No mom, Madi did not eat my cheesecake. Although that would be a reasonable hypothesis. Actually, it is 1:15 and I am eating an apple cheesecake bar and drinking coffee. It is not my lunch, I refuse to acknowlege it is lunch time. This is breakfast, and these days breakfast and I have to get creative if we are going to keep our relationship alive.
Jonathan started kindergarten, but that is not what this blog post is about. Sam is crawling and almost talking and sleeping through the night [finally, yay], but again, not the topic of the day. William is three, I am doing yoga, friends are having babies, summer is turning into Fall, but again-- not the subject at hand. The thing is, life is so darn full these days I don't know what to write about. I don't know what to focus on. My least favorite question is "What is new?" because honestly, what isn't new?! Every stinkin day I have new adventures, obstacles, challenges, thrills --whatever you choose to label them-- and I can't stop my head spinning long enough to pick the newest of the new from the responsibilites, commitments, yadayadas --again, choose your vocabulary-- that seems notable.
I think that right now what I want to be new is quiet. It is pretty loud around here. As I write this Sam is protesting loudly from his crib that it does not in fact feel like naptime. Soon we will get in the car and drive to kindergarten and there will be the noise of two little people needing me, always needing me, from the backseat. There will be music playing that is on repeat because I'm too tired to argue against Jimmy Buffett's Cheeseburger in Paradise being played for the fiftieth time this week, and there will be an endless request for snacks.
Due to this endless stream of noise I am finding that I forget my mission on a regular basis. Today I went for Target for four items, came out with about eight, and realized I had forgotten one. I went back later for the one, came out with about fifteen, including an empty box of cheese puffs shared by cheesey faced boys. Yesterday I went to drop a friend some dinner because she just had her second baby and I know what life is about to look like and I find it worth my while to make her some dinner so that for just one night she only has to worry about the forcing of the food into her children. I meant to be in the neighborhood for 30 minutes. It ended up being an hour, with a quick stop to a friend's house to "pop by". The popping by turned into a soaking wet water play date with a hose, a motorized kids' jeep, and more that doesn't much need explaining. I finally strapped three very wet boys into the car, sighed, and turned on the Cheeseburger song again.
The crazy thing is, when I sit down next to my golden girl and pour my cup of coffee at one in the afternoon, I realize I'm having a lot of fun. If you read this blog a different way, [or rather, if I read it a different way] it seems that in two days I have successfully dropped my eldest off at kindergarten, managed to complete a whole shopping list in less than a day, had a super fun play date that managed to bathe my children in the process, succeeded in making a friend dinner while juggling three kids of my own, and I have to add that I feel pretty proud that I can sing along to a whole Jimmy Buffett song other than "Margaritaville." (Doesn't this make me a certifiable Parrothead??)
While in the act of snagging snacks off the shelf to pacify my carrot tops in Target Round 2 today I bumped into a friend. We chatted for a while over little whispy wiggly heads, and when we later met at the checkout she offered me a coupon for a free Starbucks. "Would you want a cup of coffee?" she asked, proffering the ticket.
"Would I ever," I answered.
I placed my serendipitous cup of joe in the cup holder of my car and savoured the thought of sipping it from my couch perch in the sunroom. Almost home, I remembered that while sweating and wrestling a hose from a one year old the friend I saw yesterday had offered me some of her famous apple cheesecake bars, freshly baked that afternoon. Thirty minutes and two sleeping boys later, I heated up my coffee, grabbed my bar, and sat down in the sunroom. With the door ajar I can feel a blessed summer breeze floating in and the music of trees, pregnant with green, swaying back and forth while the birds are singing their glory songs somewhere among them. I can only be grateful, that my life is also so pregnant and green, with boundless adventure and the occasional quiet moment to sit beside Madi, sip coffee, and eat freshly baked cheesecake. Who can complain about not having time for breakfast when a late breakfast is so durn scrumptious? And who am I to complain about a very busy life when I realize that I am never ever bored?
