Anybody There?

This, by the way, is not meant in any way to make any of our friends feel bad.  It is merely meant for others to know they are not alone!  It may even bring some awareness to others.

I often times ponder what happened to all those awesome friendships we had before kids.  Well, really there was never a "before we had kids"!  Cam Jr. was there from day 1, he was 2 when Camron and I started dating.  Now, granted, he wasn't a 24/7 child for us, but he was just easy!  We could take him anywhere with us and he was happy.  Hanging out at the park, playing pool, going to friends, camping, fishing, canoeing, cooking out, it didn't matter.  He was a constant to our weekends.  We could take him to the car shows and boat shows, things like that.  Eventually though our friends just started to dropped off, some because their lives got busy with their own families.  Some because the older the kids got, the harder it was to go elsewhere and actually count on having a good time. It was actually pretty simple to take Annabelle & Lilly out of the house.  With a four year difference between them, Annabelle was self sufficient and pretty mature for the little 4 year old that she was.  There is a 9 year difference between Cam Jr. and Annabelle, so when he was with us, he actually was very helpful.  It wasn't until Lilly turned 1 and I found out I was pregnant that it became difficult.  Of course!  I was constantly fatigued, and maybe it just became habit, but I didn't want to go anywhere!  Maggie came along when Lilly was just 20 months old.  We really didn't have many difficulties with her early on, but it was just simply hard to get out of the house in an organized, non chaotic manner that didn't stress me out.  Most of our friends already had kids, most of them older than ours, and they had their routines.  It seemed we were always headed to someones, for something.  Eventually it got to the point that I was just declining the invites because it was difficult to get out.  We were NEVER on time, EVER!  The older Maggie got, the harder the hits.  People just didn't get that it would be so much easier for them to come to us.  We didn't know what was going on with her.  We just knew it was hard.  A kind of hard that made it grueling and exhausting just to think about it.  No one really understood!  I always felt I was under judgement.  I was actually told once that I made everything more difficult than I needed to.  Murdoch came along when Maggie was 5,  just 9 months into our discoveries of her alphabet soup of diagnosis'.  We tried to put the invites out for our friends to come here and it was always "But we have more room.  Come over here!"  The difficulties, especially with Maggie, grew more and more frustrating.  I can't tell you how many times I had to go off on my own to release the tears, recompose myself, and come back with a smile.  I cry now at the very thought of those days.  You couldn't take your eyes off of her.  There were times that I thought things were going well while we were out and I would relax a bit, but someone would always come back with "Maggie is...."  or we simply wouldn't be able to find her.  We didn't enjoy being out and the other kids had to suffer because of it.  I would be naive to say it didn't affect them.  I know that it still does.  It's not like I can just pack them up and run out with them on my own.  They feed off each other way too much, then everyone is frustrated, angry or crying.  You can't take them into a store or to the mall.  It is either take one of them or leave them all.  The only places we go together now is to gatherings at relatives and to church.  Thank God church is only an hour long, because it is arduous!  Holidays have become much easier with Maggie, but her maturity is still lacking.  She does things socially that you would expect out of a 6 or 7 year old and she is almost 9.  Things that people often times question and children don't understand.  Did you know that there is actually a diagnosis of Impulse Control Disorder?  Maggie is the epitome of Impulse Control Disorder.  She seriously cannot help herself.  Of course, I have been told that I make excuses for her also.  So, who really knows!  I always thought that I would spend my weekends with my friends and their families hanging out.  Kids playing together, some great adult conversation (that I so desperately need), and some compassion and understanding to boot!  That hasn't worked out so great for us!  Friends are few and far between these days.  Even though Belle is old enough to babysit,  we really can't expect her to be able to handle the chaos that the younger ones dish out, just so we can go hang out with friends.  I know, deep down, that the most important thing is, that we have gained so much more through our children, but I miss our friends!