running

Dinner is prepped: kale chopped, chicken shredded, eggs separated, garlic and onions diced.

Laundry is mid-cycle.

Bills are paid.

House is... neat enough.

And now? To breathe. To veg?

No: Elias is awake, just now. He wakes up now saying "nooo" in a whiny voice. I understand. I say the same thing to myself every afternoon when he wakes up, and all I want to do is "noooo"thing.

My desk in front of me is full of things on the to-do list. A bag filled with a homemade paper mobile for Elias' room that needs to be strung up. An empty ceramic pot, to be filled with basil for my kitchen counter, someday. I've had it for a year. A book on gardening, with info that needs to be siphoned off by me for Jeremy to build some raised garden beds. Curtain rings, for the kitchen curtains. A knit hat that's come unraveled and needs some help from my own mom. And photo albums and E's first year book that need filling out. He's 18 months.

I would need to have the force of a tornado to get through everything on my list. Is this why women are so tired? Not only do they have the days and weeks behind them, to which their energy has already been directed, our will to survive shot like a garden hose at our days, but we have the should-have-dones. The wish-was-finisheds. The oh-gosh-I-forgot-about-thats. It gnaws at me... I imagine it gnaws at most of us.

I don't have an answer for it. I think it will be something I deal with until the day I die. I never understood the idea before now that there wasn't enough time in the day. There certainly is enough time in the day for a teenager, but for an adult? No: whether it's our own fault or someone else's, we just can't get finished.

Some days I have peace with this idea. But not today.

Thankful

Today this verse is reverberating in my head, a reminder brought to my attention over and over:

"He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young." Isaiah 40:11

Gently lead those that are with young.

Thank you, my God, for your kindness and compassion toward me. You know that I desperately need it, and I'm so grateful for it.

Bulging gums

That's what Elias has: bulging gums. His two side teeth (bottom eye teeth) are coming through.

I was visiting the other night with a new mom of a two week old. I told her that it gets better. It's true; it does. And then it gets bad again. I didn't tell her that. No one told us. Eighteen months has been an awakening to me.

I know it's not Elias' fault. This is part of being a toddler, of having so many emotions and fears and excitements that one just can't get it together.

A friend of mine says that she has been teaching her toddler to take deep breaths to calm down, and that many times it works. So I tried that today. Deep in the middle of an all out FIT, I asked Elias to take some deep breaths to calm down. He looked at me like I was insane, tried to mimic me taking a breath, and then went back to screaming.

It's strange being cooped up with this crazy person. Jeremy and I are pretty cool-headed. A service worker once told us that we had the quietest home he'd ever been to, and others, upon visiting our church's small group, said that they had never been to such a quiet group. We like quiet. We like peace. We do not understand temper tantrums, of the adult or child sort. Like, literally. I don't understand them, and so I (actually, both Jeremy and I) are at sort of a loss at how to deal with them. Sometimes we discipline him, sometimes we distract him, sometimes we try to calm him down, sometimes we ignore him.

I bet that if you were to come to my house at any point during the day, I'd consistently have this sort of surprised, shell-shocked look on my face.

Any ideas?

(I made it to three p.m. today before making my chai. Of course, three p.m. also found me with my hand deep inside a chip bag. You win some, you lose some.)