Good McLean Fun

Ever get tired? Feel defeated? Overwhelmed? Totally discouraged? Me either. With Jesus in my heart and a song on my lips, my life is pure joy and contentment. I cannot be moved! Just kidding. That's not the truth. The truth is people call me supermom and wonderwoman, and I'm neither. The truth is I am a pathetic whiny failure who makes too many mistakes to be called good in any way.. and I'm a baby. The truth is when I say my house is a disaster, it really is. Few can compare. The truth is everyone said the first year of having twins was the hardest, and in reality it has only gotten harder. The truth is the twins have the speech development of 18month olds, and when I stop holding on to peace, other things rush in. Things like discouragement, defeat, disbelief, anger, guilt, and envy. The truth is I sometimes compare them to their older siblings and get so irritated with them I want to quit. The truth is I have five beautiful children but my favorite part of the d...

Levi says thanks! 2 weeks post op Day after We had so many people praying for us, and for Levi, that I wouldn't have been surprised if Levi had been miraculously healed overnight.  That, however, wasn't part of God's design. The blessings that came our way were surely Him though, working through prayers. Please be warned, I use the word "blessing" a lot in this post, which may become redundant to the reader, but that is the best word to use in this story...no pseudonyms for this one. I won't be telling people we were super lucky, or very fortunate, and I won't be giving credit to fate, or the universe. This story is about choosing to recognize blessings from God.  So for those wondering how it all went down, here is what your prayers got us: From the moment of the diagnosis, I felt peace. I drove up to Orlando with Levi by myself, having spent some time on the internet the day before googling "abnormal infant skull"...

This is one of those special moments in a parent's life where they just don't want to forget all the fun details of a unique experience.  My sister tells me I'm long-winded, and this post will prove her right. I could tell this story in a few sentences, but that won't capture the range of emotion I want to convey. Parents will be able to empathize, and those without kids may feel like I'm exaggerating what was probably just a slightly stressful time. To be too honest, I could not care any less about your perception of how this went down. I was there. I know what it felt like. My parenting risk management skills have really been refined since having twins. I don't get to take them very many places, not because I am a lazy mom, but because it just is not safe to have two toddlers or now 2 year olds out with only one adult to watch them. They are too "full of life" to be trusted in some situations. Sometimes the guilt sets in and I get this heavy sink...

I've never been one for too many details. I hope I'm known as a go-with-the-flow type of woman, friend, wife, mom...one who rolls with the punches. (I'm working on my epitaph, so far I've got "Danielle McLean, proven pelvis, rolled with the punches.) Truth is it's easy for me because compared to some, I haven't really had a lot of punches to roll with. As I've said many times, my life is beautiful. So I don't take a lot of effort in the planning of minor details. That is not how I've been wired which, it turns out, is fantastic, because I have a bunch of kids now and details get lost in the mess.  Sure, I have some general and unambitious "plans" for my life, such as: 1. Get my own bedroom.  Check. (freshman year of college, first time having my own room) 2. Graduate from college. Check. (UCF, c/o 2005) 3. Marry my high school sweetheart  a humble, funny, handsome, strong, kind, honest, pre-screened and pre-selected by God, most pat...

Being a mom is the most amazing job out there, and yet the pressure and daily self-induced guilt that you are just not good enough can be so heavy and unrelenting , it can break even the strongest woman. Like, say, um...I dunno...me.  The twins at 2.5 are showing some progress in their "expressive language", but haven't reached a vocabulary explosion I was hoping to see by now.  They say more now than ever before, but never sentences, not even stringing 2 words together. There's still a WHOLE lot of grunting and whining going on, and it's been slowly eating away at my heart. I see other two year olds, or ONE year olds, speaking more than the boys, and it is hard not to compare. In my gut I know they will be fine, every child is different, but by this age both Luke and Juliette were much more vocal.  But their limited communication isn't the only area I find myself questioning my parenting skills. I find myself expecting less of the twins because they don...

Baby Levi is due on April 22, which doesn't mean much since none of my babies came on their own, even the twins were induced at 37 weeks 1 day, (considered full term for twins). Either way, the time of being pregnant is near its end, and I'm going to be totally honest, this reality is bittersweet for me. Lots of emotions and thoughts run through my brain when I bring myself to recognize this is it.  Ryan and I always talked about having 4 as our aspiration.  So when I came to him with the desire to have another, he did well to conceal his shock.  Now that we're approaching 5, we both feel we have reached our desired max.  That's a pretty personal topic, but I share a lot of personal things on my blog, so I figure I'll just clear the air for those of you who were wondering. I have no problem sharing this with you.  I understand your curiousity. Many people, complete strangers even, want to know if we are "done." But really...how awkward that some woul...

I am feeling much more composed and in charge of my emotions than I was a few hours ago, so I'll share with you today's trivial tribulation, expressed in an email written to a friend this morning. It sounds trivial, I know. But it felt monumentally devastating at the time. "I have to vent for a second, I'm glad you wrote. In a nutshell I had an emotional breakdown this morning, tears streaming and everything. I am so hesitant to do stuff with the twins because there are 2 of them, I can't control as much if it were just one 2 year old, so I never take them places alone without another adult who has free hands. This morning I decided to just suck it up, stop sheltering them, be brave, let them experience something new, and with my other two I always brought them to a local library preschool story hour, I figure just clapping, dancing, read a book or two, maybe some coloring.. I thought we could do it. I packed them up and we drove to the library. I got there and...