Here’s Chapter 1 from Syra’s Scribbles V: 2011 to 2012

Life Goals: Health and Happiness

April 2011
Dear Ruth,
I saw myself in the mirror today and I looked good. As always, I wore a long-sleeved nursing shirt to cover my elbows, a jean skirt, and a bright headscarf that matched my shirt. I’m tall and thin and my coloring looked good to me, not too pale.
I don’t understand why I’m not feeling like myself yet. It’s been three months since I almost hemorrhaged after giving birth to Xenia (Ksenia). I didn’t even need a blood transfusion, though it came close. I have an iron supplement and eat Malt-O-Meal™ almost every morning. Surely, I’m not anemic anymore. Susha (that’s Xenia’s nickname) sleeps five hours regularly, so it’s not as if I’m sleep-deprived either.
Esther, Sophia, and Basil, who are all being homeschooled take ice skating, Russian, piano, and art lessons, and when their lessons, aren’t keeping them busy, they are great at chasing down their two-year-old toddler brother Jonah. I don’t even have to take the girls to all their lessons since my friend Heather has been driving them ever since I gave birth. Mom helps too when her kidney disease, depression, and diabetes don’t make her too wonky to leave her station on the living room sofa. She hasn’t fallen in over two weeks!
I don’t like asking for help, but when I need it, Mike’s mom Coryn, her husband John, Mike’s father Darryl, and his wife Jan are a phone call away. I have all my friends from church too.
Mike is here for me. He comes home and helps with the kids even after a long day at the office space he rents from his dad’s engineering company. Mike’s office hours are a little off of ours because he works remotely for a company in California, and a lot of his hardware engineering team lives in India. We are waiting to find out when he has to go to Pune. I hope it’s not for a long time. When we were dating and discussing our dreams for the future, we both hoped that Mike would have a great job to support me and our huge family while I stayed home like our moms stayed home with us. So far all is going according to plan.
It’s supposed to be the most joyous season of the year too since we just celebrated Pascha, the Eastern Orthodox Easter. Please pray for me to figure out what I should be doing differently. I’m so close to having the big, happy family I’ve always dreamed of. We have five of the eight kids we want, but it feels like the kids are more grumpy than happy. We celebrate the girls’ birthdays next week, and I want them to have the best party ever. Esther will be ten. Sophia will be eight. Basil still has six months until he turns six.
Life is so good, and yet despite all my efforts, I’m exhausted. Let me know if you have any ideas. For now, in my morning prayers during the “Prayer of St. Philaret of Moscow,” I beg God to “give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring.” Please pray for me whenever you think of me. Knowing people pray for me makes a huge difference. Lord have mercy.
Your friend, Syra