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We decided to liven up our Christmas Eve with a visit to the urgent care to check for strep throat. The good news is that no one has it. The bad news is that this tidbit of information cost $100 and two hours of time. But at least we didn’t leave empty handed. We determined that all the kids have normal blood pressure after they all begged for the nurse to use the cool cuff machine on them. And I got a fistful of just-in-case antibiotic prescriptions, which I will now file against future weekend or holiday antibiotic needs. If my kids get sick on weekdays I’m happy to take them to the doctor, but I’d rather give someone unnecessary antibiotics than spend $400 in emergency room fees to get a prescription.

The call to take everyone in to be checked was mine. I’m usually a better judge than this. But I didn’t want to be kicking myself on Christmas day wishing that I’d gotten the sore throats checked today. The trip was actually a cheerful one. Kiki grabbed the pair of Nintendo DS and I brought the wonderful mini DVD player that we were given last year. We managed to all stay occupied and cheerful throughout the visit. I’m counting it as family time.

Later tonight we’ll have our more traditional Christmas Eve events.

Today I did no business tasks. Instead I spent all day cleaning house, being with kids, cooking meals, planning ways to spend less money, and sewing. These things used to take up all of my time and attention. Lately they’ve only occupied a small fraction. Today I got an up close look at the results of this neglect. Nothing is disastrous, but I can see where I need to be doing better. I’m already planning goals for next year. I’ll make better ones if I look carefully at the things around here that need to be fixed.

Upcoming on this holiday season I was stressed and busy. I planned and orchestrated the necessary holiday chores right along with the business chores. The holiday was another thing to get done. So I accumulated gifts for the kids to give to one another. I then let the kids “go shopping” in the piles of stuff for their siblings. This accomplished the task of putting presents under the tree. Unfortunately it completely failed to teach the kids anything about giving. If you ask Link, Gleek, or Patches what they are giving to others, they can’t remember. They have no emotional connection to what they are giving. The point of Christmas is giving. In my hurry to put gifts under the tree most conveniently, I’ve robbed my children of the heart of the holiday. I’ve robbed them of the chance to hold a gift that they have carefully planned and watch someone else open it with delight. (Kiki is the exception to this. She selected and purchased all of her gifts with her own money and time.) It is too late to fix this Christmas. I think it will still turn out okay, but I want to make sure I do better with this. We have a year’s worth of birthdays coming. This time I will focus my organization energies on assisting my children to plan rather than on acquiring and planning for them.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning and mopping the kitchen. I realized as I wiped down chairs that I was cleaning up pumpkin spatter left over from Halloween. Today I assisted my children in cleaning their rooms. Among the bag of garbage I hauled out were piles of Halloween candy wrappers. I am dismayed that I’ve paid so little attention to cleanliness for almost two months. I am dismayed that at the end of two full days of cleaning there is still so much work to do. I am frightened to think what I’ll discover when I start scouring the bathrooms. I’ve been letting other things slide into the time that is supposed to be devoted to caring for my house. Rather than letting my time and attention be slurped into unnecessary internet surfing, I need to spend them on cleaning and requiring the kids to clean. Today was a much happier day because my kids had two extra rooms with play space in them.

Today I pulled out my big Tightwad Gazette book. Reading it helps me get back into the mindset of making my pennies stretch. I’ve spent the last two months focused on helping to bring in money. I’ll do that some more in the next months. But I’ve been neglecting efforts to make the money last. We have enough to get us through the next book release, but I’d much rather arrive at the next book release with money to spare. I want to pay down our debt on the house. If we can eliminate all the debt, we’ll have so much more freedom. I want to reach a point where I can loan large sums of money to people in need. I want to be able to do it on short notice and not care if I ever get the money back. I can’t count the number of times this year where I knew people in need and wished I had money to spare.

I need to put scripture study back into my days. I need to make my prayers less perfunctory. When I take the time to practice these things that I believe in, the rest of my life is far more balanced and happy. I need to share these things with my children as well, so that they can also benefit from the peace and focus it brings. A small investment of time in this area always makes a huge difference in how I feel about everything else.

The next three days have been declared business free. Hopefully by the end of them I’ll have rebalanced some of these things that have been out of order. Then perhaps I can pick up the business duties again with a better rhythm between the things I need to get done.

I don’t spend much time or energy anticipating the regular mail. It is delivered once per day, so once per day I go collect it and spend a couple minutes sorting the pile. Email is different. It is delivered as often as it is sent. I constantly wonder if something new has arrived in my mailbox, so I take a minute to click and check. Sometimes I do this even if I checked my mailbox only minutes ago. Any time I wander near my computer, I check email. Sometimes when I’m nowhere near my computer I wonder if new email has arrived and so I run and check. This means I’m checking email a number of times per day that is firmly in the double digit range. Most of the time the checking is pointless because nothing new has arrived, but while I’m clicking things anyway I’ll check livejournal and a couple of forums, neither of which have anything new either because I checked them the last time I checked email too. All the clicking results in the loss of 15-20 minutes that could have been spent on something useful.

So yesterday I tried an experiment. During the times of day when I’m supposed to be focused on house and kids, I turned my computer off completely. This way I could not fool myself into believing that it would only take a few seconds to glance at email. I got a lot more stuff done around the house than I have in recent weeks. And when I came back to the computer I found a batch of email that I could manage effectively in a little block of time. Amazingly, my email does not go bad if it sits unnoticed for an extra hour or two. I’m going to be turning my computer off much more frequently for the next few weeks. The kids are home and they need a mommy who will read stories and make cookies.

Today Link’s class had a talent show. There were the requisite short piano pieces and songs. There were, naturally a couple of kids with enough trophies to make the whole class jealous. There was even a girl in full jazz costume who could do backflips. There were also kids who showed card collections or simple drawings on binder paper. One kid demonstrated a card trick, but his need for a flat surface meant that all the audience could see was his back. Link decided that for his talent he was going to demonstrate the milk carton catapult he built in cub scouts. He stood up there and told about it. The looks of polite interest disappeared once Link started flinging marshmallows into the audience. The audience surged to their feet waving arms and shouting “Over here!” Link’s was the only talent where everyone stood up and cheered.

Link sat back down, grinning from ear to ear. I’m so glad he got the chance to be really cool.

A couple of days ago I had a phone conversation with a friend who is still working to adapt after having her first baby. The conversation started me thinking about my experiences making the same sort of adjustment. I did not keep a live journal back then, so I can’t look it up. I can just do my best to assemble the fragments of memory floating in my head.

When I had my first baby I was at a transitional point in my life. I was 22 years old and just finishing college. Up until that point I had spent the majority of my life as a student. I was finally ready to shed school and do something else. Babycare slid right into the vacuum left behind by schoolwork and classes. I was emotionally ready to dive into a completely new endeavor. And dive I did. I immersed myself into motherhood. I remember feeling as if I’d finally gotten to the best part of my life. It was hard, but so joyful that I did not mind. I spent hours holding my baby and documenting every small step of her growth. My experience with the next three babies was much different. I kept expecting to find that joyful glow, but it was not as easy to find. My life was not as primed for transition as it was with the first baby. I had acquired things that I had to sacrifice to tend to the needs of the new infant. The joy was there, but not constant.

I’ve often heard people say that after the third child, one more hardly makes an impact. That was not true for me. Adjusting to four kids was by far the hardest. I think it was because I was really able to see what I was giving up to bring the child into the world and nurture him. I had begun doing the business accounting. I watched the baby and the accounting compete for my limited attention and energy. I watched my parenting of the other kids slide into survival mode as I struggled to keep everything above water. It was all made harder because Howard was so much less available to help than he had been for the other babies. His Novell job was siphoning off about 60 hours per week with an even larger percentage of his energy and enthusiasm. Schlock Mercenary demanded another 20-30 hours per week. I honestly do not comprehend how we all carried the load that we did. It was a long, hard pregnancy and a long, hard slog for the first months of Patches life as I attempted to establish a new equilibrium.

I remember people coming to visit me with my new baby. They would coo over the baby and talk to me. They all expected me to have that new-baby glow. I remembered having that new-baby glow with Kiki and wondered what was wrong with me that I did not feel that way. There were definitely joyful times, but they were interspersed with times when I could see clearly the cost in time and energy that was not spent on other important things. I remember feeling guilty that Patches did not get the same unadulterated love and adoration that Kiki received at the same age. I worried that my stress and tears would somehow be communicated to him and that he would be hurt by it. I worried that I would never be able to bond properly with him.

It did not turn out that way. I gave him what I had available at the time. Some days I gave him joy and adoration. Other days he merely got carried while I tended to other needs. It did not hurt him. Nor did it hurt him for me to hand him off to someone else for awhile so that I could refill my reservoirs of energy. As I recovered, and as he got older, I had more and more to give. There was more energy for joy and laughter. I slowly realized that love for a child does not have to start with a new-baby glow. Lasting love for a child is like love for anyone. It is built moment by moment, service by service. For the first six weeks it is all built by the mother (or father. Dads build relationships too.) From the moment the baby first smiles, that changes. Suddenly the relationship becomes a mutual construction.

Looking back, I can see the hard times, the struggles, the adjustments. I’m not eager to go back and do them again, but I am very glad to have them in my store of experience. If nothing else I can talk to my friend on the phone and understand what she is going through. Sometimes I can even find words that help.