2 girls is great; 2 boys, 2 girls, not so much....

For a while now I've been insisting that my kids aren't like yours, and that for some reason that escapes me, my situation is different. My children have a unique ability to drive me over the edge - not that any one of them in particular is bad, but the four of them combined are a strange and terrible thing. While Matt was home recovering from his knee surgery two plus weeks ago, he was resting on the couch & the older 3 were at school -we were talking about how nice it was to have 4 kids, and how we couldn't imagine life being any other way - yes it's crazy, but there are also a lot of good things associated with it. By 4:30 pm he was ready to take back everything nice he'd said earlier in the day. It's hard when the parents are outnumbered by the children, especially when half the parents are out of the house or incapacitated.

So today I bribed Sarah and Jason into coming to Kohls with me for some spring shopping - we're headed to visit Matt's family over spring break and no one has decent clothes for warm weather that fits - by taking them to Chik-fil-a  for lunch. This worked because they are always pestering me to go there so they can play in the nasty-icky-sticky playground. Anywho- while they played I sat and surfed the news, and ran across this article about how the key to a happy family is to have two daughters! Intrigued, I followed the headline and read the article. Imagine my dismay when, at the end, I ran across this list, ranked in the order of family happiness, from most to least:

1. Two girls
2. One boy and one girl
3. Two boys
4. Three girls
5. Three boys
6. Four boys
7. Two girls and one boy
8. Two boys and one girl
9. Three boys and one girl
10. Three girls and one boy
11. Two boys and two girls
12. Four girls

Well - there you have it, in black and white. It's not us, IT'S THEM! Or maybe it is me? I'm the one who insisted, after having Evie and William, that we have just one more! If I'd stuck to just two kids, I'd be almost as happy as people who have two girls! By having Sarah, we jumped down to NUMBER 7 on the list. And Jason apparently just did us in, even though I swear he's the best one of the bunch (sshhhh, don't tell him I said that) , moving us all the way down to number 11. How is it possible that having two boys and two girls is almost TWICE as bad as having FOUR BOYS?  And if you have four or more girls? My condolences. Life must just be awful for you :)

Being a parent is so much more involved than I ever imagined it would be, as Matt and I are discovering more and more as the kids get older. I'm fairly certain that in all my years in school I was never called into the principal's office and yet here I am a parent only a few years into the whole school thing and I'm relieved when it's just the school nurse calling. Yes, PLEASE tell me my kid is only not feeling well and not flooding the bathroom/hitting someone/saying things that aren't nice or politically correct. I'm really beginning to question everything I say and do in front of my kids, the whole nature/nurture thing - yes we are born with certain tendencies, but to what extent can I modify those tendencies in my kids through my own behavior? Lead by example, right? Nowhere is this more apparent to me than in the car when I hear Jason telling me to just GO already, and FAST! (all boy, that one). I am trying to be more aware of the things I say, and also trying to act rather than react. I'll let you know how that goes.

All this to say, life is busy, and it's hard, and we don't even really have any major issues to deal with here - God bless families dealing with health issues, financial issues and such. For now I'm grateful for what we have and will muddle through as best I can. If you come to visit, please ignore the clutter, I'll get to it at some point. Maybe :)