attitude

yesterday was a normal day. nothin fancy - bennett to MDO, stop by local fabric/furniture store for a client, meet a real-to-the-core friend for lunch after a way-too-long period of not seeing each other, pick up bennett, work on aprons, deep clean bathrooms, bennett wakes up from nap....

somewhere between "deep clean bathrooms" and "bennett wakes up from nap" my mind goes to mush. i dont know what happened.

i just know that if i heard "climb climb up sunshine mountain" one more time i was going to implode
i just know that if i heard that high pitch, every five minute, for-no-reason squeal one more time i was going to hurl myself off our roof {dont worry, we live in a one story. would have just broken my leg or something...nothing serious}
i just know that when stephen came home i was sitting on the sofa and said
"i dont know why, but i am not in a very good mood"

and when i am in a "not very good mood", and dont know why, i usually get in a worse mood bc i really do NOT like being in a bad mood
they are just complete wastes of time

today was a pretty good day.

a thanksgiving playdate at the playground with bennett's playgroup - but i really think its more of a mommy's playdate. bc i love my new friends - or bennett's friends' mommies. :) they provide slices of that all-too-much coveted adult contact stay-at-home-moms tend to crave. it just happens to be a huge plus that they are all so...likable. likable is too weak of a word. they are supreme! so much so that i want to bring them home to "meet the parents" {or in other words, "playgroup new friends, meet childhood old friends"}

we actually all brought lunch today for a picnic...but lunch plans were quickly aborted once two school buses showed up with swarms of highschoolers. seriously - ???? at a children's playground? we felt about the same size as our children did when they arrived. when did highschoolers get so....HUGE? they must have all been 6', 250 lbs.

anyway, come home, eat lunch, bennett takes a nap, our babysitter cancels on us on our once-in-a-blue-moon-parents-night-out, i work a little bit, then break open the pine sol and start scrubbing. cabinets, door trims, window sills, pantry doors, toilets.

i tell you what, if you are ever in a not-so-great mood, break open the pine sol and start cleaning toilets.

{i kid i kid...DONT do this. you might actually consider hurling yourself off a TWO story house}
{you do all know that i write this in jest? of course you do. its called sarcasm. but just have to make sure no one out there thinks i really would do that. bc i dont know all of you. OK. i promise never to interrupt a great moment of sarcasm again}

anyway, after the scrub fest i had an epiphany.
what was my problem? was there really anything at all wrong with anything at all?

NO

i dont know why it was as easy as that, but today it was.
bennett woke up and i ran to him with a vengeance.
how lucky am i that i get to stay home with him?

seriously - its something i actually do not often forget. i try my best to bask in that luxury as much as allowed. meaning: i dont ever want to appear that i take it for granted. my mind may turn to mush as "grab your backpack, lets go, jump in, vamonos!" is played for the third {or is it three hundredth?} time in any given day, i may pass the child on like a cold when my husband gets home on some days, i may have a semi-meltdown when my husband asks me "so what did you do today?", i may get in a rut like everyone else with outside-the-home jobs do....

but i get to watch him

learn


and grow
and love
and witness the little spark in his eye firsthand when he gets it



i get to be a mom.
the thing i always answered when asked: what do you want to be when you grow up?

im all grown up.
and now i get help someone else get all growed up

what more is there?

so, tonight, i am thankful.
thankful for the little man who teaches me every day what real love is.
thankful for the little man who teaches me who i am and what i was really meant to be in this life.
thankful for the opportunity to experience all the good and all the bad with him.
thankful for the Son who died and gave us all this miraculous opportunity to truly live by his grace
thankful for
learning
and growing
and loving

thankful for the few down moments.
the thankfully few and far between down moments.
because they make the up ones all that much sweeter.

oh, and Christmas music helps

:)