Time for You

A little diddy I wrote last year around this time when my little boy was off to big kid school for the first time.

Time for you

Written by: Sabrina Chamberlain-Parks

It would seem that time is cut up into pieces like brownies in a pan to be gobbled up. A week is made up of days, a day is made up of hours, an hour is made up of minutes. A minute sliced up into 60 seconds. Sometimes a person’s whole life can change in a matter of minutes. Sometimes, one gets lucky and it changes for the better. As was the case in the minutes that it took to find out about you. However, the minutes I waited seemed like hours and by the time the pink plus sign had appeared, I knew my life had changed forever. That moment in time signified the start of motherhood, which would prove to be one of the best times of my life!

 From that moment on I charted your growth week by week counting 42 weeks in all to be exact. That’s how many weeks it took for a tiny you to be ready for the world. The weeks were divided into blocks of time called trimesters until you arrived at the end of the 3^rd and final one, as our newborn baby.

You were born in the wintertime. We had to take our time in bundling you up for its wintriness. Quickly, wintertime melted away into spring, springtime burst into summer, and summertime turned into fall. Before we knew it, wintertime had blown in again marking the first year of your life, one that had flown by us in a flurry. More wintertime’s blew in and you grew to be a toddler – and now a pre-schooler. You see, the time it takes for you to grow as a child is broken up into categories, just like the seasons, each one having a special name signifying change.

                I am thankful to Daddy because he worked a lot of over time so that we could have our time at home together.  We’ve had some great times with one another filled with game times, craft times and imaginary playtimes.  That from time to time we took breaks from, so you could have your potty times, lunchtimes, dinner times and naptimes. While trying to teach you some of life’s lessons there were short times that you spent in time out. There have been some trying times that I couldn’t wait for both our bedtimes. There were night time stories that were shared after your teeth were brushed and you were dressed for bedtime.  Also, there were story times at the library, and playtimes with friends at the park. Sometimes messy playtimes, resulted in daytime bath times, followed by down times, in the form of nap times, or early bed times.

Before we all knew it, it was time for elementary school. When night time rolled around I packed your first lunch for lunchtime, filling up your bag with enough food for a week’s worth of snack times. All the while hoping that your time at school would only bring you good times and that you minded your manners and avoided a timeout. I hoped that older kids would spear you a hard time and that if they didn’t mind their manners that they’d get a timeout.

Then I started to think about all the free time I would have during the daytime, with you away at school.  Then for the first time, a tear rolled down my cheek.  I hadn’t taken the time to think about it before. Over the past few years we had shared so much time together that I forgotten what it was like to have time alone. I began to think about what I’d do tomorrow. Deciding then that maybe I’d bake a batch of brownies and pop them into the oven. Just around the time you would be packing up at school for home time. Then perhaps when you got home, we could sit down and enjoy warm pieces of brownies together while sneaking in a little one-on-one time, to talk about how your first time at elementary school was.

I’d want to spend my time doing this so you’d know, that despite the fact that the amount of time we could spent together during the daytime was changing, that whatever time we did spend together was special to me. And no matter what kind of time you were having in life – whenever you needed me to make it...I would always make time for you! However making brownies each time would be a different story!

My Sweet Babies!

Read to your Kids

I can admit, these days I don't read as much adult stuff as I'd like to. Although, I have read scores of children's books since the birth of my now five year old son. In reading them I have learned to love them and actually I devour them. I am enamoured with them so much that I will confess to making secret trips to the book store and hanging out in the children's lit section all by my self. I have even given writing for children a kick at the can. Check out my latest work entitled "The Wish". Feel free to critique it too!

The Wish

Once there was a family who lived on a farm, whose farmland was in desperate need of rain to make their crop of lima beans grow. The family counted on the rain like they counted on the beans to make a living. Days went by. Weeks went by, without a drop of rain.  The farmer’s fields began to flake and crack and the choices from the pantry cupboard were becoming slim. For the first time, Hanna the little farm girl began to see worry on her parents faces.

One day while playing in a field Hanna plucked a dandelion that had gone to seed (weeds seemed to thrive even through drought). She blew on it as hard as she could, making a wish for rain as she blew.  In that moment her wish was born. It traveled out of her mouth, whizzing and whirling towards a cluster of gray storm clouds that were in the sky.

Far below the storm clouds, Clarence floated on a raft with his family. Where he lived, it had been raining for many weeks and all the rain had made rivers raise so high that it covered up his house.  Despite having lost all his favourite things to the rain and water, he and his family had been able to stay together. However, Clarence knew that they’d all be a little happier if they could touch the ground again. So he wished for the rain to stop and the sun to shine, to help dry up all the water.

Meanwhile, up in the sky Hanna’s wish was working hard to lasso the heavy rain clouds.  The wish mustered up all of its strength to work them loose, and was able to pull them over to her family’s farm, whose field was so very dry. It took many days of solid rain before the ground became wet enough for the lima beans to sprout. Though eventually, Hanna and her parents were able to take delight in seeing thousands of little green lima bean shoots pop up across their fields.  

While bobbing along in the raft, Clarence noticed that the rain had stopped. To his amazement the dark clouds had broken up to reveal the bright shiny sun that was hiding behind them. Its warm rays felt good on his cold and soggy back. The sunshine helped spread hope to him and his family. For the first time since being on the raft, his Mommy and Daddy smiled.  It took many weeks of sunshine for the sun to drink up all the water. But eventually Clarence and his family were able to touch the ground again.

On the other side of the world a little girl named Kirima sat with her family around a candle. For months on end they lived in complete darkness. It was night all the time. Kirima could barely remember what her small town had looked like in the daylight.  All she knew was that the sun was needed to melt some snow to summon the spring. She made a wish for the dark cold nights of winter to end and for the days of spring to shine. The wish got busy and rounded up the sun...it dragged it across the world so it would be there to greet her when she woke up the next day. For the first time in many months Kirima’s Mother did not have to wake her for school. The sun beaming through Kirima’s window did it for her. That day marked the start of spring.

Way, way, over on the opposite side of the world a little boy named Sebahive (seh ba HEE vay)  lived with his tribe in a desert.  There in the desert all of the tribe’s people and all of the deserts animals waited anxiously for a cold dark night to come and relieve them from the sweltering dessert heat.  As  Sebahive lay in a hut, too hot and weak to move he wished for a cold dark night to come.  That night as the sun dropped out of the sky, the wish reeled in a cold dark night and cast it out onto the desert, reviving and refreshing everyone and everything that lived there.

The wish was tired but happy that it could help so many children. Then just as the wish was about to rest after all of its granting’s, a little boy named Jacob - who couldn’t complain too much about anything, who lived in a safe an fortunate part of the world, who was fed anything his heart desired, who had a roof over him not under, who got to enjoy four seasons (and when one of them became too hot or too cold all could be fixed with a flick of a switch) requested a wish. You may be wondering just what kind of wish this little boy could possibly have?  As Jacob stepped around mounds of toys and baskets full of clean laundry on the floor, to place his dirty cup into a sink filled with dirty dishes, Jacob made an unselfish wish for his Mother. He wished that one day her wish to tell the world’s children about wishes would come true!

Hello All and Welcome to "Career Mom and Would Be..."

Here I am a career mom with a new blog! This is an exciting departure from my stay at home status! I realize that using the term "career mom" may be a little misleading. I honestly thought that by staying at home with my children that I was considered a career mom. Who knew, me a career mom. Despite devoting my life to child rearing, I, like many other stay at home mommies out there have other life ambitions hence the "would be..." component to this blog. If I could dedicate my time elsewhere I would be an interior designer (my trained profession), an artist, a children's book author, a photographer, a landscaper, and a philanthropist (if I generated an income).