The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.
This poem conjures up images of a mother in a white cotton nightgown with her hair neatly swirled into a bun at just the right place on the crown of her head, rocking her sweet sleeping baby with a gentle grin on her face and her eyes closed lightly, humming a sweet lullaby. I love you, dear girl. Oh, how I love you. But this is not my life. This is not my reality.
I just bounced you to sleep for the third time tonight and it's not even 10pm. I am wearing sweatpants stained with the lavender paint from your bedroom and an "IU" tee shirt from college, complete with the wet spit up mark on my right shoulder that now always adorns every outfit I wear. My hair looks decent, but only because I styled it last night in preparation for church this morning, although we didn't make it to church due to a variety of slightly ridiculous factors including one involving you and a middle of the night party started by an interest in the tinkling of the air vent blowing heat against the vertical blinds.
Don't get me wrong, I adore your snuggles. I'm very conscious of the fact that you won't be little for long. Your brother taught me that lesson very clearly. I hold you, and bounce you, and carry you, I study your soft skin and tiny toes, and nuzzle my nose against the top of your little head and breathe in deeply that heavenly, perfect baby smell, I know the dimples on the back of your knuckles and the way your chubby cheeks make your eyes shrink when you smile.
But, here's the thing, I'm a bit of a neat freak...bet you hadn't noticed...and I like to have things in their places. Some would even call me, dare I say it, OCD. After I got you and your brother to sleep tonight I started my normal ritual of putting our house back together after a day of letting things fall apart around me as I tended to the needs of my sweet children. Get this, Lydia, there was a lid from a steaming pot in the bathroom sink on top of a pile of peed on clothes from your brother's "potty learning" experience. I have no idea why it was there nor how it landed in that location. All I know is that by the end of the day I am completely exhausted and my house is a disaster.
I treasure you and your brother, but having two under two is insane, complete madness, and I have a feeling it won't change much when your brother has his birthday in a couple of weeks. Yet, once you are both sleeping peacefully I absolutely can not relax until my house is put back together. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect. I'm "done" for the night and there are two heaps of laundry in the middle of my kitchen, a pile of toys in the living room that I swept out of the walking path with my foot, and a heap of framed pictures on the kitchen counter that I haven't gotten to hang on the wall since we moved in two weeks ago.
I'm learning. I'm learning to lower my standards, to be more realistic. I'm working to get to a place where I'm okay with the heap of laundry and swept aside toys. They bother me a bit now, but I'm so wiped out that I will let them be until tomorrow. I know that the most important things in my life aren't things, but people...your daddy, and your brother, and you! Still, I like the things to be neat and orderly. It's hard for my brain to rest when my house isn't tidy. So, I'm compromising. I took the pot lid out of the bathroom sink, and I put it in the hamper so that I could take it out and put it in the kitchen sink to be washed on my way to take the laundry to the washer, except...I'm pretty sure...now that I think about it, that the pot lid is still in the hamper, and it's just going to have to stay there until tomorrow.
Your daddy is off of work tomorrow. That means I'll get most of the "put off" things caught up. That means I'll get to shower long enough to shave my legs. That means, if I'm lucky, that I might get to go to the bathroom without my entourage! I love you both dearly, but wiping my bottom while fielding your brother's questions about my "gina" and holding you is...interesting, to say the least, not to mention the one handed shimmy I have to do to get my pants back up with you perched on my arm. Yep, that's my goal for tomorrow: diminish the laundry mountain and pee in privacy. It's not glamorous, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Sweet Dreams, my littlest love, until you wake to nurse in a couple of hours....
Love,
Momma
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