ABOUT FACE!

So I was logging on to post about the aggravations of motherhood.  Those things that would seem ridiculous to someone sitting calmly at their desk at work.  Things that make mothers look like crazy people.  Things like the intense frustration when big kid messes with little baby's white noise machine, setting it so that it only workes for 30 minutes.  And 30 minutes was the EXACT amount of time that the world's noisiest truck took to drive to the front of our house which woke the baby from what SHOULD have been a 90 minute nap which caused her to scream her tiny little head off which caused her to poop which caused more screaming which caused mommy to quickly calculate that now baby and big kid would nap at EXACT OPPOSITE TIMES ALL DAY LONG.  So much for working on taxes while they both napped this afternoon.

And wow did that frustrate me.  So much so that you'd think that I'd been looking forward for months to doing taxes.  Of course I hate doing taxes.  Only weird people like doing taxes.  But that's not the point.  The point is they ruined the plan.  No one messes with the plan. 

But, as I logged into Blogger, I saw that my good friend Bethany had posted to her blog and I thankfully took a moment to read.  Her blog is often insightful and meaningful (unlike some other blogs I know of that just prattle on about funny things in their day... ) and she was posting about the preciousness of life.  Her brother-in-law was in a car accident yesterday and is in the hospital.  And I thought, while sympathizing with her sister who is a mother of 4, how often I do forget how precious life is, how precious my children are.  Somehow I thought that after Jack died I wouldn't forget that.  I thought I would remember that there are babies that are too sick to ever cry, and the lusty scream that Belle can keep up for what seems like hours is actually a sign of robust health.  But I forget that all the time.

So I stopped, grabbed my kiddos and gave them each a hug and kiss and told them that I loved them.  I even got a hug from D's buddy Gus who made sure to tell me that he loved me too.   I have no doubt that I will forget again soon.  Probably next time someone messes with the plan.  But maybe it is an improvement if I can just take a deep breath after my melt down and recenter my priorities and realize how precious this moment with my children is, whatever mood or volume it happens to be at.