I would want someone else to make this small sacrifice.

This is something I can do easily. My body hasn’t always been there for me when I needed it. It didn’t do things that normal bodies did, but it can do this. And someday it might be the match for someone and make a world of difference for them.

I know this isn’t for everybody, but I know this is for me.

We haven’t had a weekend without back to back parties in 3 weeks. that means we haven’t had a lazy pajama day on a weekend. We love having fun at the parties and celebrating so we can’t skip any.

Who knew with 4 kids you would have such a busy time with the parties. I sure didn’t anticipate this and Paul isn’t even in school yet. I would have to say keeping Annie and Kimberly in the same class is a good idea in order to not have more parties to attend.

I don’t want to seem like we don’t enjoy the parties, or love celebrating each friend’s day—we certainly do. Which is why we accept the invitation, pick a gift for the special child and attend the party. I am glad the children are so well liked by their peers.

I am sure the parties will ease up sometime soon, or at least I hope they will.

As soon as Kimberly started to tell me what she learned she got big tears in her eyes. She said, “and my little bro Paulie wouldn’t have had the same things as us.” “Mom, he would have to use dirty bathrooms and not ride on buses.” “He couldn’t go places we can.” She was hurt by the facts. I was hurt by the facts and the pain in her face.

Annie chimed in to tell me similar stories and was so choked up that she gave Paul a long hug. She wanted to know why people would do this in the first place. I took her in my arms and told her I didn’t have an answer. I cannot imagine thinking any different of any human based on the color of their skin. She shook her head and walked away.

They were so thankful to Dr. King for making all things possible for their brother. I too find myself in awe of his dreams of freedom for all people. She said she wanted to be like him and I just smiled. He had a dream and he made his life work achieving it. I can’t think of a better role model for my daughter.

A wise woman wrote this on her facebook status on Monday:

Thanks to the impossible dreams of giants before me, my dream of a family is now my reality. ~ Jill Catlett

Dr. King was born in 1929 in Georgia. He dreamed of a reality that seemed beyond possible, yet he achieved it. I hope my children will be filled with this sort of determination, whether it be for worldly ideas like Dr. King’s or meaningful personal goals like creating their family. The greatest of things come from the greatest trials.

Life is an amazing journey. For some reason I always felt I would adopt. Even as a young girl I dreamed of it. Adoption is one of those times in life where you really feel God moving in your life. (You can feel free to substitute God with the universe/fate or whatever floats your boat. For me it is God but I know it isn’t for everyone.) It was like that seed was planted deep inside of me and would grow when the time was right.

For me the time was right when infertility seemed like a road of no hope. Learning that no matter how hard I tried and how much I wanted to have a child that it was most likely out of my realm was hard. At that moment that seed began to sprout and grow. It insisted that we tell everyone and anyone that we were looking to adopt. That if someone heard of anyone that they would tell us. From all the pain of infertility and loss came hope in the form of Kimberly. She was the miracle we had been searching so long to find.

Years later after seven hazardous pregnancies and two scary births we found adoption once more. This time it was a son from Ethiopia. He was the one we had been waiting on to complete this family.

There isn’t a way to put into words how much of an impact adoption has on my life. It is like trying to explain how my beating heart has made my life great. My heart has made my life amazing because by beating it has allowed me to live. Adoption has made my life amazing because adoption has been in it. I am so glad that my life has been touched by this miracle.

I have some dear friends, Rick, Christi and Bella who are looking to complete their family through the adoption of a child. Each journey is so unique and for them their journey has brought them to the moment where they are looking to adopt a child domestically. On the face of it domestic adoption can seem so easy, there are so many children without homes and so many families waiting for a child, but it isn’t that easy. You have to wait until you find the perfect match. Much like dating to find the perfect spouse for yourself this too is a long process.

If you know of anyone who is looking to place their child for adoption please consider passing along their website. Help be part of their miracle of adoption.

I know many who come to this blog are adoptive* parents themselves. Celebrate the joy of the miracle of adoption in your home tonight. Whether in the form of a tickle fest or a shared bowl of ice cream. Remember to hold your miracles tightly and give them an extra squeeze from me.

*Even if you are not an adoptive parent but just a parent of an amazing child who was brought to you in a different way other than adoption please follow the above suggestion for tonight’s activities.

Learning to handle the many moods and activities of life requires solitude.
Do not let the demands of an overly active world rob your children of their peace.
Constant stimulation without balance of quietness creates chaos.
The child who early befriends solitude becomes one with all that is and inherits everything.

First you must embrace solitude in your own life.
It is more difficult than you think.
Distractions are everywhere.
Even the mind is noisy.

Give your children time to play without agenda, to read without purpose, to daydream without limits, and discover without fear.
Allow yourself the same.

This excerpt is from the book The Parent’s Tao Te Ching by William Martin.

I have been too wrapped up in things lately. I need to calm my mind more. I feel like I have forgotten how to relax and that is sad. I am so very busy with the demands of wife, mother and friend that I don’t take time for just me. I need to model this far more. I want my children to know how to give themselves down time.

For me this doesn’t mean I need to go to the spa or go shopping by myself those are things that would be nice but wouldn’t bring me solitude my life lacks. In fact those things would just bring one more rush to the already rushed life.

What does it mean to me? A year after my initial post I am still feeling frazzled and I am preoccupied with matters that don’t matter. This tells me I have yet to learn this lesson.

Is it this time of year? Yes, and no. I think that this time of year brings a slew of hurried activities and makes me crazy but I think I am like this all year. It is hard to quiet the mind. The 12 days between Annie and Kimberly’s birthday always take their toll. They are some of the most wonderful times, celebrating my two oldest children, but they are chaotic and crazy there is no way around them.

Since the Girls have entered school I have noticed each of them feeling more like they need me to entertain them. They are already losing that wandering spirit that their childhoods afforded them. They too will one day battle the balance much like I am. Hopefully I will have finally figured it out and can help them.