what i do

I was in a meeting with a contributor today, and after looking at the photos of my kids on my desk, she said, “Wow, I don’t know you do it. I can barely get myself up and dressed for work, let alone two kids.”

It’s not as if I exactly excel in the morning relay race. My sweater has a “snail trail” of snot from one-year old T’s ever-present daycare nose and 3 and half-year old S went to school wearing his baby sister’s socks (the heal left an uncomfortable bump just at the ball of each foot that he complained about, but what could we do since all of his socks were still in the mountainous heap of a laundry pile in the basement?). Not to mention the fact that after seeing his sister get a morning bottle (Yes, I know we should be weaning her to a cup now that she’s had her first birthday. Our pediatrician would just die.), S begged, pleaded, whined, and fussed for a bottle, too. “I’m feeling little today, Mommy,” he told me. So to be able to finally get into the shower, I gave him a bottle, too. (Okay, now our pediatrician would really freak.) In my defense, I did see a late night Dr. Phil episode where he encouraged parents to choose their battles carefully, but just never lose the ones they’ve chosen. So maybe a one-time bottle relapse wasn’t that big a deal? And wasn’t I acknowledging and listening to his feelings by giving him one? I was grateful to hear him say, “Wow, it’s really hard to drink much this way,” and then a little more worried to hear him say quietly, “but it’s really, really nice.”

The weekends are a bit mellower. On Saturday, we took the kids to the park and taught S how to climb a tree. (Okay, we hoisted him three feet up into the tree and held onto him while he yelled out, “I’m taller than everybody in the whole world!” But he was proud of himself and talked about it for the rest of the day. And later on, after the kids were in their jammies and had their baths and their teeth brushed, the four of us crowded into S’s small twin bed and read stories and giggled and sang the Itsy Bitsy spider umpteen times for T because she loved it and because each time she smiled, we could get a glimpse of her new front tooth, I looked around at my family squirming and squished into this tiny bed and thought that I had everything I really needed just right there.