Put em' up!

I love my husband so stinkin’ much.  We got in a big fight this weekend.  Sam and I rarely…RARELY fight.  It is rare that we even disagree.  We both love and adore one another.  So what would two people who rarely disagree, who love and adore one another have to fight about?  Kids.

Toddlers are tough.  And not tough like strong or durable (they are that too), but tough like wanna pull your hair out!  They are so tough that Sam informed me the other day that he wasn’t sure we were cut out for more.  Yea, that didn’t go over so well.  We had always agreed that we wanted a big family.  We love having people over and we love our family, so four children is what we have discussed for the longest time.  Granted, having two toddlers 15 months apart and Kael with his Sensory Processing Disorder makes for a lot of work, not that it doesn’t come without its rewards.

Here is how our fight came about.  Sam called me and wanted to know if I cared if he went up to visit a friend in Kansas City for the day on Sunday.  He asked, he didn’t tell.  I hummed and hawed, wanting him to be able to go, but knowing that it meant I would be home all day by myself with the little boys.  I am home Saturday’s while Sam works all day by myself with them.  Two days in a row, by myself…UH!  That is a lot of work!  I explained this to him, that I didn’t love the idea of being home alone with the little boys two days in a row and that he wouldn’t want to be either.  Right then it was like a light bulb went off in his head.  If neither of us would want to be home all day with our boys by ourselves, maybe we shouldn’t have more.

No, no, no, no no!  How I wished I could have just said, “Sure honey, that is a great idea!  Go, be free, have FUN!  Enjoy!”  So instead, I got my future turned upside down…my future babies were being ripped from my future dreams and I became very upset.  I felt like on top of it Sam was telling me we were bad parents.  We have since worked it all out.  It turned out to be a very good discussion where we sat and talked about all that we desire for our children and our family.  What traditions we loved and valued in our upbringing.  And we also took stock of the importance of our time as individuals and as a couple independent of our children.

This argument was awesome.  It wasn’t awesome in the middle of it, but it stirred conversation that went past, “How was your day?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” “Good.”

It brought us back to our hopes and dreams and plans and desires and goals and vision…it encouraged us and spurred us to be better parents, better workers, better people, better for each other.

Sam still wants more kids.  YAY! It was a momentary realization for him that toddlers are very time consuming, energy consuming, mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, consuming.  He realized that we never fought until we had kids.  For him, it isn’t that he wouldn’t want kids, but that he does need some man time, and I know it!  Because I need some mom time.  And we need some us time.  We are going to slate out some Man time, Mom time, Us time, and kid time.  The kid time will be each of us spending a little bit of time with just one kid.  So it will be Daddy and Kael time and Mommy and Caleb time, and then switch.  Our boys are little individuals.  Caleb loves Diego, and Kael loves Thomas…and oh how they cry when they have to watch each other’s show.

I was married before…a lot of you might not know that.  I know that not all husbands are like Sam.  I know that not all husbands adore their wives.  This is just me talking about my specific situation.  It breaks my heart when I think about broken marriages where people are living in ugly situations.  I was in a really ugly marriage.  Today I was reading in Ephesians and I love where it talks about our marital responsibilities.  Wives respect your husbands…Husbands LOVE your wives.  It is talked about in Ephesians chapter 5 if you are curious.

I couldn’t do much right in my first marriage according to my husband.  I was very young.  As I look back I see where I personally went wrong.  I would cry out to God and was desperate to be out of that situation, but I don’t ever remember praying for John (my ex).  I don’t remember praying for him that God would change his heart.  I was a baby spiritually even though I was raised in church.  I may have and it may just be that my memory is really crummy.  It was such a dark time in my life, I see very little light in it.  So if you are in a situation like this I would like to pray for you.  I will be praying for you regardless...God knows.  So I will lift all the marriages up of anyone who actually reads this little blog, which I think may be down to my parents some days.

:-D Love ya Dad!  Love ya Mom!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend.  I am so excited that I have a guest blogger tomorrow. A testimony came trickling in...Mindy Horr (Cliff and Casey Horr's daughter) sent her's into me just the other day.  It is awesome.

xoxo

Ronda