Chicago, continued

So anyhow, to continue my previous post, we stayed at the Sutton Place Hotel in Chicago which I don't think is used to seeing large families. At one point I left our room for some reason and when I opened the door our "neighbors" were opening their door next to us and the man seemed frozen by the level of noise coming from our room. He looked at me and said "You've got to be kidding me". Sorry. There's a lot of us.

Our friends Aisling and Brian did Walk America with us the next morning with their 3 kids. Aisling's a much better woman than I am because she's in her first trimester of pregnancy which is exhausting and her babies always kick her butt with morning, day and night sickness, but she didn't complain once. Those Irish women are tough old broads. Aisling is my friend who I consider responsible for my large family. Three years ago when I was telling her about how I was on the fence about having another baby she told me "You'll never regret having another one, but you might regret it if you don't". And there it was. The one sentence that made my decision crystal clear. The one sentence that has echoed in my head hundreds of times since, while I was so ill in my first trimester that I thought these three little parasites were literally sucking the life out of me. And while I laid in a hospital bed for 3 months, an hour away from my family. While I layed there in pain with torn abdominal muscles and a burned esophagus from constant heartburn. While I was trying to sleep with a head under each of my rib cages and another that felt like she was always trying to come out. While I laid there for three months waiting to see if Carly and Sonny would stay together when it was revealed that he fathered a daughter with Alexis and also got Sam pregnant between his mob dealings. Then I still heard her words of wisdom months later during many of my 25,000 diaper changes, while trying to feed three babies with only two hands, while praying that they all sleep at the same time for just an hour so I could get a quick nap in. And don't get me started about her words screaming at me during the crying fits, temper tantrums, endless laundry, dishes, dirty floors, and poop smeared walls. But I can honestly say that I hear her words the loudest when I see my girls belly laughing over some joke that only they know, or watching them play Ring Around the Rosy, or when they fight over which of them gets to sit on my lap for a story. Through all the chaos I'm always reminded that we are SO blessed to have our family. We were reminded of this on the March of Dimes walk, seeing several t-shirts with pictures of babies who were born way too early to survive and knowing how those parents would give their lives to live our chaos. We didn't get too far into the walk before we walked by Millenium Park and the kids splashed around in the water fountain for the rest of the time. I kept thinking that we got off track from the walk because our healthy kids just wanted to play and be kids, and there were a lot of parents there who just kept walking for their kids who couldn't be there. We know how lucky we are, and Aisling - you're right. We'll never regret it.