When Your Children Hurt

The one thing in life that is always constant is change.
Sometimes that change is good, and sometimes that change is not.
Now, my girls and I are going through what I expect to be the biggest change of their lives and it is not a good change.

The change hurts me. Each day is a struggle, but I will make it. I will put one foot in front of the other and I will keep walking. I will walk until I can run again and I will be ok one day. I know I will be ok, but I also know that my pain is immense right now.

Their pain, though, is in calculable to me. It hurts more because I see them hurting, and I know there is nothing I can do.

I watch The Big One cry and I see the scars forming on her heart, and as her mother, my heart breaks even more than it already is. I wish I could grab her, and pull her to me, and make it all go away. I would rock her until all the pain was gone, and kiss her until it all felt better. But I can't. This kind of pain doesn't go away like that. No matter what I do, I can't keep her from hurting again and again. I can't keep the change that she had nothing to do with from knocking her down.

The Little One is younger, and fares much better because of her age. She doesn't understand the change going on. She doesn't quite get it, and can roll with the punches more. She is the lucky on, in all of this, to be so young, and not understand it. She is the one that I can hold until she feels better, and then watch her happily go play with someone else. She will adapt faster and better, and will come out of this with much less scaring than her big sister, but she will still scar from this change.

Change can be hard. Watching your children hurt is the hardest thing of all. I am angry that my children have to hurt, and I would do anything, and have tried everything, to keep them from hurting like this, but sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we just can't protect them from everything. Sometimes, we as parents are even the cause of it.

I know that children will adapt, and I am sure mine will too, but in the mean time, we have a difficult path ahead of us, full of so much more heart ache and heart break. I can only hope that I can be the best parent that I can for them both, and do everything I can to make this as easy for them as possible. In time, I hope this makes us all stronger, and better, having learned much from the hardest of situations.

Most importantly, I just hope that soon, very soon, The Big One will feel better inside.

Shaving Moratorium

Last night, I decided that to place a temporary moratorium on shaving.

First, let me stress that this is temporary.

Second, I should add that this is not a full ban on all shaving, but only on shaving my legs.

You see, I am currently in Tennessee visiting family. It is cold here. It has gotten down into the teens. I actually mean that we have temperatures reaching into the teens, as in it was 13 degrees the other night!! That is far, far too cold for me. That is far, far too cold for most people who live in Southern California.

So, in an effort to keep myself from freezing to death, I have decided that I must immediately cease shaving my legs, and allow whatever hair that can grow in the short amount of time we will be here to try and help keep me warm.

Now I realize that this is both a little wimpy and gross, but it is all about survival here, people. I will do what I have must in order to survive until we return to the nice warm climate of California.

And, while I know that I could also use my reasoning to stop shaving my underarms, that is just plain old gross, and I won't stoop to that.

I plan on promptly ending the moratorium the moment we get back to California. Until then, I will be in pants, praying to survive this freezing weather that would bring any one acclimated to the So Cal weather to their cleanly shaven knees.