Slow Down and Savor It
With a 3rd baby on the way, I like to gently push the boundaries of what might be considered difficult, as a practical lesson into what will ultimately be my future. Case in point, I needed to pick up our car from the shop 1.5 miles down the road and so I loaded the girls in the double Bob stroller and decided I’d take our Cocker Spaniel, Macie, along for the run. We made it exactly 30 seconds before Macie got so excited she pooped on someone’s driveway. As I made an unsuccessful attempt to lock the stroller, in order to dodge getting run over, not only did Macie step in it, but I didn’t open the bag all the way and so I came up with a steaming pile of poo in my unprotected bare hand, just as my stroller rolled gracefully down the driveway. If this isn’t the perfect metaphor for trying to do it all as a mother, I am not sure what is.
My list of things I need to do this week makes me want to curl back in bed and sleep until next Tuesday. My youngest, soon-to-be middle daughter is turning 3 and I’m hosting a family brunch on Saturday and then a Bounce House birthday a few towns over on Sunday. My philosophy for kid’s birthdays is that it be some place contained that will safely exhaust every child--everyone goes home with a full tummy just in time for family nap time. Also, if you tell me that you flat out don’t want to come because this would be your 6th kid's party in a month, I absolutely won’t be offended. This won’t be New Orleans on Mardi Gras, let’s make sure we call a spade a spade and recognize that all we can really pray for is that the children have fun and nobody bounces to the point of a bloody nose.
We spent last weekend out of town at our annual Apple Hill family reunion, which was wonderful but exhausting since my kids don’t sleep when we aren’t at home (or even at home these day— every night we play a lively game of musical beds). We stayed at a cozy Airbnb that was on an actual little farm with goats and chickens. Have you ever been awakened in the morning to the sound of roosters? Yeah, me either, my kids were up well before then, but I can one day hope for such a dreamy fairy tale to come true. I guess I’ll call this #roostergoals.
It seems like life these days is coming at us hard and fast. We get to experience a lot of joyful events, with limited downtown and now the holidays are on the horizon, so the rest of 2018 is likely to be one long food coma— sprinkled with a dozen more kid’s birthday parties and some light, tier-2 tantrums. I’m not going to tell anyone to slow down and savor it all, because when someone stops me while I’m pregnant lifting both my kids into the shopping cart and tells me exactly that, I want to kick them softly in the shins and say, “It may be hard to tell through all the chaos, cringing, and crying; but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing all along.”
