Generally speaking, the first day of a new year, and in this case, a new decade, doesn’t bring a sudden realization of the changes coming. A little while ago, I was stuck by this very thing. You see, I’ve been a mother of a small child for the last seven and a half years. As soon as the first got out of babyhood and was in that grey area between toddler and big kid, I had another. And repeat. The littlest, the third, is now getting to that age when my body starts thinking another baby would be a good idea. Thank God I had the forethought to get a tubal last time, so there will be no more baby making in this uterus. But? What now? Some days, the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that one day they’ll be bigger and won’t need me to do every fucking thing for them. My kids wear me out. And I know I’ll miss these days. I’ll miss it when they won’t talk to me in sentences longer than three words. I’ll miss it when they’d rather be with their friends than me. The last seven point five years have been hard but so rewarding. And I sort of thought it would always be this way.
But today I have been stricken and I sort of don’t know what to do with myself.
I was up way too late last night celebrating the new year (alone physically but connecting with my nearest and dearest friends on the phone) and when the kids woke up at eight o’clock this morning I thought I was going to die. When I remembered I had forgotten yet again to pick up coffee I was sure of it. I guzzled a Diet Pepsi and rooted around for a few Advil when I remembered I had forgotten to pick that up too. So I turned on the brain torturing cartoons and set my alarm on my phone for 15 minutes. That was all I needed, just a teensy tiny little power nap while I waited for the meager amounts of caffeine in the soda to reach my brain.
I woke up three hours later, cell phone in hand, alarm missed and 14 texts unread. Oh my God! What had the kids been doing?! I ran out to the living room and there they were, bowls of cereal at hand, mesmerized by the TV. The oldest had fixed them all breakfast and was taking care of them and making sure they didn’t wake me up. I’m still a little shaken by the whole episode. Then a little while later, I took them to McDonald’s for lunch. When we got back, not only did the oldest want to go check the mail, he came back to the car and got his sister so she could go with him. I watched as they neared the street and they stopped and looked both ways, then held hands to cross the street. I was shocked and proud.
We came back inside and the littlest sat at the table without a high chair or booster to eat his Happy Meal and Noah sent his grandfather a text all by himself. That was when I saw how things are changing. How, exactly, am I supposed to handle this shit?!
Oh and by the way, you’re right about keeping our names out of the blog entirely. So I’ll rename them, but I can’t think of anything really cool. Wanna help? And should I rename myself or can I still be me?
