let's try this again

Ok, so what I meant to write yesterday was that when I took our children to gymnastics on Monday, I really wished that I had remembered to bring my camera.

Because, training alongside my four-year-olds, were world-class athletes from the nearby Olympic Training Center.

It turns out that our children's gymnastics coach lends her support to help several of the athletes in flexibility training. I've seen the athletes at the gymnastics complex before. And they've seen me, trying to get four little people to all walk in the same direction.

When I've commented to them that I am really impressed at their ability to do back handsprings across the floor, they have commented to me that they are really impressed I can manage four small children with two arms.

This group of athletes consists of both men and women and any one of them could easily grace the cover of a Wheaties box.

They are athletes that have participated in the Olympics - and/or - are hopefuls for the next Olympic games.

Seeing these athletes up close who have devoted their lives to their sport and are at the absolute height of physical fitness and on their way to representing our country in the next Olympic games, helping my little children on the bars - or beam - or pommel horse - and then giving them high fives when the session is over, conjures up a feeling in me I can't quite describe.

On Monday, while standing in the lobby and looking through the large plate glass window in to the gymnasium, my eyes welled with tears as I imagined our children stepping up on the podium to recieve their gold medals as they clutched their bouquets of fresh flowers while the Star Spangled Banner played overhead and they gazed up at the American flag hanging before them.

I can dream, right?

At home, our children are watching their father prepare for his next triathlon in March. And they're watching their mother have small nervous breakdowns almost daily. Which believe me, that burns a lot of calories. I'm down three pant sizes since last year at this same time.

Since childhood obesity is on the rise, I'm really thankful that I am able to surround our children with such positive influences for physical activity (and borderline mental stability) at this point in their young lives. And I'm also excited about the various sports we will enroll our children in next year, when they are out of school, and will need an outlet to burn COPIOUS amounts of four-year-old energy so that when they come home they are completely exhausted and ready to sleep.

Ah yes. I can dream.

Sometimes I think that I need to put a filter on my thoughts.

Or at a minimum, the thoughts that I express here.

Whenever time allows and I have the opportunity to visit other blogs, I am always surprised at how upbeat they are. Children don't fight. Parents don't freak out. There are no poopy diapers being flushed down toilets by four-year-olds at 5 AM. They chase their cloth-diapered babies in fields of green clover and drink organic goat milk and fresh carrots as a snack in their modest homeschool classroom, while plentifully living on a single income budget.

Raising voices and spanking, it doesn't happen.

They would never yell at or swat at the people they love!

Then there's me. Never quite able to figure it out. Not quite sure what to do next. Wondering when I'm going to get my game on, consistently. Taking everything in my life one step at a time. Backing up and doing things differently. Not sure where we'll be a year from now. Not sure what we'll have for dinner three hours from now.

Frequently overwhelmed that motherhood is the most important job that I will ever have in my entire life ... but often believing that God shouldn't have entrusted me to a task more complex then making sure our toilets are clean.

You mean it is MY job is to mold and influence four small people?

You mean that they are watching me during my good moments and not so good moments and storing all of these experiences that they have with me - their first teacher, away in their brain as part of the operation manual that they will rely upon as they go out in to the world?

Get the smelling salts. I think I'm blacking out.

While I don't think people should make it common practice to air their dirty laundry on the internet, it sure would help ME if every so often they did. I can't tell you how nice it would be if just once I could step away from the computer and think, "Wow. I'm not the only one."

So, please send me a link if you write a post that will make me feel better about my often sub-par parenting moments. And if it's a really good post (or bad, depending upon whether you are the one that had the experience), I might even send you a box of Joe-Joe's.

(They always help me.)

By the way. Jesus was found.

I discovered him under my pillow this morning.

I like to think that he was gently placed there by small hands who probably figured I needed some Heavenly contact ... and not lost when the kids were jumping on the bed.