- We’ve been gone from home most of the day. We originally headed out for the National Day of Prayer at our local courthouse. It was scheduled 11:45-12:45, right in the meat of the baby’s nap, but I decided to go anyway. I thought it was important, and thought it would also be a good experience for Chloe. I could have prayed from home, but wanted Chloe to see all the people gathered together with one common goal. I’ve never been before, having usually been at work. I was under the impression that it was a come and go thing, rather than a scripted event. Imagine my disappointment when we arrived at 12:15 (with 30 minutes remaining) and heard the amen and watched people scatter just as we were walking up. So, Chloe and I sat on the park bench and I prayed with her. I said my own prayers as I let her run about. As I got up to leave, Chloe made it known that she didn’t want to go. She wanted to climb the courthouse steps. I informed her that I couldn’t with the stroller, and it was time to go. She continued to plead her case, and I ignored her and texted my Dad. So she screamed, “Are you listening to the words coming out of my mouth?!” Hey, that’s my line! I asked her didn’t she want to go get a snow cone, and she replied, “I do, but I just can’t right now. I’m too mad.”
- We ended up staying out and going to visit folks. We eventually made it around to my Dad’s house. After we had been visiting a while, my step mom asked if Chloe could jump on the trampoline. Uh, no! Hello?! I can’t let my precious china doll jump on a big, bad, dangerous, slippery, highly elevated device that throws children to the hard ground where their tiny bones break!!! She told me there was a net around it. Oh… Ok. So, I let her. She offered to take her out there, but after a few minutes (or maybe seconds), I had to go out there so I could watch her. I told my Dad I wanted to see her excited face, which is true, but I also wanted to keep my eyeballs on her. You never know. There could have been a tear in the net. In the end, it seemed pretty safe. My pulse only accelerated when a little 5 year old boy got in there with her. Oh, Lord, he’s being too rough! It took every ounce of me to just stand back and watch, and not make her get out. It’s hard to balance being smartly protective for their safety, and being insanely over-protective for your peace of mind. I’m working on it.
- Sometimes it’s no wonder I live like a hermit. Going places means disrupting schedules! Argh! Help me! I love the baby to take her big nap at the beginning of the day. Everything just flows so smoothly after that. Today, instead of 3-4 hours, she got 30 minutes. Later she took a 15 minute nap on the way to my Dad’s. You see where this is headed. It’s the snowball effect. Exhaustion leads to more exhaustion, fighting naps until a total meltdown is inevitable. Chloe missed nap time too. On our way back home, they both fell asleep. When I got there it was like a scene from Mission Impossible trying to figure out how to make the transfer from car to inside without waking them. I worked on Bailey first. She was asleep in her carrier once inside, but I feared with an empty tummy and no movement, she may wake prematurely. So I made the decision to get her out and feed her. Once back asleep, I’d transfer her to the swing and presto. The best laid plans don’t always go accordingly. Wrong choice. She woke and wouldn’t go back to sleep. It’s going to be a fun night. As the baby cried in the swing, and I attempted to rock Chloe back to sleep, I thought “it’s absolutely insane how much of my time I spend trying to make other people go to sleep for their own good”. I realized that in 3 hours, I would be doing this again, rocking another child to bed. With all the going to sleep, how do we do anything else? Ah, well. It is what it is. Can’t put a positive spin on that one. It’s a job. They need to sleep. I put them to sleep. Being a Mother is a fantastical position in life. I’m taking care of small humans. I may have missed the boat on naps today, but I still think I “totally rock” as Chloe would say.
That is all 😉