THESE DAYS

I have to write this down here because it feels monumental each time I come to it:  I really love being a mom. My journey to this conclusion might take detours in "can I get one more hour of sleep" or "I am too tired to put both these girls to bed right now" or "when am I going to have me time" but at the end of the day I am faced with two truths: this is all temporary, and these girls make me a better person. If I were to keep my head buried in the sand I may mistakenly think that I am doing all of the shaping and teaching around here, but I get daily reminders - in the form of challenges and accomplishments - that these little ones are doing just as much shaping and changing of me. 

Being a mom is a bunch of extra work, and a lot of it is behind the scenes work, but being a mom is also incredibly fun. It's hard and fun for different reasons along the way; right now it's hard because it's winter and I'm not getting enough sleep, it's fun because of conversations with Sloane and cuddles with Logan. These days my work days have been long and my nights of slumber short, but after both - at the end of my work day and when I wake up in the morning - I find that I miss my girls terribly and can't wait to see them.

This is what my grocery shopping looks like these days. I realized the other day that Logan was more than ready to sit up in the front of a grocery cart, so in she went (She had usually stayed in the car seat, which we places in the back of the grocery cart). There is this feeling that you have as a mom to little ones, where your whole body tingles with the giddy knowledge that they are taking something in for the first time and having their mind blown. I experienced that tingle at the grocery store last week. She was amazed by everything. 

Every week, my goal is to not be late to church. Even if we start getting ready extra early, it seems to be a rare thing that we are actually at church on time. There is always a reason, but I will never stop trying. When we are early, it is cause for celebration. In this case here, we were extra late, and I took a photo of it. 

Chub report: she's still got it! The cheeks, I mean. And I am happy to report they are getting all the love and smooches they deserve. 

Sleep report: she is still not great at napping during the day, especially at daycare. Which means she often only gets an hour of nap time total during the weekdays, which means she is tired by the time I pick her up, which means she falls asleep on the way home. All of which means that I only get about an hour of time with her at the end of the day during the work weeks and sometimes that makes me really sad. 

These two former blobs made eye contact the other day and it was very exciting.

The CrossFit Open started last week with a bang and after this workout my butt hurt for days. So many days.

I made this amazing one pot French Onion pasta from Half Baked Harvest and I really liked it, partly because it was a one pot cooking situation. We also had leftovers for several days afterwards, and as we all know, leftover pasta in the fridge is a guaranteed win over the winter blues. 

I have been very good about staying in the present moment, but with these spring teasers, I feel as though I am getting blue in the face holding my breath waiting for the cold to break. Last Sunday was beautiful and we spent a couple of hours in the park.

Motherhood right now is snuggling in bed with Sloane to read stories after putting Logan down. If we both had our way we would stay there for hours reading books, but I am trying to be strict with bedtime (both hers and mine), so we just enjoy the heck out of it while it lasts. This is one of those daily motherhood moments where I try to be fully present.

Parenthood these days is exclaiming to each other how amazing our girls are, helping each other out when it has been a rough night, and sitting around the table together as a family as much as we can. Things are super busy these days since there are a lot of logistics to take care of for the upcoming move, and I have thought to myself many times how glad I am to be busy in this season with Ken. I like being excited with him, and I even like being busy and tired with him. 

Every morning this week, I woke up with the thought of, 'Thank goodness it's Friday!' ...which it wasn't...until today! We have plans to get a lot of house things done this weekend, but we are also going to go watch a Peter Pan play! As you can imagine, we are terribly excited about it. 

Hurray for March!