Spending Time With The Middle

I've bemoaned the fact that not having a job really stinks. Almost two years running, patiently waiting (?), and surviving on one income can be more than a little challenging. When the kids were small, we did the one income thing anyway, so I guess you could say we're use to it. I never thought, though, at this point in our lives, I would still be a stay-at-home mom. You've heard me cry and complain and wonder when the day will ever come that I'm back in a classroom.

(By the way, pray, Pray, PRAY for me, please. I submitted a resume a little over a week ago for a position that I would really, Really, REALLY like to have for the next school year. Fingers crossed and toes crossed).

But back to the present and the reason for today's entry. This morning the middle had a doctor's appointment. We dropped the other two off at school, ate breakfast, drove around aimlessly killing a little time, saw the doctor, and then killed a little more time in the grocery store. Can I say how much I enjoyed this young man's company?

I try my best to spend a little one-on-one time with each kid. Very early on in my mothering days I had a very wise pastor point out to me that it was important not to lump them all together as one kid. Because they are all two years apart, that was easy to do when they were toddlers. He showed me that I had to remember they were individuals and to treat them as such. I might be a slow learner, but I remember lessons like that.

So today was all about the middle. I like to call him my child of promise. He entered this world one year after we lost a little one near the end of the first trimester. I mourned that child, but welcomed the new one. He was never meant as a replacement, but only the Lord knows how special that pregnancy and his arrival was to me. I can still see us together in the first moments of mother and child and remember how irritated I was with the nurse who kept coming to take him away from me.

He joined a big brother and later welcomed a little sister. From that point on, I'm sure he has always felt he's been stuck in the middle.

But I happen to think that the middle's a good place to be.

So although I look forward to the day when I'm back to doing that other part of my life that I love that includes singing songs to memorize presidents and teaching about wars and keeping a bag of Dove dark chocolate tucked away in my desk, I'm thankful for days like today that remind me having all this free time as a mom is a good thing. I get to do fun stuff like breakfast and stalling so a kid can arrive at school just in time for the last five minutes of an English class.

I'm the mom I always wanted to be.