I am tired of winter and found myself looking at some old photos from this past fall, when the trees were still heavy with ruby apples, the grass was green, and the pigtails were stubby. Brinley is growing so hard and so fast these days, adding new words to her vocabulary, getting a little more strong-willed every hour, and finding her place in this crazy family of ours. I have grown more and more sure that she is our last baby EVER and I find my heart aching a little looking at old photos of her, knowing we’re leaving so much behind and won’t get to write the story of another life. But I am SO DONE. So tired. The children have dried me up from the inside out. In a bittersweet way, of course. Worth every parched piece of body and soul, but wow, I am pooped.

Everyone always said that being a parent was the hardest job in the world but I kind of thought they were exaggerating and that it would be one big stay-at-home party. Yeah, no.

Anyways, here we are. A full house, full hearts, full calendar. Filled to the brim.

OK. So January kind of sucked. Things are on the upswing now, though, and it’s time to lighten the mood here!

How’s this for a laugh?

This was me in grade six, looking mighty fine in my dirty old turtleneck and swanky plaid vest from Northern Reflections. It was before I learned how to style my unruly hair or how not to eat four pizza pops for lunch everyday.

My aunt put this precious gem of a photo in a cozy little Christmas frame and gave it to me this summer. Thanks for bringing up old wounds, Auntie Frieda! Kidding. I am at peace with my portly past.

Anyways, Steve gets home from Argentina tomorrow and we are all so ready for his return. I have missed him, and have heartily realized all the things he does for me and our family since he’s been gone. Oh, Absence and your fondness-blooming tendencies. He even pre-arranged to have flowers delivered to me TWICE while he was gone. Total brownie points there. Wait, those brownie points are actually cancelled out by the head lice, stomach flu, night terrors and general discord I put up with for the last three weeks while he was traipsing through South America. He owes me BIG TIME. The flowers were nice, though. I will think of them as I am sitting on a white-sand beach all by myself, away from the children, away from it all.

Thanks to everyone who was such a source of kind encouragement while I was having a rough go on my own. I have felt so loved and supported these past few weeks.

Stomach flu, head lice, coughs and colds, fevers and now night terrors. It’s been neat.

Last week I was broken. I hit a new low and was having a rough, rough time. I don’t feel ready to write about it just yet, but this week is so much better. My mom, bless her heart, hopped on a plane to help me pick up the pieces. Sounds dramatic, but don’t worry, no one died or is terminally ill or getting divorced. It was just a dark few days there for me and I am so thankful for friends and family who helped me kick through to find some light again.

Ha! When will I learn not to boast about good health? The minute after our last holiday guest left, Steve started barfing. Then it was Avelyn’s turn, then Karenna’s, then mine. We spent the last days of 2011 in a dehydrated stupor, wondering what had hit us. It was a pretty bad few days with the entire household falling ill. Brinley managed to escape the bug, but has given up sleeping decently in the night AND the day, so even though she wasn’t barfing, she was howling for hours on end, keeping all of us who were barfing from actually getting the rest we needed to recover. Nice.

I was feeling pretty emotionally low for a few days there; partly due to the usual post-Christmas slump we all battle, and then throw in a dose of cabin fever, a few litres of upchuck, dozens of barf-soaked loads of laundry to deal with and a house that went to pot in no time flat….I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and as though we are living in this endless purgatory of life with young children who are always sick and always crying. I have friends with kids who are older and they were enjoying the local ski hills together as a family, or going on date nights with their husbands and I was just feeling as though we’ll never be there. Our kids are so demanding, so young, so close in age that it’s easy to wonder if it is ever going to get any easier. When will Steve and I have time alone together without a screaming child interrupting our conversation? When?!

Anyways, the fog has lifted and I am feeling better now. The house is in marginally better shape, the kids are back at school (SCORE!) and things are feeling a little more manageable. Oh, the pendulum of emotion has taken me for a ride and for now I’ll enjoy the upswing. We really are blessed beyond measure; sometimes it’s just hard to recognize the blessings when they’re dripping in fresh vomit.

Here’s a photo of us lighting the advent candle at our Christmas Eve service this year. It captures the family quite well: a blur of motion, lots of children, and a fire hazard.

The Little Drummer boy has been on repeat and it’s the girls’ favourite Christmas Carol. Check it!

Oh, the joy of holiday memories captured forever in those perfect photographs. Easier said than done. Every year in the past, I have tried to dress the three girls up in matching dresses, pay eight bucks to have a Portrait Studio drone slump them in front of a crooked winter wonderland backdrop and hope for the best. They were rarely cooperative and this year I’ve decided to just skip that trip and instead celebrate the entire past year in photos by putting together photo books as gifts. I loved the layouts and design options at Shutterfly and I used them (and plan to from now on) to commemorate the past year’s milestone photos.

I do believe the key to strong family photos is a good camera and over at UrbanMoms they recently reviewed the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3X.

Here is what they had to say about it:

“I am my family’s photographer. It’s a role I take seriously because I, more than anyone else, enjoy reviewing the photos that capture our lives together. I’m the one who downloads them onto the computer, spends time editing, selecting favourites for screensavers, prints, photobooks and gifts. I take pride in my role and in my skills. I’ve taken photography courses, done extensive research before buying any cameras, carry cameras with me wherever we go, and am quick to pull them out and chronicle our days photographically. But I’m always looking to improve my skills, my tools and my end results. So when I was asked to review the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3X I jumped at the opportunity. I have spent the last week playing with this beautiful camera and I’m…”

(Click here to read the full review.)

UrbanMoms and Panasonic want to help you preserve your family’s special moments. UrbanMoms is giving away a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3X to one lucky member! Visit UrbanMoms for a chance to win!

So, I bought some skinny jeans. And Steve HATES them. He finds it laughable that when they started coming back in style a few years ago we were both snickering at the fools who bought into the trend and now, here I am, wearing what I once mocked. Fashion is a mysterious enterprise, what can I say? Owell, I like them and Steve is getting used to them, too.

The other day he said, “Hey, I know! When you were those skinny jeans you look just like Despicable Me!”

Then I wound up my skinny little-ankled pant leg and kicked him in the left butt cheek. (Not really, but come ON.)

It’s three in the morning when I hear her footed pajamas pad down the hallway to our bedroom. She opens the door and whispers, “Mom, I peed in my underwear.” I roll out from under the covers and assure her, “It’s OK, Karenna. Let’s get you some clean ones that are nice and dry.” I stumble to the laundry room, flick on the light and strip off her wet p.j.s, get her a new pair of underwear and say, “Alright, now let’s pick you some new, clean jammies to wear now.”

“But I want those jammies,” she protests as she points at the urine-soaked heap we just pulled off of her a moment ago.

“But they’re all wet, Karenna,” I reason. “Let’s find some here that are dry so we can go back to bed.”

I see her body stiffen with anger and she starts to lean into the beginnings of a tantrum. She crumples into an angry ball on the floor. I go to pick her up and she flails and wails. With a calm, firm voice I explain, “It’s the middle of the night. You cannot scream and wake up the whole house. Let’s get you dressed and go back to bed.” I put a new nightie on her and lead her back to bed. She is SCREAMING. I tell her that if she continues to have a fit, I will have to take her sister out of her bedroom since it’s not fair to wake her. She screams louder, kicks the wall hard. I pick up a groggy Avelyn and get her tucked into the other room with a spare mattress on the floor so she’ll be spared her sister’s wrath. Then I go back to Karenna who is frothing in her bunk like a rabid coyote, now angry that her sister is gone. “If you have a fit like this in the middle of the night, you can’t share a room with your sister. That’s how it works.”

Her tantrum continues to escalate, an unstoppable freight train headed straight for my heart and I leave her in her room, slamming the door behind me and running to my bathroom to sit on the lid of the toilet with my face in my hands and cry.