Yes I am. The kids are 15, 15, 9 and 7. I have two friends with chronically, seriously ill children whose life expectancies are a question mark so even when we're in "crisis" I know that the cross I bear is really nothing compared to what they go through. But it's nice to not be in crisis or chaos right now, and I relish the relative calm and joy.
You know how when you learn to do something that seems larger than life, you have that point where you're in the middle of it and realize that "OMG I'm really doing it!"? Like when you learn to ride a bike, or swim, or drive and it hits you that you're doing it without really thinking consciously about it? I've had a few of those moments in parenting this summer, where it hits me out of nowhere that we really are giving our kids the kind of lives we hoped they would have. For instance, there was an evening during a heatwave a few weeks ago where my (step) daughter had a couple of friends over swimming, my oldest son came home from work and a couple of neighborhood kids came over, then his best buddy surprised us by coming over literally 2 hours after he got home from summer camp, and my two little boys also had a neighborhood friend over. The little kids were playing in the driveway, the older kids were in the pool and playroom, and luckily we were having breakfast for dinner because of the heat and I was able to cook up bacon, eggs, and waffles for everyone. I think there were 10 or 11 kids total and I realized that yeah, we are that house where everyone feels welcome and the kids know that if a friend comes over at dinner time, she or he can just pull up a chair and join us.
Another day recently, the little boys and their friend from down the block were playing here. They all have walkie-talkies that really work, so it's funny because they can just buzz their friend at his house and vice-versa and they go back and forth between our houses all day. They were playing FBI and it was so cute to see them dressed up as g-men (one boy put on an old suit, the other was wearing black jeans, a tight black t-shirt and a vest a la SSA Morgan on Criminal Minds) and a bad guy, hiding all over the yard trying to capture the bad guy with squirt guns. It was totally the kind of thing that we played in my neighborhood when we were kids and it was so great to see them not playing video games or watching TV or listening to an iPod. It's sometimes really stops me in my tracks to realize that right now, they are living the days that they will look back on when they're adults and some of those days will really be worthy of fond memories.
My kids' lives have certainly not been without crisis or chaos - my oldest son's father left before he was born, my step-daugther's mother abandoned her to us when she was 13 and my younger boys have grown up knowing that their siblings have these mysterious (and lousy) other parents out there - but it's awesome to catch these moments and realize that right now, today, life is good for them.
btw the link to the story is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julianna-w-miner/the-sweet-...
Thank you so much for sharing this, it was a great reminder that life is good!