Juggling Clown
I’ve been trying to figure out if this feeling of trying to constantly play catch-up is new to me or I just forgot how intense it can be. I’m also trying to figure out if I’m behind because I’ve got too many balls in the air or if I’ve always been lagging. Either way, I will continue to plug away and do what I can. Since I’ve started working, teaching 25 little Kindergarteners each morning, I’ve felt more torn than ever between things that need to get done at home and trying to enjoy the simple pleasures of being a mother and wife.
I’ve become like a fierce guard dog over our family time and am trying hard to protect what little time we’ve got together these days. This means that our evenings and weekends are still jam-packed, but we’re a bit more choosy with how we spend our time. We’ve had friends over for dinner, family visiting and lots of yummy food, but ultimately the time that we have together is the most valuable to me….especially since I have to slip out the door each morning.
Where the family time is very important, seeing my friends is equally important. There are some friends (Hi, Nicole & Krista!) that I haven’t seen in months and I so dearly want to sit and catch up with them. But that just isn’t how the cards fall. Luckily, I’ve got a fantastic group of friends that I also get to work with. The staff at my school are some of the best people. They’re reliable, funny and very caring. I’m also in a book group with a handful of them….we had book group a couple weeks ago and, as always, I stayed up way too late, ate too much dessert and laughed the perfect amount. Family & Friends….the threads of my life.
For Barry, I know he’d say the same thing: family & friends are what matter. But for him he also needs exercise. It relaxes him and even if he’d never, ever tell you….he is very competitive. So when Edmonds announced that they were hosting a half marathon, he jumped at the chance to start training. The man loves to train for events. I can only imagine what our household will look like when Maggie is old enough to participate.
As I was hitting my 12+ hours of needed sleep during my first trimester, Barry was up and out the door most mornings by 5:30 to go running. Although I am very impressed, there were mornings that I didn’t hear him get up or leave and a couple times I was convinced that he hadn’t left. Anyhow, he trained, trained and trained and when the race day finally came I think he felt very ready. We drove the 2 miles to downtown and dropped him off to pick up his race packet. I tend to get more nervous and jittery than he does, I am THAT wife and will probably be THAT mom.
Since we live in Edmonds and know the area very, very well, Maggie and I were able to see Barry about 3 times on the course. Each time he looked awesome and was in the top 7 or so of people. He looked great finishing, probably one of his strongest races, and ended up placing in 3rd in his age group and 12th overall….even though he got lost on the course. (Apparently he accidentally followed an art show sign and went down a dead end, losing about 5 minutes). I am such a proud little chicken.
Now that I’m my glorious 2nd trimester and bursting with energy (see above about trying to do it all…I have no doubt by my 3rd trimester, I’ll care a little less about something…because something has to give!) I have taken more notice of Barry’s early mornings. I stir or wake when he does, hearing his patterned movements through the house as he leaves. By the time he returns he’s relaxed and I’ve had time to wake up. Sometimes we have time before Maggie wakes up and we talk about things we forgot about the night before or carry on a conversation that we’d fallen asleep having. The other morning, however, he came home and informed me that he’d been attacked by an owl. Pretty scary.
Family and friends. Friends and family. Our peeps are woven into our lives, but the ultimate center is right there in those morning moments. The ones where I’m sporting some awesome bed-head and he’s sporting his sweaty clothes and head-lamp. Those mornings, the ones where I’ve woken up without the need to rush out the door and Barry’s had a non-owl-attacking workout, are the mornings that I forget that I’m trying to play catch-up or mark all those random items off my list. The imaginary balls that I’m trying to juggle suddenly fall to the side and things aren’t such a big deal.
The List and Other Randoms
This morning I woke up with the list of ‘things-that-need-to-get-done-holy-hell-school-starts-tomorrow” spinning in my head. I’ve had kids floating in and out of my class – moving to PM Kindergarten or full day and so I haven’t even written their name tags yet. Worry not, that task is on The List. I intentionally left my notebook, which is keeper of The List, at school over the weekend because I wanted to really enjoy this Labor Day weekend with not too many distractions and school pressures. Translation: I sent myself e-mails about what needs to get added to The List.
Yesterday we squeezed every, single ounce of the day out and by the time our heads hit the pillow, we were satisfied with our weekend. Friday, when we had our ultrasound, seems so long ago and the things we did in between then and now aren’t really important, but boy did we enjoy the weekend. After we left the ultrasound, Barry and I set out on a mission to find a perfectly round pink balloon. We were successful in finding the balloon; however, it wasn’t until we got out to the parking lot that we realized that perhaps the balloon wouldn’t fit in our car. It was that large. We did some maneuvering and got it to work and next time I have a need for a balloon, I plan on getting another rad huge one. The instant we walked through the door with the massive thing, Maggie was enamored. It didn’t take much convincing to get her to ‘take the balloon to get some pictures taken.’
And that was the start of our weekend. We went to Bellingham to visit Barry’s family on Saturday and Maggie got to spend some time playing with Greg and Linda. I slipped up to Bellingham to run some errands and by the time I got back, they were still having a great time. It doesn’t matter where we go, Maggie always remember who has what toys at their house. I suppose we’re all that way as kids, I can clearly remember toys that both sets of my grandparents kept for the grandkids. She just seems so young to be remembering!
I wish I was better at writing down more of Maggie’s day-to-day anecdotes (maybe I should add that task to The List?) because she has become so dang funny. Like the other day when I was changing over our duvet cover in our bedroom, a long process, and suddenly I heard fake snoring coming from the corner where she was playing. I looked over to see her curled up inside a pillow case with her head sticking out making sleeping face. Then she’d pop up and yell “Good Morning!” and instantly fall back in to sleeping face/snoring/ball curled inside pillow case. She then insisted on finding a rubber band “I need rubber band right here. I need it now” and tying the pillow case closed around her waist like a potato sack. She kept the pillow case on to hop to her table and eat a snack and for quite a bit of time afterwards.
She’s also trying to figure out who her friends are and anytime we mention some of the little people she knows, she says “they my friends, mama.” She also is figuring out that mama and papa have friends too. We’re working on helping her distinguish between family and friends because as we were pulling out of my grandparent’s driveway the other day, waving to them, Maggie informed us that ‘them my friends.’ She’s right that my grandparents are her friends, but they’re also her family.
[Other side note, the other morning Barry dropped me off at the Farmers Market and waited in the car with Mags and Syd. I guess while they were waiting for me, Maggie started to ask “Where’s Janet? Where is she? Where’s Janet? Where is Grammy” Barry tried to explain to her that Janet/Grandma was at her house. I wish I could have heard her ask for my mom by first name. So funny.]
But trying to figure out the friends & family concept is a tough one, because what happens when you have friends that really are like family? How do you explain that? We’re not going down that road quite yet….instead we’ll settle for pillowcase wearing
