Blogs with words

I read blogs often. I have a blogroll of about twenty blogs that I browse every couple of days and stop to read once a week or month or whenever I have time to do more than skim the surface. My favorite blogs are blogs written by moms who love being moms. I also love blogs about people who I know who are posting their favorite pictures of their children. I also read this cooking blog, but mostly because the lady who writes it is hilarious… and also because she is a mom… and also because she has a whole section devoted to writing about herself and family (kids) and another about homeschooling. Her latest food blog really caught my attention. It’s a blog about what she’s making her husband for his birthday. It makes me drool. If we can afford a steak, shrimp, potato, cake, rolls dinner sometime…. I want it to look like this: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/01/marlboro-mans-birthday-dinner/

One of my favorite blogs is a mom of five kids, ages five and under, I think. Three by birth, two by adoption. She’s honest and real and finds purpose and satisfaction in mothering. I am encouraged by people who “have it harder” than me with regards to kids and the ensuing exhaustion… but still love what they do and wouldn’t have it any other way. I enjoy hearing from other moms who just talk out what they’re up to and how things are going. I’m following several in-process adoption stories and some blogs of large families (7+). It’s opening the world to me a bit, showing me families and lives and possibilities.

I enjoy having the conversations with Brian that are about, “What will we be doing in 5,10,20 years?” We talk about when we want to adopt, how large we want our family to get, what our primary goals are as individuals and a family, etc. Lately, with a little one, we haven’t been able to have those conversations very often, and even when we have one, it’s questionable whether we have the mental capacity to really process the thoughts properly. Brian: “Where do we want to be in five years?” Me: “Asleep.” We don’t have our family plan written down really, although I’ve made efforts to occasionally. It’s a nebulous thing and it’s both broad and narrow. I am a person of details, so it bothers me to summarize things with true succinctness. (yes, that’s a word, spell check says so) If I just say our “purpose/vision/goal” is to be parents, then I want to know exactly what that means and how to get there. And what about some of the ‘side’ purposes, like being sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, part of a church, part of the community, other ministries, etc. etc.

Some people I know have it all written out in detail (*cough* Roy) but here’s a glimpse into my brain. It’s messy. When I try to pull it all together, I start at one end of the problem (such as the statement of being parents) and then I attempt to work though the entire situation so I can understand it in its entirety. I think about Brian’s work, income, savings goals, house goals, house plans….. and then I start thinking about house layout… and then I think about homeschooling…. and then I start trying to understand curriculum… anyways, I have never gotten through. I’ve never even properly scraped the surface. Hopefully I can keep up with life as it moves along!

No, I don’t want five kids under five. I am not as crazy as Hol*cough* some people. I am stretched a lot with “just” Anna and Maggie. Someday we’ll have more kids. I don’t know when it will be. I don’t know if we’ll do a medical needs adoption, a sibling adoption, a domestic or an international adoption or produce some more out of my uterus. But yeah. Life is good. And I am rambling. We don’t get enough sleep over here. I hear it’s pretty chronic among the parents of the young. Twenty years or so in the future I am really looking forward to the first years of being a grandma. I don’t look forward to the later years of being a grandma as much. I hear it gets hard to sleep again.