Little Friends

I've been doing quite a bit of babysitting lately. For someone who once thought that she would never even consider having an in-home daycare, we have quite the flow of kids in and out of our home each week. And you know what? I pretty much love it. Tuesdays and Thursdays I get to watch the Cooper Crew for a few hours in the afternoon, plus a handful of other random kids throughout the rest of the week. A couple of weeks ago, by Wednesday - I'd had ten extra kids at one point or another. By the end of today (Tuesday) I will have had six extras (plus two that came over Monday night with their parents). Sometimes we'll be outside saying goodbye, and my neighbor Katie will jokingly ask "How many today?"

I ran into a good friend from the ward next to ours at a neighborhood music class, and she introduced me to one of her friends as being the Queen of all Babysitters (or something along those lines). And a lot of the time when she drops off her daughter for our Babysitting-Swap (so amazing!) there are other kids here, or kids who are just leaving. But I feel a little weird about it. It's not like I'm really good at babysitting (at least not any better than anyone else), or that I love it especially much. But I don't mind having kids over, especially if it's a help to their parents. I'm not good at so many things, especially service-wise, but I feel like I can help other moms out who just need a couple of hours for a doctors appointment, or to take a nap after having a new baby, or whatever they need. It's something I can do, and at this particular time in our lives we can handle a larger amount of kids than we have been able to before. Lydia enjoys having friends over, and in most cases they entertain each other while I am able to do some laundry or the dishes or whatnot without feeling like I'm not giving my kids enough attention. It's pretty win-win. 

I've just recently started watching the Coopers on Thursday in addition to Tuesday. I don't write about this a lot, but I love these kids so much. And Ashley, their mom, is such a blessing to me. There is something so comforting about knowing that you have a friend there for you all the time. Most of the time it's for random gmail chatting about which swimsuit style to order, or a funny story from the day, but those things mean the world to me. (And other days, like today, it was messaging her to ask if she could come pick me up from the side of the road if I got stranded taking my broken down car to the mechanic, which resulted in her sending her mechanic husband to my house so I didn't have to drive my poor sad car.) Lydia asks pretty much every day if "Carson-Elsie" are coming over, and the bonus is that I get to chat with Ashley in person at least a couple of times a week.

Lydia has lots of friends that she loves - but almost every time she says a prayer (other than the prayers that are shorter than two seconds) she says "Thank you for Henry." This little friend is super special to us.

Recently we had the chance to visit with some new-ish friends. Kajsa and I met at Utah State when she started dating her husband, who happened to be David's roommate. We really only met a couple of times, but we became facebook friends - then blogging friends, we've stayed in touch and gotten pretty close.

I've been reflecting recently how interesting it is that there are really only a few people whose blogs I still follow and most of them are women that I was only acquaintances with in person. Now I look forward to their posts, comment like we are best friends, and admire them incredibly. I realized that it's because although I might not have spent a lot of time with them originally, as we've grown we've developed similar attitudes about mothering, families, and life. These blogging-friends inspire me to remain faithful in time of trial, remind me to enjoy my time as a mother, crazy as it might be, and encourage me to keep blogging this little record of our life.

Kajsa is one such friend. She writes beautifully and is able to convey things that I think/feel in such a great way. Austin and her youngest, Declin, were born just hours apart - and it was so fun to read about her pregnancy and to watch Declin and Austin grow up so similarly. She doesn't live close, so we haven't ever spent time together in person, but recently she was visiting her family in Salt Lake County and we arranged to get together. I'm so glad we did! It was so fun to visit with her in person. Our kids got along great and played pirates and tag and all sorts of games. We chatted and picked right up where our blogs left off. (The Coopers happened to be there for part of the time and they loved Kajsa's kids, too.)

We tried to get a good picture of the five of our kids (she has one just older and one just younger than Lydia), but as you can imagine it was quite the task. The best picture I got was a "just one last try" but Declin was already in the car.

Although our house is kind of crazy most of the time. This is a good time of life. We are enjoying all of our little friends and I'm blessed to be surrounded by such good adult-friends, too.