My daughter Sweetpea dropped the regular nap last fall.  There were too many afternoons where I would open her door after "naptime" only to find that she had spent the entire hour bouncing on her bed.  We sighed, resigned ourselves to her new maturity, and stopped putting her down for naps (though she is still required sometimes to play quietly for an hour).

This is a real change for her.  You would think she would be thrilled, but Sweetpea has always been a little unusual about naps.  By eighteen months old, she asked for them.  She would walk across the living room to the bottom of the stairs, collapse on the first step and wail, "Nap! Needa nap!"  She longed for sleep like the mother of a newborn.  She hunted for nooks around the house in which to catch a few winks.

Sweetpea disappeared one afternoon when she was two. I could not find her. I searched the house frantically for five minutes, considered a panicked call to 911 and my husband at work, but first thought to walk around this chair, which had been facing the window:

I heaved a sigh of relief and added this spot to the list of Places To Search First.  She has fallen asleep in it many times since then, including a few mornings when she came into my room to snuggle me, only to find I was occupied nursing her little sister instead.

Now that she is three and freed from the regular nap, she can rejoice in the freedom of fully conscious afternoons. Instead, I still sometimes round a corner into a room to find that she has once again found a spot, curled up and drifted off to dreamland.

I like that old chair, but I would like it even more if I could do THAT in it.

I love Sweetpea's sleep. I envy it, too. It's not just the sleep itself - I get a decent amount of rest, considering I have a baby, and Az the Husband is always willing to watch the kids so I can have a nap. It's the surrender I envy; the certainty that home is safe, there are no pressing demands, and I can drift off here and now, for as long as I like.

And even when I don't have a chance for a nap, I love knowing that I have made space in her childhood for that.

My sweet husband sent me away overnight to a spa last night, sort out of the blue, with zero regard for my blogging commitments, darn him, so I'm posting from my archives today.

I am not, let me repeat, I AM NOT PREGNANT AGAIN. Thank you and have a wonderful day, y'all!

"God, I just do not know. You know. If You want another child for us, You can make one happen."

As I dragged my tired, sausage-like body up the stairs a minute ago, I called down to my husband, "Honey, I'm going to write now. If you hear sobbing, just ignore it, I'll be fine in an hour or two."

And I meant it. I've been trying to avoid deep thoughts on the subject of parenting lately, as allowing myself to travel any mental distance beyond the rote daily thoughts and activities involved in caring for my family and running the household nearly always finds me, in the end, in a puddle of tears. I've been filled with guilt and self-doubt, worry and sentimentality, no doubt thanks in great part to hormones, the rest I attribute to this precipice Bean, Al and I stand on - the Three Musketeers - as we await the arrival of the fourth little guy, whom we don't even know but will be awash in love for within moments of his birth and will remain that way until the end of each of our days.

Having become a Mama for the first time at age 37, I carefully savored each moment of my pregnancy with Bean, feeling certain this was the first and last time I'd experience it. Though Al never ruled out the possibility of more children, something inside me decided one would be blessing enough, and after a textbook labor and delivery and then laying my eyes on the most beautiful baby God ever made, I simply couldn't imagine topping the experience. Worse yet, I feared the dropping of the proverbial other shoe, should we ever enter into the pregnancy/birth/baby arena again. So each first with Bean was a last, too, in my mind and heart, and I've learned to walk through my life as her mother with all senses fully alert to every beginning and ending, holding quiet, reflective emotional vigil as she physically left my own body, as we ended our nursing relationship, as she's gradually stepped out in independence from me, even as I changed her last diaper. I've carefully captured each moment as the final droplet of another fleeting facet of motherhood.

As she's grown, though, Al and I have discussed the possibility of a second child - him ready and at times even anxious, me hesitant and very unsure. For a year, between Bean's second and third birthdays, I battled internally - could I do it? Was I enough mother? Enough wife? What would it mean to my relationship with Bean? What would it mean to be nearly 40 and starting again from the beginning with a newborn when I'd as much as declared myself all done and made peace with that? The answers didn't come. They wouldn't. I remained at a crossroads through four seasons, my prayer in the end simply, "God, I just do not know. You know. If You want another child for us, You can make one happen."

Thirteen days after Bean turned three, He did.

This child I'm carrying brings with him so many questions. So much change. In all of the uncertainty and doubt, I lean on the prayer I uttered time and time again when my own human mind couldn't reach a resolution, and I know that God chose this child for us. For me, for Al, and even for Bean.

He's meant to be ours and for now, that's enough answer for me.

Megan also blogs at Fried Okra.

By Tina

Somewhere along the way, in the bumpy course of my life, my eyes had become crusted over with the cynical smog and gunk and goo of the world. Bad news for an artist. I had just stopped seeing the exquisite surprises that God puts in my path every day. And I didn't even realize it. Until Sean came along.

Having a little boy to point out the spot of bright red in a sepia colored world has been a marvelous and soul-healing thing. Sean has opened the eyes of my heart to see the wonder of the world again through his eyes and this, for me, has been the gift of parenthood.

Not too long ago, we had breakfast at IHOP and if ever there is a place where the world gathers up her cynicism, it's at IHOP. We always seem to get some world worn waitress named Blanche who is all business but calls everyone honey. Blanche is probably 53 but looks 73 from smoking three packs a day and having worked at IHOP since she was 16.

As Blanche sets down the plate of pancakes before us, Sean shrieks with delight, "Oh Mommy! A strawberry!" he gasps. "Look! She brought us a strawberry!" And then he looks up at Blanche and gives her a smile that would light up the dark side of the moon.

But Blanche doesn't take notice. "Anything else honey?" she asks instead. Sean claps his hands together with glee and laughs his own funny little staccato laugh over the sight of such a rare and unusual thing. He picks it off the side of the plate and examines it.

Powdered sugar snows down on everything between the plate and his shirt. He holds it to his button nose and inhales deeply leaving a dusting of white behind. He feels of its bumpy texture. He offers me a sniff by shoving it firmly up my nose. Then he looks at me and smiles. A strawberry! Tiny white teeth and dimples punctuate the moment — those dimples that daily prick the tender underside of my crusty, cynical heart. It is so hard to be crusty and cynical when there are dimples.

I look at him as he licks what's left of the the powdered sugar off the strawberry. I think of his happy little heart, still pure and unstained by the world, a world which cannot, will not, be distracted away from it's cynicism long enough to appreciate the beauty of a single strawberry on a plate of pancakes.

In that moment, the strawberry and the boy are so blindingly and shockingly and painfully beautiful that it makes my eyes hurt. And I want to eat them both up.

This boy, he has opened the eyes of my heart.

Find Tina blogging at Antique Mommy.

Somehow whenever my friends and I get together we end up talking about motherhood.  I know mothers usually do talk about motherhood! However, none of my friends are mothers or fathers for that matter.  Their curiosity about the whole event astounds me.

Most of them assure me that they never wish to have kids.  They would not be a good mother, could not handle the stress, don’t want to get fat, stretch-marks, college funds, the list goes on.  I usually rebuttal with the joy parenthood brings.  If I don’t defend it, lets face it, our generation will be the last.  I emphasize the sense of accomplishment that I have received from having Aiden.  I leave out the spit up, night time feedings, tantrums, poopy diapers, potty training, sore breasts, contractions, all of the real joys of motherhood.

This past week though I heard something that I don’t usually hear.  A friend was afraid she wouldn’t feel that “instant bond” mothers are supposed to feel.  I assured her that I did not feel that instant head over heels love for Aiden.  I mean there is nothing like holding your newborn in your arms and looking into their eyes knowing you helped create this little person.  After labor and feedings and the realization that I had 45 pounds to lose when I got home I was too preoccupied to fall in love.

I spent the majority of Aiden's babyhood feeling guilty about everything that I did.  I didn’t feed him enough, fed him too much. My house wasn’t clean enough.  I drove too fast.  I didn’t dress motherly.  My taste in music was bad. I listened to music too loud. Looking back I see that I didn’t even love myself.  I was so preoccupied with what the world expected of me I didn't see that I was a wonderful mother.

I see it now.  Every day I fall more in love with this little boy I have created.  Biased as I am, I would say he is the sweetest little man I have ever met.

I assured her.

It may not be right away but eventually you will fall head over heels. and you will never recover.

Find Cassie blogging at MessyFunMommyLife.

By the time you read this, it will be 2009, although right now while I am writing this it is still the very dregs of 2008 and all of my kids have feverish, snotty colds and we're watching Wall-E and eating appetizers - the usual New Year's Eve pattern for us. Even with the sickly little boogers, it's still a surprisingly pleasant evening. It's been a surprising sort of day.

My mother has a much younger sister who is only nine years older than me, and this sister has always been beautiful and slim and athletic and young and had a partner who was handsome and smiling and athletic and kind and who was taken very, very cruelly by cancer two months before I had The Baby, in what will be four years ago this March. I will not write any more on that because the whole thing was so awful - my pretty aunt a widow at 40, my laughing uncle gone.

I have to tell you that each of those previous words physically hurt me to write.

My aunt remarried two summers ago, and settled into life as stepmother to her gentle new husband's teenaged daughter, settled into their new house with their little dog and their jobs - bittersweet, as life so often is, but full of the business and good times that life can have, and we all thought that this was the happy ending to a tragic story. Then she announced something today and I am shocked, shocked, shocked.

My maternal cousins and I were mostly born in a tight five year span - me at almost the very beginning, and then the rest following closely behind, with a few stragglers for a few years afterwards, ending 23 years ago with the birth of my youngest brother, a full decade younger than most of us. There have been great-grandkids - a baker's dozen - as we move from our startlingly wild youths into surprisingly sedate adulthood. Can you guess where this story is going?

2009 will see a new grandchild in my grandmother's arms - the first child of her youngest child, an unexpected blessing for everyone in the family (my aunt's voice still quavery with shock when I spoke to her today), a new cousin - a COUSIN! - for me. Oh, relentless life.

If I was writing this as a novel, I might end with a sleeping newborn being placed in my grandmother's now fragile arms. I might end it on New Year's Eve a couple of years from now, a little person wearing pajamas and wedged between her parents (I'm certain she's a girl, although I'm equally certain that I'm wrong), with a sippy cup of juice and my aunt and uncle are exchanging wry looks over her (or his) head, pretending that this isn't where they'd rather be on New Year's Eve, watching some very simple movie that they know will have a very, very happy ending.

Travel safely, little cousin.

Beck writes at Frog And Toad Are Still Friends.

In just a few hours this year comes to a close. It was a pretty good year for me. I was pregnant for most of it and then birthed my first daughter. I made friends and lost some friends. And truthfully I saw more heartache and pain in the lives of many than I'd ever hope in a lifetime in just the past year…

But it all reminds me that I am living. This is life. The happy ups and then the sad, sad downs. I hope for mostly good times in 2009. At least I know that 2008 made us strong enough to handle pretty much anything that gets thrown at us.

I have a feeling this coming year will be our break. A resting period. That's what I'm hoping for. No matter what, I hope it doesn't go too fast. That I don't blink and see my children all grown up before my very eyes without breathing it in and writing it down- whether it be on my blog or in my head or on my heart. I hope for no regrets. That my decisions and my actions are only a long-lasting blessing to those around me. Especially my husband and my kids. And maybe even myself.  : )

I wish you a very Happy New Year.

Stephanie Precourt is the managing editor of 5 Minutes For Parenting and also blogs at Adventures In Babywearing.

Yesterday, I had a tubal ligation.

My friend Deb drove me to a small medical center where an anesthesiologist put me under and my OBGYN zapped my fallopian tubes.  The hospital where my babies were born is a Roman Catholic hospital, so the procedure could not be done there.  At this point in this post, more liberal bloggers might complain indignantly about religious hospitals denying women medical care. I am not that blogger.  I believe profoundly in religious liberty for everyone, including organizations that have convictions against birth control.   We do not extend religious liberty to people only if they do not inconvenience us. Besides, I benefited from those Catholic religious convictions, both by the charitable program for uninsured mothers during my first pregnancy, and in the confidence I had during every other pregnancy that no matter what went wrong, no one at this hospital would pressure me to abort my children.

So you just keep doing what you're doing, Catholic hospitals.  I'm grateful.

But my husband and I do not have religious convictions against birth control, and we had decided that our current three-month-old would be our last baby.  At Thanksgiving, I found my heartfelt prayer was "Thank you, God, that I am not pregnant."  Being not-pregnant has felt like coming out of a fog.  I can handle the nausea and the heartburn and the sciatica of pregnancy, but the exhaustion overwhelms me.  I can't say that I will never again want a baby - how could I say no to a baby? so sweet! so wonderful! - but I know with certainty that I never want to be pregnant again.

But thinking about this subject has reminded me of many posts I've read on the subject of fertility from other bloggers, most of whom have different beliefs than mine.  Gretchen at Lifenut, though not opposed to birth control,  wrote about when the decision to become infertile may be foolish in her post Scarred for Life.  Although I do not come to the same conclusions as Jennifer F. on birth control, I have been very moved by her blog Conversion Diary, where she explains her Roman Catholic beliefs on abortion and contraception in her post How I Became Pro-Life. Amy at Amy's Humble Musings wrote about her convictions as part of the protestant Quiverful movement.

My different beliefs about birth control are based on a different understanding of vocation and the ways the abstract acceptance of God's will should be manifested in the concete, but I am grateful that there are women who see as their vocation the welcoming of all children under any circumstance.  That is a powerful message in a world that too often views children as "mistakes."  And no, if I miraculously conceived a child after a tubal ligation, that child would not be a "mistake."

Deciding to end my own fertility also makes me keenly aware of what a privilege it was.  I had four babies in five years, each one a welcome addition that was easily conceived.  So many of you have had different experiences.  Antique Mommy's birth story you probably all know.  Robbin at My Level of Awareness wrote about the consequences of her own decision to wait for children in her post, A bad example is sometimes the best one.  And GiBee of Kisses of Sunshine wrote a great guest post at Shannon's blog about what she'd like people to know about infertility.  It is easy to take fertility for granted, and the writing of these bloggers has shown me how intensely grateful I am for the privilege I have been given.  Thank you, bloggers, for that.

My sister tells me that this is the "end of an era" for me.  I suppose it is, though the busyness of motherhood will not give me much time to absorb that.  But today's heavy sleep under the lingering influence of morphine, I find myself well-rested enough to recognize it and cherish all I have been given.

Veronica blogs at Toddled Dredge.

What's your New Years resolution this year? Share it with us in the comments!

Megan also blogs at FriedOkra.

This year we had a choice of services to attend for Christmas Eve. There was a 4, 5:30, and 7:00 service. I jumped at the 4:00 service. That way, I reasoned, we could be home in time for dinner, and could ship the children off to bed at a decent hour, so Santa’s merry elves could begin wrapping the presents.

I indeed said “begin.” As in, I hadn’t wrapped a single present prior to Christmas Eve. In fact, I hadn’t even gathered the presents together from various hiding spots throughout the house. Hiding spots that were so elusive, I still cannot find a few of the gifts. Which I’m sure will make wonderful Easter presents.

My sad excuse this year was that it would do no good to place any wrapped presents underneath the tree. It was difficult enough keeping the tree righted. And because the Barbie cars have been positioned under the Christmas tree since Thanksgiving. Giving the tree a festive appeal, that only gridlock can bring.

A 4:00 service seemed like a wonderful idea to us. And evidently to the 1200 other service attendees. I believe our church seats 900 comfortably. And we were late. Thereby relegated to the back of the church in the folding chairs. We separated upon arrival, knowing Jensen would never make it through service without injuring someone. The Nursery is high on his list of places he absolutely refuses to be left in. Which narrowed the playing field down to the cry room. A 4×10 darkened room that holds about 5 folding chairs. And that’s all. We affectionately refer to it as hell. Or Purgatory.

Fiddledaddy graciously volunteered to wrangle Jensen in hell the cry room, while I took the girls into service. We were greeted at the door by an usher who handed my daughters each a candle. A real candle. With a wick and a cardboard cutout to apparently catch the wax. Should the candle find fire. Allrightythen. I was hoping this was just for effect. A prop. Not meant to be lit. On fire.

We found our place among all the other sardines, and their offspring. The service was wonderful. I was very much drawn into the message of the baby Jesus, the beautiful music singing praises to Our Lord, and the wonder of the miracle of Christmas. And how that small baby in a manger was the greatest gift I’ll ever receive. I forgot about my claustrophobia. I even forgot that my 6 and 8 year old daughters were holding an unlit candle.

Until the singers began a song titled “Light A Candle.” Oh dear Lord God in heaven. No, I silently prayed. Then I watched as the singers did indeed light their candles, and come down the crowded aisles to light the candles of the attendees in the audience. And they came all the way to the back of the nosebleed section. Emme immediately sensed clear and present danger, and handed her unlit candle to me. That's my cautious girl. Cailey, who is deathly afraid of fire and has recurrent nightmares about her favorite doll, Zoe, burning to nothing but orange cinders, held onto her candle with both chubby hands. In a death grip. I couldn’t have wrestled it from her if I tried. I looked down at her, standing there in her highly flammable taffeta and tulle dress. And I prayed a little prayer.

“Dear God. Please help her to focus, and not burst into flames. Amen.”

I hovered over her, ready to sacrifice myself by throwing my body on her to smother the flames. Not taking into account that I was sporting quite a lot of polyester myself. Also highly flammable. She couldn’t take her eyes off the flickering flame. She was mesmerized. Strangely drawn to that which she so greatly feared. And which is forbidden.  Let’s just call that SIN NATURE shall we? Something that I know nothing about. Ahem. (Sidestepping that bolt of lightening.) At the end of the song, I let out a rather large exhale. Extinguishing the flame.

“MOM, I WANTED TO BLOW IT OUT,” just as the church quieted for one last prayer.

Which was mine.

“Dear God.

Thank you for the gift of your precious Son. And thank you for the gift of my sweet husband and three children. And that my daughter didn’t burn down the church. And that I didn’t have to ruin my perfectly good polyester pant suit. With the elastic waist.

Amen.”

DeeDee blogs at Fiddledeedee.