Fed and Breathing

I was all prepared to post today about making time for yourself to get away from life, kiddos, work, etc., and relax. I wrote a piece while I was up at the Cabin Saturday night and was super proud of myself – I’d made a fire, had some takeout and beer by my computer, and wrote (and edited!) a great post. Then…I slept like shit. I’m 100% positive it was the result of finding three dead mice in trash can when I got up there that afternoon. Every creak, squeak, and snap put me on high alert. Somewhere around 2:30am, something much larger than a mouse bumped into the wall next to my bunk and scrabbled up on to the roof. After that, I was pretty much done sleeping. So I wasn’t super relaxed yesterday when I was packing up and shutting the place down, or when I tried to do a little Christmas shopping before I left town. I got home and I was kinda weird and annoying – just ask my husband. So, I did my best to get over my damn self. I took a long, hot shower, had something to eat, and chilled the f*ck out.

This morning, I had visions of tackling all the stuff that was getting to me last night – the boxes and books all over the dining room table, the dishes on the counter, the toys all.over.the.house. And I started to. But then I noticed that my monkey needed a little snuggle time, and she is simply way more important that than the all the literal stuff in my house that was bothering me. We jumped back into my bed with milk, breakfast and coffee, and watched some Curious George. Now I won’t lie, once we had some snuggles I did get some laundry done, and even vacuumed a bit (mostly because I spilled some of the coffee on the stairs and needed to get the carpet cleaner vacuumed up). But after that, I snuggled up again. She’s was too cute to leave for much longer.  The dishes are still on the counter, my dining room is still a mess, and those toys? Yup. Still all over the place.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since becoming a parent has got to be that life doesn’t always go the way you planned. Flexibility is paramount. A different me would be twisting, trying to decide if I should go ahead with my original post because it’s done and pretty, even though it didn’t turn out to be realistic this time around. But parent me knows that done and pretty isn’t what life is about anymore, so I’m going to post this piece, which I wrote in 20 minutes and isn’t perfect. Life (especially with kids) is about letting go of expectations, giving yourself the space to take what you need, and on somedays, simply being grateful that everyone is fed and breathing at the end of the day.