The boys wrestling with their daddy on the rug.

The “hold my hand, Mommy” as we go down stairs every morning.

The way my oldest whispers to his baby brother as they fall asleep at night.

The “Mamamamama” jabber as the baby reaches for my face.

The laughter at the dinner table.

I know I will miss these things when they are grown because I feel the swelling these moments make in my heart. When these moments are gone, I will feel the space they will have left.

But the $4 of spilled blackberries.

The whining and pulling at my pants.

The learning (and learning, and learning, and learning…) to share.

The semi-comedic circus to get everyone out the door.

The constant questions. (O, sweet mercy! The questions!)

I want to miss these moments, too. I want to treasure them for what they are – fleeting. But with my current perspective, these moments aren’t expanding my heart. They are annoyances to me. Isn’t that the strangest thing? How does it happen that my children learning and needing me has become, in my eyes, a burden?

O, let it not be so.

I want God-eyes to see the preciousness in my near-three-year-old’s efforts to put away the berries himself. The connection OBrother and I have formed that makes him so long to be close to me. The foundation for the future of my boys’ friendship which we are laying now, on the floor of the playroom as they learn to share. The excitement that awaits us on the other side of that front door. The curiosity and learning spirit of  OBoy.

I want to see those beautiful sides of these imperfect moments. I want my heart to expand at the blessings, not shrink and harden at the burden. I want these moments to grow and stretch me so that when they’re over – even the messy ones – my heart feels their absence and remembers them with fondness.

May I see the God-breathed beauty in every moment and may I miss them when they’re gone.

most unexpectedly

Motherhood is a series of lost and found blessings.

The blessing of carrying a sweet baby around in your tummy is lost, the blessing of birth is given.

The blessing of a fresh, snugly, warm newborn is lost, the blessing of an alert, smiling peanut is given.

The blessing of a chubby cheeked  toddler is lost, the blessing of a talkative, imaginative pre-schooler is given.

At each stage I find myself mourning what was – what I’ve lost, who my boys were at such and such age – but each time I am blown away by the unexpectedly beautiful next stage.

The assurance that what comes next will also be a blessing allows me to enjoy today without fear. Knowing this, that each blessed stage ends, makes me want to dwell that much more in the moment, drinking in who my boys are that day because surely they will be different tomorrow.  But tomorrow will be a blessing as well. I don’t have to cling to today as though the end of this stage will mean the end of the blessing and the beautiful, because another will be most unexpectedly given in its place.

Even when I can’t fathom what could replace the sweetness of a standing, cruising, smiling OBrother or a creative, enthusiastic OBoy, I can know and trust that it will come, and that it, too, will be a blessing.

The more times I experience this cycle – loss and then unexpected blessing – the less unexpected it becomes.

Praise God, I can trust in the unexpected blessings of tomorrow.

Slivers of moonlight whisper through the windows and across our white down comforter to find us cuddled up, curve to cove, cove to curve, just has we have every night of his life. He nurses and sighs, sighs and nurses. One chubby hand grasps at my chin, my pendant, my lips. Groggy eyes search for something to distract and land on the slivered moonlight, then find my own. He cracks a smile, which breaks his latch. Joy and peace and grace this moment is. I look down through the mostly dark at the curve of his smiling eyes which disappear on account of his cheeks. He latches again and settles in, muscles relaxing.

In the quiet I can hear his swallows and my thoughts. How is this even possible, all this? This, my body creating and sustaining another body? A gift, this boy full of smiles and babbles who fits perfectly into this family like he fits in this cradle hold. How intricately we are known and made, that we could possibly be woven together this perfectly.

His swallows slow, then pause, his eyes now closed.

This moment, this joy and peace and grace. I want to grab it all and cling to it because it fades, O, Lord do I know how it fades. Last night, was it? that I laid on this bed with another nursing baby who somehow this morning I awoke to find a two-and-a-half year old who hasn’t nursed in over a year.

Stay, moonlight. I whisper back into the silence. Stay, joy and peace and grace. Stay, sweet, soft, warm nursling. Stay. I know it’s in vain, but it bears asking.

These moments, they drift off and away as quickly as my baby, filled with warm milk, drifts into sound sleep. It hurts, almost, to know I will miss this even before it is over. But this is the risky proposition of motherhood, to allow oneself to experience the greatest joys and sweetest moments knowing that they will not stay.

My only consolation is this: the moments that come swift at their tails will be joy and peace and grace all their own.

It took everything I had.

It seemed like every night, without fail, our son would wake up crying moments after our heads hit our pillows. It was frustrating to say the least. Some nights it was relatively simple to help him return to sleeping, other nights it took everything we had.

This night it took everything we had.

Walking. Rocking. Nursing. Bouncing. Cuddling. Nursing again. More rocking. Walking around. Singing. Swaddling. More nursing. More cuddles and rocking.

Everything we had was not enough.

Somewhere under the incessant crying, the feeling of failure, the hopelessness, the darkness outside and in – I snapped. I yelled, I screamed, I was irate and completely incoherent. I could not believe this was happening to me and I wouldn’t take it anymore. I kicked a wall and threw things. The world around me blurred, my hands and legs moved without my bidding.

I was scared of myself from inside my own skin. In a fleeting moment of clarity, I remembered seeing a hotline on a form I was given by the pediatrician the week before. A crisis hotline.

It took everything I had to go get that form, find that number, and call it.

I sat on my phone on the very edge of my bed while DanO held our precious first baby in the living room. A warm female voice was soon connected to me. I explained the feelings of complete emptiness and insufficiency. Of losing touch with reality. Of wanting to implode. Simply the presence of another person via phone line was enough to bring my feet back to earth.

This all unfolded well before I knew I had a postpartum mental health issue; at the time I just thought I was a horrible mother (and person) who had absolutely no self-control and a very serious anger problem. So much has been done to address my postpartum depression and anxiety since then, praise God. But I will always, always remember the night at the very bottom of my struggles when I called a crisis hotline.

With everything in me, I am so glad I did.

I have a really hard time turning on the TV. I don’t know, it’s not that I expect everyday to be educational and homespun and full of finger painting, but it seems like once the TV has been turned on it’s near impossible to turn it back off. It sets a course for the day that I don’t want.

Except yesterday. Yesterday I wanted a lazy course, a course filled with blankets and lounging and pajamas at noon. We ate french toast in our PJs, watched Super Why!, and generally just wandered around without a plan. It was lovely. I even light a yankee candle and put it on the mantle. Cozy perfection.

At one point I considered bundling everyone up (over their pajamas, of course) and hitting the grocery store, but then I saw the freezing rain that was falling and decided against it.

More public television programming it was.

The one that before you’ve moved a single muscle of your body, your stomach has already sunk.

The one where the guilt strikes and it strikes hard.

The one where you cry and call your husband, even though you think the baby’s fine.

The one that makes you vow to never ever set him on there again.

The one that makes you feel like the only mother in the world that has been so negligent.

The one that so many mothers have heard.

(Including me.)

I’m in one of those yearning seasons lately. Wanting to see the more in life through the 1:00am nursing, the menu planning and the time-out battles.

I don’t have an office. I don’t have a team of project managers reporting to me. I don’t ‘take lunch’. Heck, I don’t even pee with the door closed. One out of two days of mine is spent entirely within a 1800 square foot house (well, that’s including the basement/laundry room where, let’s be honest, I don’t spend much time). And most of the day I am left with the sinking feeling that I am not ultimately in control of my own life. I am needed desperately by both of my boys, one of whom I literally sustain nutritionally (how’s that for project management?) and it’s often hard to tell where I end and my family begins.

Realizations like this tug at me from time to time. They make me want more. They make me strive and stir.

For example, there’s that one time that I printed off a half-marathon training schedule and went for it with abandon. And you know what? I completed it. Actually, I more than completed it. The schedule had me running 10 miles last Sunday. I ran 12 instead because I wanted to be sure I could finish this Saturday.

{because then maybe I will feel like I have really accomplished something?}

A few weeks ago Dan and I started reading a money management book. It has us pumped to live on a ridiculously tight budget and pay off our student loans as quickly as possible. We have realized that not having those loan payments means that we would be able to invest and give instead of using it to pay for yesterday. What an incredible feeling it will be to be debt free.

{because then maybe I will feel like I have really accomplished something?}

Together, Dan and I are working on a small business venture that we are both completely excited about. Our skills totally compliment each other and we have big, exciting plans for this little “baby” of ours to be successful. We sit and dream and plan and develop our passion. I can’t wait to see what big things become of this.

{because then maybe I will feel like I have really accomplished something?}

Why is it that none of these is ever enough? There will be more striving next year, I guarantee it. And undoubtedly the year after that. I’ll want to rearrange the living room or take up cake decorating or conquer some other area of life. more. more. more. more. more.

And why is it, that on days (like yesterday) when I throw my whole self into mothering – when we make the muffins and I let him stir despite my cleaner judgment, when we have a snuggle fest reading Where the Wild Things Are, when I tickle and chase and peek-a-boo and sing – on days when I drink it all in (‘it all’ being what I already have in front of me) I feel more satisfied than when I run 12 miles?

{because this is what it really feels like to accomplish something.}

That long stretch felt just as long as it looks. Yea, no, probably longer.

Anyway, this post wasn’t supposed to be about running. It’s supposed to be about sleep.

After I ran farther than my body ever has before, and after DanO wrangled both boys for most of the morning (O and did I mention because of our schedule OBoy didn’t really nap?), we were both plum tuckered out. So tuckered out that we threw ourselves into bed at 8:45pm. Eight! Forty! Five! We were all “O man! Look at us! We are going to feel AWESOME tomorrow!”

Haha.

Ha.

9:45pm – I’m still laying in bed awake, next to a snoring husband. My body is so sore I can’t get comfortable. I take some Ibuprofen then get out of bed and stretch for a while. Calves, hamstrings, glutes. Back in bed, I tell my brain to shut it so I can sleep.

10:30pm – OBoy wakes up crying. (I wish I were exaggerating when I tell you that he has woken up 1-2 times every.single.night. for the last week+. I took him to the pediatrician last Monday because he had woken up so many times distraught last Sunday night. Thought maybe ear infection? Nope. 2 year molars. yay.) DanO went in and consoled him, laid him back in bed.

11:45pm – I still haven’t slept, but I have planned meals, redecorated our dining room, written fantastic and hilarious blog posts and sent emails in my head. OBrother wakes up to nurse. (I also wish I were exaggerating when I tell you that baby boy sleeps for no longer than 3 hours at a pass anymore. Once upon a time we were flirting with 7 hours. Now I’m ecstatic if we hit 3.) I nurse him with much effort because of his stuffy nose (make a mental note to get out the humidifier), DanO lays him back in his crib asleep.

12:45am – Baby wakes up positively rife with boogers. He battles sleep and bulb syringes until THREE. A. M. DanO and I take turns rocking him and laying him down.

4:30am – After sleeping the longest stretch of sleep I got all night (90min) baby wants to nurse again. I oblige but he makes it clear that he would not like to go back into his crib, thankyouverymuch. DanO gets exiled to the couch and baby and I struggle with sleep and bulb syringes.

7:15am – OBoy comes a-knocking on my door because he got 12 hours of sleep last night (what, like it’s hard?) and is ready to rise and shine and give God the glory.

7:16am – I break my 4 day streak of no coffee. Heaven help me.

Yesterday was one of those for me.

You know what helps in that situation?

Bringing your boys in bed with you (and some books too, of course).

I love them so much my heart hurts.