the ultimate Survivor challenge

I often compare motherhood with the show Survivor because there are lots of surprise twists & turns throughout the day & I often feel I'm being pushed & pulled to stretch beyond what I think is humanly possible for me to do. This week was a true Survivor Challenge week.

Survivors ready?

Randy had to work late, leaving me to manage the bedtime routine alone, most of the weeknights this week... an often exhausting process.

I decided to try playing in a volunteer city orchestra & was absolutely fried by the time I got the kids ready to be watched by their opa and got to the rehearsal that began at 8pm on Wednesday. I'm not sure that I'll keep going for now. My mind was about to explode as it tried to remember what it hasn't done for at least a few years: keep time while reading music and finding the notes on my viola. I was ready to collapse 5 minutes into the experience!

Also, my friend, April Oaks, owns a digital scrapbooking company and I often help her when she has events with it. This weekend was the Scrapbook Expo and I was to be there on Friday from 8:30am to 8pm and Saturday from 8:30am to 6pm. So, all week I've been trying to pump an extra bottle of breastmilk a day so that Claire would have enough to eat on Friday. It was really tricky to orchestrate & a big, fat pain.

My kids weren't going easy on me while preparing for all of this, as you probably saw in my previous posts this week. I checked Tate's mouth the other day and saw that he's getting 4 teeth all at once, 2 of them being his 1-year-molars! YIKES!!! This teething thing stinks! I thought all the other times he's gotten teeth were bad, but there's not comparison to this time. Also, Claire's been especially fussy and difficult to soothe this week, but that is thankfully improving, as of Thursday night, due to my friend, Mandy, and her homeopathic remedies - HALLELUJAH!!!

My mom had both my kids on Friday during the Expo, which I hope was a good experience for her, and blessings upon her head for helping me out! I had been really nervous about Claire even taking a bottle, but she seemed to do fine, which was truly an answer to prayer. Something I never realized before becoming a mom was that even when you get a break, you still have to pack your kids to last without you during that break, which this weekend was like packing for a mini-vacation. You've got to make sure you've packed enough diapers and wipes and clothes to change them into in case of emergencies. Then you've got to make sure they're covered for all the meals you'll be missing - Tate will eat big-people-food now, so he's no big deal. There are a lot of other nuances to pack also, but I won't bore you with those. Just know preparing to be away from my kids, especially a newborn, can be a big job.

The Scrapbook Expo blew me away! I have never seen anything like it! It was held in the SouthTowne Expo Center and the entire auditorium, except one section, was filled with booths that were stuffed with every possible thing you could ever think of that is related to scrapbooking. On Friday, the first person to arrive to get in line got there at 4am!!! And I bet she stayed until the Expo closed that day (midnight!). The line to get into the Expo was about 2-4 people deep and went from one end of the Expo Center, all the way to the other end. And most of them were carting in huge scrapbook boxes on wheels, because part of this expo is that there are tables set up throughout the auditorium to actually sit down and scrapbook on.

The tickets to this event were $12 for one day (if you were lucky, you could get a $3 off discount coupon from Roberts) and anyone that wanted a VIP ticket (your tables were in prime spots on the sales floor and they feed you meals throughout the day, offer snacks and drinks and give you free scrapbooking stuff) paid an extra $50 on top of admission. None of those prices included if you wanted to take any of the classes offered; that fee was a minimum $10 on top of admission price. The crazy thing was that people actually paid that! I'm sure if it's really your thing, it could be a blast to do, but I was a little overwhelmed by it all.

On Friday I worked at the Digital Scrapbook Memories booth, feeling like a missionary looking to convert paper scrapbookers to digital scrapbooking. Surprising (to me) there was a fair amount of blatant hostility towards digiscrapping! Some people were downright rude! I've learned some interesting vocabulary this weekend, including my favorite term, "paper purists," meaning those that believe scrapbooking should only be done using paper/traditional methods. Several people thought they were doing me a real favor by telling me that digital scrapbooking won't last and that my pages won't last for my children to view. This concept is laughable that so many "paper purists" believe it! Digital Scrapbook pages are printed as enlarged photos, meaning that if your photos on your paper scrapbook page will last until the end of time, why won't a digital page?

Since I needed milk for Claire on Saturday, I took breaks every 3-4 hours on Friday to go pump breastmilk in the handicapped restroom. It was quite an experience. Thank goodness there was a separate handicapped restroom and I wasn't doing it in the handicapped stall. I'm sure a lot of people were confused seeing me - a not very "handicapped" looking person going into that restroom with a cooler and my lunch (the cooler was for storing the pumped milk; the lunch was to eat, not to throw up). If someone would have told me a few months ago, even, that I would be doing that, I would have laughed and not believed it.

Saturday was pretty much the same, except Randy had the kids all day - a first since Claire's birth - & I taught more classes for April, so I got to hang out in the classroom and not be on my feet all day long. After all was said & done, I really did enjoy myself and it was worth all the hard work and opposition in preparing. It made me extremely grateful that I don't have to be a working mom. I'm very blessed that Randy works so hard to keep me home where my heart is.

In the last class I taught, I was working examples on a projector with pictures of Tate. It made me very homesick to be back with my kids. The very best part about being a mom was realized when I got home from the Expo each day: hugs & snuggles from Tate and happy jiggling of arms and legs from Claire. I haven't really thought about just how much I depend on and need their love before this weekend, but I really couldn't "survive" without my kids and husband's love for me. Stepping away made me appreciate that I've got the best job, ever, and I hope this week I'll be less likely to take that for granted. It might surprise some of you, but when you're home all day, sometimes your mind wanders to imagining being someone "important" in the business world, but this weekend I knew it is more than enough to be someone "important" in the lives I love the most.

Well, after appreciating my life so much yesterday evening it was off to another Survivor Challenge during the night. Claire woke up to eat at 1:30am and Tate woke up for who knows exactly what reason shortly after that & was mostly awake until around 4 or 5am. At one point of trying to help Tate relax enough to go back to sleep, Randy brought him out to the living room to watch a movie and was sleeping on the floor in front of the couch so he would wake up if Tate left the couch. And of course Claire woke up again at 6am to be fed...

Survivors ready?