The five year plan, Part III

Impossibly and miraculously, I have made it past another five year mark in writing on the blog and it's time to revisit and revise the good 'ole five year plan.

Previous five year posts - gosh how I loved going back to hear my own voice in those posts captured right at that time in our lives. Seems like a different world but also certainly not five years ago - how time passes will never make sense to me. 

The five year plan: 2020
The five year plan: 2012

When I was 36 in 2020, I sent out these hopes for me and here's how they've shaken out: 

• you will not have moved but found a way to make this home and space more of what you want - yes! updated the living room, found private spaces for the biggest kids, re-did the basement into a den, added a basketball court outside! All projects I never could have even anticipated wanting or needing five years ago. 
• you will have more farm animals (goats? sheep? ducks?) - yes! currently at 6 goats, 30 chickens, 2 kittens, our 16 year old dog Bullet, and our guardian dog Osa! 
• you will WRITE THE DAMN BOOK - technically no, but theoretically yes....hahhaa, I am currently in the works of something on this! 
• you will have taken some/all children on a volunteering trip - no not officially but we do all volunteer regularly in our school communities all year long and we started taking proper family vacations again - both things that are important to me. 
• you will still be teaching - yes! in a new school!
• you will have stuck to your guns on the no cell phone until 8th grade rule - a little adjusted because motherhood is nothing if not being flexible. Our rule is phones at 13 and social media at 8th grade.
• you will still be making Family Yearbooks - yes!!

Content, optimistic, tired but hopeful Tabitha of 36 on the brink of having your fifth baby in the middle of a global pandemic. My darling, you will be surprised to find out that in the last five years, these things have happened: 

• You have six kids!! Five years ago, you were just about to have your fifth baby via c-section during Covid-19 lockdown with full intentions of being done. And then when that fifth baby was five months old you found out you were pregnant with number 6! A half dozen! It was clear that the wish on a star you made when you were 7 years old telling everyone you would grow up to have six kids really came true! 
• You took a year off of teaching to stay home with the three youngest and got to nanny your first nephew that year too. What a blessing it was to work for a school district, principal, and superintendent who gave you that gift. 
• You are an aunt to three nephews! Your baby sister Uch had three boys in three years and they are the sweetest squishems ever. Being an aunt is one of the greatest joys on Earth.
• Bullet is still alive at 16 years old! 
• You and Brandon both moved schools (no longer in the same district); it took some adjustments but B is with the kids at school and you have learned how to manage work-life boundaries and that feels like a step in the right direction.
• You teach elementary school students in the morning and high school students in the afternoon at your new school which means every day is a fast speed blur and you know about 500 students' names across the district (a much bigger school). But you feel proud of your financial contribution to our family, you love working in a department of two with your new Spanish teacher partner, you get to work with your dear friend Loni, and you've grown as a teacher and a person who knows their value. (proud of us). 
• Brandon is the Varsity football coach at Conemaugh Township and football season has become a family event! Three family members on the sidelines every Friday night and the rest of our crew and extended family and friends in the bleachers rooting for the team. (all your Tami Taylor dreams come true!)
• We got the driveway fixed with millings and you can barely remember now how bad it used to be!
• We have made changes to our home that match our growing family: paved a half basketball court behind the house, renovated the inner garage to be another tv room, converted the room near the attic door to be a tiny bedroom for our teen daughter, and bought a huge sectional couch for the living room that fits all of us! There are still a lot of projects and dreams that we have, but it feels like our home is growing up with us.
• You still have that pink carpet upstairs and the tile in the kitchen that you hate (LOL)
• You navigate the grief of losing your mother-in-law (over a year ago now, but still finding your footing regularly because grief is like that). You try to guide and support your husband, kids, and father-in-law through it as best and intentionally as possible and received so much patience, love, and support from family and friends. (miss you everyday, Gigi). 
• We said goodbye to our pitbull Trixie (13 years), all of Brandon's fish (we don't even have a tank up anymore!), a kitty Dwayne, and two guinea pigs Toffee and Queen Barb
• We started to raise goats and lots of chickens, we even have a guardian dog Osa who lives with the goats full time. We went through a breeding season of goats (what a stressful stage that was of being a goat grandma!) and we have learned a lot about animals (medicines, pregnancy and birth, wing clippings, castrations, midnight rescue missions, freezing temperatures, heat advisories, predators, electric fences, and stool samples!) We have loved and lost many farm animals in five years- What a lesson in life and loss and love we have earned from hobby farming. Who knew we were these people? 
• We have a 12 passenger van (Lucille the Studermobile) and Jillian the Honda Pilot, and we still have Ron Burgundy the Ford Truck. It was oddly sad to say goodbye to Sheila (our first van) and you even got a little choked up as we drove away from her on the lot. 
• You have a sourdough starter and her name is Celebrina. You feel proud to have it and make things from it but also kind of hate the effort it takes to maintain it. You definitely do not need one more thing to take care of but also get joy and pride from it so its worth it. A perfect example of you still trying to figure yourself out. 
• You are straddling a great canyon of parenting right now; a span from raising teenagers to raising a 4 year old and many ages in between. What a vast stretch of your body, mind, and heart it is. Trying to delicately balance the scale of raising big kids with big problems and little kids with little problems and the beautiful blur in the middle of independent young kids. In your wildest dreams you could not have imagined what a challenging yet incredible gift it is to be in the thick of parenting all these stages at one time.
• Grey is fifteen and half a foot taller than you and you play a game called "I bet he can't eat all this" while you try to give him two bagel breakfast sandwiches each with three eggs, meat, and cheese (spoiler alert: he eats them both and then eats a protein breakfast bar afterwards). He plays football, basketball, and baseball but still loves fishing and hunting the most. He is artistic too though and plays with his younger siblings and daydreams about driving a car and can concoct a delicious wing sauce.
• Gem is thirteen and 4 inches taller than you and reminds you so much of being a teenage girl it is disorientating almost daily. She plays soccer and basketball and is an assistant trainer on the football sidelines. She is president of jr high student council and takes photos for the yearbook and loves to fall deeply into rom com movies and tv series. Her heart is still wide open and she is empathetic to a degree that it is self-sabotaging. 
• Violet is ten and a half and though she be tiny, she is mighty. She and I have opposite personalities which makes for both fun and frustration for both of us. She cheers and plays basketball and soccer. She also is in elementary student council, on the scrabble team, and plays the flute. Her creativity and artist's heart has her wrapped up in projects and ideas (and messes) every day. But competitiveness is truly her driving force and she is determined to be the 'best' or the 'most' in all aspects of her life.
• Rusty is nine and a friend to literally everyone - everywhere we go people are calling out to him to say hello or to play. He is an incredibly patient big brother and an easygoing little brother. This year he played football, soccer, and competitive swim. Last year he also tried wrestling, next year he wants to try basketball and baseball. He is very athletic and strong - so I know he'll succeed in anything he tries if only he could get over the fact that all of the sports require practice (the part he dislikes the most - he just wants to play and have fun!) 
• Reddy is five and equal mixes of his big brothers with a heaping scoop of just him in there. He has the most contagious laugh and can get all of us going just by laughing himself. He played soccer this year and became absolutely obsessed with fishing. It has been so sweet to see him learn more about himself; figuring out how he is like the men and boys in his life (his dad, grandpas, his brothers, all his brothers' friends, the football players on Daddy's team) and who he is himself. He is still a little bit of a momma's boy and I will take it for as long as I can get it. 
• Olive is four and like a sparkler come to life. She is sassy and hilarious and so smart is it shocking. She loves dancing, lip synching, playing babies, and bossing everyone around. She played soccer this year and cannot wait for the moment that she can be a real cheerleader (she pretend cheers at all her big sibling's games). If ever there was a child who was meant to be the baby of the family, it is Loopy - she handles it with so much spirit, smiles, and sass. 
• You and B are solid with 25 years of love and learning between you (16 years of marriage). Every year brings its own challenges and obstacles to learn and grow through; to figure out how to talk and hug and kiss our way to the other side of money worries, parenting, job challenges, relationships with friends and family, and maintaining a home and farm. He is truly your best friend and most days the only person you even want to talk to about anything real. The hard parts will never cease as we move through life, but what a deep sighed relief it is to know at the end of each day you get to climb into bed and lay on his chest and rest in the safety of his arms.

36 year old Tabitha, 

Girl, I love ya. Thank you for being and doing all the things you did then - never getting settled in comfort and always trying to move towards the version of you that you see out there in 50 years from now. You were young and hopeful and more lighthearted then. I wish I could sit down with you and listen to you chatter on and on and steal some of that energy and optimism you have. I would love to give you a hug and let you know that you are on the right path and out here with all the kids ranging in an 11 year span is hard but mostly so fun and full of life. You are going to love it out here, keep going girl! 

46 year old Tab, 

Five years seems  like no time at all in my time - but you and I both know that our time does not match the speed of our kids' time. What do we care if we are 46? but if I'm 46 that means that we have a kid who has graduated high school and that seems impossible. I want to give you a hug out there - how are we doing? actually. Do you miss the snuggles of the little ones (because I can still scoop them up and shower them with a million kisses and they just giggle). Does your body feel like it belongs to you more than it does to them; less holding and carrying and being a lap to sit on? Do you ache for the slow mornings when you wake up before everyone else and you know that everyone is under your roof asleep in peace? Are you still performing magic out there at Christmas and lost teeth? Do the kids still tell you their dreams in rambling stories over cereal at breakfast? I'm back here holding on to that for as long as I can for us.

If I'm being honest though, I can already feel the chill in the breeze coming from the open door out there of the future of motherhood; kids grown and moving on and even youngest kids that are heading towards double digits. But I know there is more good coming too; good I can't even imagine. Do you still have a missing sock pile? What have you done with all the spaces that used to hold baby dolls and board books? Do you still have gogurt in the fridge? Do you wake up rested because you didn't have a kid's foot in your neck from kids who want to sleep in your bed? 

It's so good right now at 41 with all six kids under our roof (aged 15-4!) I wish you could come back here for a day and see how it is again to have everyone at home together. There are struggles (everything is broken, everyone is hungry, everyone wants to do all the things) - but every seat at the kitchen table is full, and it is mostly days filled with silly and funny and always a pop-up dance party. Best of all, I am still homebase for every single person in this family. 

I don't know what it will be like out there - both in motherhood and in life? I'm old enough now to see that life can knock you on your ass pretty quick and you have to relearn how to walk again as a person while also navigating your children through it as a Mom. I can't begin to imagine what's going on out there for you but I trust you and I know you are figuring it out and learning and trying to see and be the good.
You got this - I believe in you and I'm cheering for you.
Cheering for us.
Cheering for the kids wherever they are in life too. 

In five years, Tab - I wish for these things to be true for us: 

• the house is more organized and you have less stuff
• everyone in the family has a passport that has been used at least once
• you and B have renewed your vows and the kids were a part of it
• your writing is out there in the world and you feel proud of you
• you feel strong and capable in your own body