Birthdays and Family Traditions

I accepted a challenge to write a blog post daily for a month, and because today we have a birthday in the house, I decided to write about it.

When it comes to birthdays, we have a few family traditions, like breakfast in bed, a personal date with the birthday child, a breakfast date has become quite popular among the older children these days, and a cake with the family by the end of the day. We did few birthday parties for the ones that have theirs during the summer, but early on I found out that I am not the right person to organise parties. It would end up very chaotic by the end and the child would end up not really enjoying it because their mom was stressed the entire day.

Today my philosophy is, the simpler the better, if the child feels loved and accepted, all efforts are appreciated.

I often laugh at the fact that five of my eight children have birthdays close to each other. Two in December and 3 in January. Springs must have been a busy time at our house few years ago 😊!

Since I became a single mom, I have tried to stick to the traditions, it is not always easy, but I try to take the child on a date and then have a cake with everyone else in the evening.

I do not know if you read my last post about us all having covid now, but that situation made it a little challenging to know what to do for Lucy’s birthday.

Lucy is my youngest child, only few birthdays but almost each of them she has spent either in hospital with asthma issues or at home sick, seems that there is always something happening on her day.

 Becky’s birthday was on Monday, so the moment it ended, Lucy could talk about nothing else but her sixth birthday that was coming up, Tuesday we got our first positive test for covid, and poor Lucy got her positive on Wednesday.

She was so angry: I hate Covid! she said. Why do I always get sick on my birthdays, it is not fair!

I told her I would find a way to do something and then when we are better, we can do our proper date.

Thanks to my amazing neighbours, we had a cake and cupcakes, I was well enough this noon, so I took Lucy on a drive, we went to one of my favourite spots and had one hour for ourselves. We had homemade pizza and fish cakes and she is happy enough

How do you celebrate your children’s birthdays?

Here are the links of little videos I made to register the birthday we had this month.

Judah turned 14! Here it is!

Becky turned 13! My sweet girl.

Lucy turned 6! My forever baby 🙂

Quarantine Saga OF A Single Mom of 8

Laughing, crying, and shouting mixed with smiles, hugs, and kisses.

These have been my days since I became a single parent of 8.

Two years ago I became what I never had dreamed of, the thing I feared the most had become my reality. My husband of 15 years, with whom I had built a beautiful family, was now just a visitor.

It took a while for the idea to sink in. Being a single parent with 8 children was an incredibly sad thought indeed.
For the past 6 weeks we have been in quarantine here in Ireland, the children are home 24/7 and life has taken a little turn to a place that I am learning to appreciate.

When my husband left our home in September 2018, I was devastated, poor and felt completely lost. I just wanted to curl up in bed and cry for weeks, like we see in movies when they go through a breakup. Usually there is a sad song, a bottle of wine or ice cream and the actor will cry to her friends while she tries to make sense of all that just happened. Well, unfortunately, when you have children (in my case 8 of them) and no family living near me, you cannot just stop your life to recover, you must keep going. Your crying moments are in the darkest hours in the midst of the night after you finally managed to end your day and get them all to fall asleep.

In October 2019 I decided to go back to education. It was like life was finally starting to have a new normal. I became a student trying to learn a new skill to get a job and be more independent. I had been home for the past 14 years. Being a stay-at-home mom was something that I had been passionate about but now things were different; everything looked grey.

This was going to be the year of change for me. The year that all my dreams of being a perfect, stay-at-home Christian mom was going to be put away and the new business woman mom was going to come from somewhere deep inside of me, and I would discover all those amazing business skills that I did not know were there before. I would find the perfect job and never again need any government assistance or depend on my ex’s maintenance. Of course I would still be a very present mother. I would spend the weekends playing with the children, baking, and having fun would be all I would do.

I hope you were able to picture those dreams just like I did when I planned what my 2020 was going to be. I exaggerate a little as I am writing, but I guess us mothers like to dream, we imagine a world where we love doing the things that we are supposed to do. Do not get me wrong, I love being a mom and although I was never the perfect stay-at-home mom and will never be the business kind either, I dreamed because that is what kept me going when times got tough. I prayed and I dreamed.

Fortunately, it did not take long for me to wake up to the reality that my days as a stay-at-home mom are not over yet. I realised that even though life is stressful right now, and parenting alone is extremely hard, there is nothing else I would rather do. Honestly, there is not one day that goes by where I do not feel that I am just living inside a nightmare or a joke; that at some point I am going to wake up to find my life back to what it used to be five years ago. If back then someone told me that in 2020 I would be separated, being a lone parent and the entire world would be in the middle of a pandemic and because of that, as if that was not enough, I would be told to stay indoors and home-school, I would say that person was crazy! Because crazy is how I would describe all that is going on right now.

Many would ask,  how do I do this? What are my days like? 
Laughter, crying and shouting, smiles, hugs, and kisses, 
that is how I do it, one day at the time.

A cup of coffee for my head

What is it like to be stuck in the house with 8 active, inquisitive, and sometimes “annoying” children? I get asked that question often, and friends send me sympathy messages like, I am praying for you, or you are my hero… things the sort.

When I get those messages, what comes to mind is, my friend, you have no idea what you are talking about!

Here is the thing, do not get me wrong. All of us moms have challenges; as mothers of 1 or 10 children, each one of us could sit and tell an endless number of stories of how many challenges and joys we have daily in this process of quarantine. I am not trying to make it sound like my life is somehow more difficult than yours; comparing should never be something that mothers should do; we are to encourage each other in this crazy motherhood journey. My friends have taught me so much; they have one or two children. Having 8 children does not make me an expert at anything, but when I think, “ You have no idea what my life is like”, it is because 1 and 8 are pretty different numbers, which is the reality. I appreciate the prayers so much; thank you!

I have 4 stages of childhood around here. Two teens, two pre-teens, two getting there, and two on the pre-school age. The dynamics are intense, and sometimes I fail! Big-time fails.

I want to share an incident that happened last week; mind you, it has been over 5 weeks that we have been home on quarantine, my 8 children and me. By this stage, we are bored, frustrated, and tired.

It was Thursday evening, we had finished dinner, and the children were being loud; I had already asked them to start getting ready for bed; the teens had a screaming meltdown earlier that day, so by this stage, a lot of us were frustrated. So I started cleaning the kitchen when I heard the youngest crying and the others coming shouting: Mommy!! They hurt her, so and so did this and this…

It is tough to even begin to explain what this kind of scenario does to my brain; I had been hearing fights and crying the whole day, and by 7pm, when I heard crying and everyone shouting, I went a little crazy. I shouted louder! I took the children involved in the incident and screamed at them: I told you to stop; I asked you the entire day, why do you not listen to me? I am not going to share all that I said and how the whole situation for the 3 minutes it lasted, but my kids were shocked by my reaction, and so was I.

When things were quieter, and I got to tend to the hurt child and realised it was an accident, my friends, I was that thoughtless, first went to get the ones who hurt the little one instead of tending to the hurt child, who does that??? I did, a tired and overwhelmed mother! Things improved; I apologised, and we cried and prayed together, but even though all seemed ok, I went to bed with a heavy heart; I felt lonely and like a failure. I asked God to help me be a better mom and to protect my family and my mind so I can be the mother He wants me to be. I fell asleep after a good sob.

In the morning, I woke up tired, more tired than usual; it was like a tractor had gone through my body or that I was bitten up during the whole night, I had a shower, and it got worse, and my eyes were sore. Sarah, my baby number 5, told me to go back to bed, and she made breakfast for me; I said I did not need coffee; I like making my own as I can be fussy about my coffee. She made a beautiful omelette; I was so thankful and felt unworthy because of the previous night.

As soon as I finished my breakfast and was going to return to sleep (it was already 11am,) I got a message from one of the children’s teacher, who has become more of a friend since this quarantine started; she lives down the road from me, the message read: “Hey, are you home? I would like to bring something to you.” My first thought was that she had some school stuff, so I texted back and told her I was not feeling the best and was trying to rest. She replied, I am sorry you are feeling poorly l; II was making some Latte for myself and made one for you too, so I thought of dropping it off.

Now, pause and think of how I felt when I read that message…

Guys, Lattes are my favourite kind of coffee. I felt so blessed at that very moment. It was like God told me: “Yes, you blew up last night, but I still love you and care enough to even give you your favourite kind of coffee.” I am crying right now, even thinking of it; it seems silly. He does so many other massive things in my life, real miracles… but somehow, this little blessing made such a difference.
She dropped the coffee and a little note thanking me for all the work I do with the kids and saying that she could imagine how hard it must be for me to do this on my own.

More blessings happened that day; more friends were involved in being God’s hand in my life; I felt him saying:

No matter what happened yesterday or will happen tomorrow, my love for you will never change, and I care for you more than you can comprehend, and yes, I care that you get precisely what you wish for if that is exactly what you need even if it is just a cup of coffee.