We went to the UNLV football game on Saturday! It was supposed to be one of the few they could win...but they lost! Ethan didn't care though. All he cared about was that we were all there in red clothes and there were big flags with the letters UNLV on them, and there were fireworks when a touchdown was scored. We are trying hard to make memories for our children. I hope that they will look back on their childhood with fondness. I hope that they will remember how much fun we had. Sometimes it is hard not to sit at home with a movie on all day, trying to catch up on the mounds of laundry and wallowing in my troubles. Not that I have a hard life, I am so blessed, and I know it. But even still it is easy to be negative. Being positive is much harder, but the effort is well worth it. One of BFFs, Linsi, borrowed me a book that I have been reading and it has had a profound effect on me. It is called "A Mother's Book of Secrets. I find myself thinking about it a lot. One of the quotes from the book is from Anna Quindlen.
She says," Everything in the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories...The biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make...I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of my children sitting the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more, and the getting it done a little less."
My laundry has increased by about two hundred percent since Isaac was born. I feel like I don't have the time that I used to spend with Ethan doing what I call "floor time" Where we just play and laugh and roll and learn. I am committed to focus more on the doing instead of the getting it done. There is another story in the book about a little boy who found a praying mantis and was saying, "Mom! Come look at this!" He was on the ground so excited studying it and yelling for his mom's attention. His mom yelled over her shoulder while she was doing the dishes, "Oh honey isn't that a pretty bug." This is me so much of the time! I don't want to miss another moment with my boys because I am too "busy."
The book says that motherhood is about being attuned enough to notice when your kid's eyes shine so that you can make yours shine back. SO this is my new goal. And I am finding that the hard part isn't making my eyes shine back. That comes so naturally as I watch Ethan explain why this certain race car is the winner and which country that car is from and what the car's favorite food is. My eyes reflect the shine in his eyes because of the love and the pride that I have for him! It is being attuned enough to recognize when his eyes are shining! It is not being too busy to enjoy the moment!
And I end with the words of a country song,
You're gonna miss this.
You're gonna want this back.
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast.
These are some good times,
So take a good look around.
You may not know it now,
But you're gonna miss this.
