It isn't fair!

Just when I have some hot food and I sit down, the baby starts to cry. My food gets cold while the baby is eating yummy warm milk. Cute little Skyler waits 364 days for his birthday to roll around, and today...the day we chose to celebrate it, he is sick and down with a fever. Poor kid. The other kids are happily enjoying his birthday presents while Skyler feels yucky. It isn't fair. I spend most of the Spring sick with a cough. I get better around the end of May only to get it all over again come June. Not fair!!

My folks always told me that life isn't fair. I thought they told me these things to try to rationalize some kind of disappointment I was feeling, or a new rule. I thought my parents "made up" all kinds of things. Surely life wasn't that unfair...right? Wrong!!! Life is that unfair!

There are lots of people that have a lot more money than I do, yet I have three times as many kids as they do, not fair! I have 10 kids, while some people struggle to have just one, no fair! Some people starve while others have more than they need and they waste, not fair! I guess I could really depress us all about the unfairness of life, but truly, let's try to stay on a positive note here.

For a bunch of kids being raised in a family of 12 it usually means that life is rarely, if not always unfair. That's just the way it is. Someone will have to share a room with another kid that grinds their teeth in their sleep, is a hoarder, borrows underwear, takes money without asking and farts without warning. But then again I have kids that don't share rooms, but their rooms are the size of shoe boxes. Either way it's not fair. We can never get shoes for everyone the same day, some kids have to wait for another payday. Road trips mean sharing a bench with your mortal enemy. Meal times are a free for all, where someone always loses. Then there's chore day...don't even get me started on the "unfairness" of that day. "His chores are easy!" "That room is such a mess, and I didn't do any of it!" "Why doesn't Skyler have to do three chores?" "Why do I have to clean the toilet after Colby used it?" "IT ISN'T FAIR!!!!"

I know it isn't fair kiddos, I know! I try to make it fair. Buy the kids the same thing so no one is left without. Usually someone doesn't like what they get. I try to get the same amount of cuddle time in with whoever wants it, but alas, someone goes to bed crying about how unfair it was because they didn't get my attention today. After hearing an argument I get mad at who I think deserves it, but it's always unfair to the kid getting yelled at, at least that's what they think. You know what isn't fair kids???? When mom gives up the cake to make sure you all got a piece...that's not fair! :)

Life isn't fair. I am still trying to get used to this concept, and maybe I never will. Some days are better than others, some I think I definitely have more than some, and some I think I got short changed in a lot of areas. Either way, I may die with the words "This isn't fair" seeping from my lips. But, in a all fairness to myself, am I really that different from everyone else?