I Can Never Be a Boxer
Around 5 a.m. Maggie comes into our bed every morning, if she isn’t there already, and announces that she’s going to get her milky. We can hear her feet pitter-pattering down the hallway, the grunt that goes with her tugging the fridge door open, and the sprint back to bed. She snuggles herself in the middle of Barry and me, with Syd snoring at her feet. Most mornings our bed feels crowded because I’ll be feeding Audrey on the other side. We make it work, all in the name of precious sleep.
A couple days ago, the morning events were exactly like any other day, with Maggie handing me her milk cup after she announced she was ‘all done!” Without opening my eyes, I grabbed the milk cup and put it on our headboard and we all promptly feel back asleep. Jump an hour or two later, and Maggie whispered into my hear that she was going to check out the window if it was daylight. I might have murmured a response, I don’t remember because I was dead asleep.
She stood up and lifted a couple slits of the blinds to check for the morning light. In doing so, her milk cup fell off the headboard….ON TO MY NOSE!! I have never been punched in the face, but I’m fairly certain I can go the rest of my life knowing that a milk cup did the same amount of damage and I experienced the same amount of pain.
I went from a deep sleep to having my nose throbbing in pain in a matter of seconds, not the very best way to wake up. It has now been roughly three days and I am still sporting a fairly nice bruise on the bridge of my nose, not to mention the bump that has also become less notable with each passing day. I’m thankful that my freckles cover up the black and blue.
The falling milk cup story has absolutely nothing to do with these pictures, but I keep scratching my nose and am reminded of the random anecdote. Plus, we’ve been laughing about it around here regularly.
On Mother’s Day weekend, we headed up to A-Town to visit my family. We had toyed around with the idea of going somewhere and actually doing something, and leaving the kids with my parents, but one thing lead to another and we ended up having a nice, relaxing cook out at my parent’s house. We had brought the makings for S’Mores and my mom happened to have hot dogs, wine and salad (with yummy lettuce from their garden!) on hand, so it worked out perfectly.
It almost felt like we were camping, minus the whole part about pitching a tent and not having a toilet. Maggie did some major digging and towards the end of the evening, we hauled her upstairs and directly into the tub to rinse off the dirt and campfire smell.
My parents recently added a fence around their expanded vegetable garden and it is gorgeous! I have a deep appreciation for all the work it takes to maintain a garden of any sort, because I’m struggling with the small patch of dirt in our back yard that we call a garden….
What We Really Look Like
As a child I always looked forward to Mother’s Day because it was a day that my entire family got together and I got to spend time with all my cousins and grandparents. It took me a very long time to figure out that cousins on my mom’s side and cousins on my dad’s side were not directly related to one another. I blame Mother’s Day for this confusion. All of us have grown older and now we’ve added a new generation to the mix. Some of us ‘kids’ have gotten married and that has added some more adults as well. Attempting to draw a family tree would be funny, maybe next year. Now that I’m grown, and a mother of two, I’m surprised to find that Mother’s Day doesn’t have a new meaning to me.
I cherish motherhood all year long – I love this season of my life – and I approach the day as another opportunity to see my beloved extended family. My only request to Barry was that I have a couple uninterrupted hours (at some point in my life) to edit photos, work on the photo books and maybe do a blog post or two.
I also feel very, very fortunate to have a mother that is so present in my life. I hope that I can be to my girls what my mom is to me. I’ve had a post stewing in my brain for a bit about my own mom and have even pulled a few awesome photos….
BUT right now our yard has been taken over by my dad, Izak and Izak’s friend, Rich, to expand our driveway and extend our fence. I really don’t have time to be blogging right now or even editing photos. Alas, here I am. Audrey fell asleep (yahooo!!) and Maggie is ‘assisting’ with the digging. I double checked to make sure that the mountain of laundry is still there, wondered if I should take a shower or sweep the dirt up again, but opted for a cup of peach tea (thanks, Sue!) and a Monster Cookie while I sifted through the photos I’ve got.
As I looked through the photos, I kept having this thought of ‘this is what we really look like’ and how I’ve been fighting the fight of wondering how families do it. How do they get it all done? And I am slowly, ever so slowly, coming to the firm truth: they don’t. Everybody essentially has their piles of laundry, weed-filled yards, ignored dirt on the floors, unwashed hair, etc.
As I sit here finishing my tea and eating the last bits of my Monster Cookie, I’m thankful that I get to be a mother to my girls. I’m also thankful that I’ve learned enough about myself that I can walk away from the mess of a busy home for a moment to enjoy a cup of tea and cookie. I know I’ll be a better mother because of it.
I should go check on the digging…..
