Feast of St. Patrick 2012

On Friday, we celebrated the feast of St. Patrick a day early because it was our home schooling co-op day. The children enjoyed a party: one mother taught about the saint. Then two girls who take Irish dancing lessons gave a performance. While the introductory music played, the two dancers stood poised in dance position in front of fifty or so children, and whose little three-year-old do you think got up from her seat and took position in between the two girls? Yes, that would be our Mary Genevieve! I leapt up and took her down off "stage" and she protested innocently, "But I wanted to dance with the girls!" Oh yes, I have no doubt, my daughter . . . .

Then we got to eat green treats before doing a craft project that involved Fruit Loop cereal. Later on our drive home, John asked me if we could buy some of that cereal to eat at home. "I don't know, John. It's really junky cereal." He said seriously, "Maybe we could call ahead to the factory and ask them to make a batch and put less junk into it. Then we could buy that batch!"

I experienced a moment of self reflection concerning how we strengthen our "muscles" all the time, slowly but surely. (Obviously I mean metaphorical muscles because, based on my utter and repeated failure to exercise, I'm not increasing any of my literal muscles at all!) Last year I wasn't even brave enough to sign up for the home school art class because I could not fathom how I would manage one three-and-a-half-year-old and one 21-month-old.

This year I was brave enough to enroll the kids (and now with a baby tagging along), but I somehow got out of having to teach any of the classes, normally a duty that rotates among all the participating mothers. Each week I'd watch these mothers of many somehow teach a class of 10-20 preschoolers while monitoring their own broods of tots, including the inevitable baby crawling around the room among the tangle of legs. Meanwhile I had to be sitting right there with my kids (often with the baby nursing in my lap, one hand holding the baby, one hand doing crafts with the other two kids), I didn't even know how I could step away at all, let alone manage the whole classroom. Well, I figured out more and more tricks, figured out how to do it. And then a mother couldn't teach one month so I got called to duty for the two classes, which I managed to fulfill. I figured out how to manage the classroom and my three tots simultaneously!

And for the St. Patrick's party this week, I was asked just the day before if I could lead the younger children in their Fruit Loops craft while the other mother guided the older children in their project. I said yes, I did it, I managed the screaming and sometimes nursing baby, Mary throwing a temper tantrum while holding a pair of scissors, and John desiring to wander away and play popsicle stick swords with some boys. And that is a very small thing in the big picture, but it's big for me in my small domestic world. It just left me reflecting at places I've been earlier in my mothering journey (and not so long ago) when I could not even imagine how I could manage such a feat. I can remember easily that initial paralysis of having my first newborn and not being able to leave the house because I couldn't nurse in public! And who knows where I could go from here, as I still sit in astonishment watching mothers with more experience doing things I still don't know how they do!

So, mothers who are not as far down the path as me: take heart! You'll learn so much more than you think possible! And mothers who are farther down the path than am I: please tell me how to get there!