My girls are 3 1/2 and 2. Parenting these ages can be a little intense at times. With constant words and thoughts from them, constant requests for milk and stories and games and help in the potty, just to name a few. This age can get to you. I think at one point or another every mom with kids these ages has felt just a little done, a little too stretched.
Saturday was one of those days for me. As you may have seen in other posts this week, we have been sick with colds and Caitlyn’s has required extra breathing treatments and all of us have had a little less sleep than normal. And, while he is rarely gone, my dear hubby was not here on Saturday. Not only did I miss his help, I missed HIM. We have been married 5 years and I still miss him when he is gone. I still count the hours until he gets home.
Add to that all the times the girls wanted something and some pregnancy hormones (which this time are making me an emotional lunatic) and finding out hubby is not coming home as soon as I hoped, and this mama felt drained and started to cry and started to take it out on my kids…and then a look from Caitlyn stopped me short.
She wanted something, who knows what, and I just wanted a minute without someone in my face. I told her to just go play, just go play by herself. As she started to walk away, I caught this heartbroken look on her face…and it absolutely stopped me.
That look made me think of a blog by MckMama about how she stays calm when everything is crazy. She talked about how even when the kids need a million things she reminds herself that when her kids are grown, she’s gonna miss this stage, the intense young child stage, and it rang so true with me.
There is a country song along the same lines, I think it is called, “you’re gonna miss this.” It starts with a teenager who is anxious to grow up and her mama tells her that some day she is going to miss this…and then the girl is young and married anxious for kids and a house and her daddy tells her, you’re gonna miss this, and then she is a mom with young kids, and the plumber reminds her someday, you’re gonna miss this.
I often need both of these reminders and decided they were so important, I wanted it in my brain all the time. Toward that end, recently I typed the phrase, “you’re gonna miss this” on little pieces of paper and hung them all over my house.
So I have those reminders and then that look on Caitlyn’s face. Right now the girls want mama and daddy all the time. It will not always be this way. They will, as they are supposed to, get more independent. And need us, if not less, just differently than they do now. And I will miss it. So, while I might still want to have a pity party for myself or think I need a break, really I just need an attitude adjustment (isn’t that another country song??).
So in the middle of thinking, why can’t I just get a minute of peace to do laundry, I stopped and listened to the funny thing that Caitlyn was doing. She was so bummed that I had gone downstairs to do laundry, that she was opening the door to the basement to yell down a play-by-play of what was happening up here.
Turns out there was a lion in my living room (also known as Sue, but trust me, she can be mistaken as a lion sometimes). And the lion was sitting on my chair. And the lion said RRRRRRRoarrrrrr to her. Oh, the lion said RRRRRoarrrrrr again. Hey mama, the lion said RRRRRRoarrrrr to me again.
How many times in life am I going to have a lion in my house? Probably not too many, so I decided to laugh at this one (and hope this lion decided not to be destructive).
And Caitlyn has been in her Belle dress most of the day. I am not fond of them being in dress up clothes all the time, but again decided, how many times is Belle going to be in my house? So I watched her spin and twirl through my house. And didn’t insist she take it off for dinner. I just handed her a napkin to get the applesauce off it when it dropped off the spoon. And took pictures.
Oh and during dinner I learned something very important, dragons are not nice. Personally, I don’t have much experience with dragons, so it is probably a good thing my 3 1/2 year old is here to educate me on the social skills of a dragon.
I had also been looking around my house thinking, oh man, so many toys to clean up, laundry to fold and put away, aggghhh. But again, some day, my house will not be full of kidlet clutter, and while it will be nice, I am gonna miss it. So, I took some pictures of that too.
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