Not so deep thoughts

Tonight I am extra thankful for my husband.

I guess it's easy to take the really good ones for granted. The ones who bathe the baby without being asked, who know when you're upset and need to be left alone versus when you're upset and need someone to be just as righteously angry as you are versus when you just need a good hug and an assurance that it's going to be okay.

I try not to do that, take it for granted, because I know how lucky I am. I know that Steven is One of the Good Guys, and I'm pretty sure they're few and far between. At least from what I've seen. He makes me laugh, he keeps me sane. He loves me when I'm finding it hard to love myself. He is my balance, my anchor, my home. And, thank God, he's the father of my children.

My baby is now walking, and I think the crippled-crab crawl is gone forever. Bittersweet. She still walks sort of like Frankenstein, and the least distraction has her freezing and holding her arms out for balance, and she has the first little scrapes on her perfect baby skin, knees and elbows, from taking tumbles that she gets right back up from and keeps going on her merry way. She occasionally holds on to my finger but more often than not pushes my proffered hand away in a grand gesture of independence. Last week at a bookstore she insisted on doing it herself, and it took us a good 20 minutes to make it from the back of the store to the checkout counter, but she was proud as could be.

My other baby (who says I can still call him that, but only in private) is a big first grader, who likes to sit on the first grade bench and who has decided he's in love with our former neighbor girl. One day when his class was on the way to recess, Liddy was en route to the bathroom when she saw Alex, ran over, and hugged him. When she left, he says, a little girl from his class asked, "Who WAS that?" which led Alex to believe that she is in love with HIM, and has determined that he shouldn't tell her he's in love with Liddy because it might hurt her feelings.

Who knew the soap operatic antics begin in first grade?

Katherine will be starting Mother's Day Out two days a week in a few weeks. I know the first day is going to be hard for both of us. After all, we have not been separated, essentially, since conception, my girls' beach weekend notwithstanding. MDO will give me eight hours a week of uninterrupted work time, and the idea of THAT is so tempting that maybe I will be able to let go of her tiny hand and walk out without crying. You'd think it would be easier with the second one, but since Alex was in care from the time he was 3 months old, it was different with him, somehow. But I honestly think his experiences have led to his (to me and his father) incredible ability to roll with the punches, to make friends in any environment, to be the strong, confident, easygoing kid he has grown to be.

I've been very content lately. Life is good. And when it's not, it's at least funny, interesting, or enlightening.

Katherine, who has taken to raiding our pots-and-pans cabinet, came out one night with a clear-Plexiglas pot lid, put it on her head like a hat, and laughed like it was the best joke ever. But the funniest thing to US was when Alex, cracking up himself, said, "Katherine's a pot head!"

Oh, kids.

I've managed to scare up some extra work and have yet to be let go from my primary source of income even though their recent "restructuring" scared the daylights out of me. I originally said I'd give this work-at-home deal a try for a year and if it didn't work out, I'd go back to an office job. But the time I get with the kids that I wouldn't have any other way is precious, and I wouldn't trade it even on the days when I have a triple deadline and Katherine isn't in the mood to let go of a big handful of my hair.

It's stuff you don't get back. Like the crab crawl. Like fluffy-haired Alex. Like watching them grow up, little by little, and still being startled when the older one comes into the room with pajamas that fit him a second ago suddenly stopping well above his ankles. Like going from Mommy to Mom without realizing it's happening.

It's no different for moms who work outside the home; I've been one of those, too.

If I learned anything from my first go-round with parenting, it's that nothing is insignificant and that it's important to take mental snapshots along the way.

Life is funny, even when it's boring

I have this fantasy of life running like a well-oiled machine. Laundry doesn't pile up. Dishes are promptly loaded into the dishwasher, washed, and put away. Dinner disasters don't happen. The children are sweet and happy and entertain themselves quietly while I get my work done. The floors don't keep needing to be mopped because of muddy pawprints, and the culprits of those pawprints don't keep making their beds in the mud under the deck. There is no dust. There are no stray goldfish crackers in the crevices of the couch, or greasy little handprints on the TV screen. I don't lose my cool, ever, and my hair is always presentable. And I don't wear clothes with dried arrowroot cookie smudges on them.

It doesn't last too long, the fantasy, because usually by the time I get to the laundry part I'm too busy running the vacuum cleaner (or lately, my Godsent little handheld Dirt Devil) to suck up breakfast crumbs under the table or scrubbing sticky finger leavings from the chairs.

And then I sit down to do my work, be it editing or writing or occasionally self-promoting so that I can do more editing and writing. Katherine plays happily for a good 15 minutes while her breakfast digests and The Fresh Beat Band is on, Alex takes about twice that long to get dressed (factoring in the inevitable re-do that comes when he dresses in clothes he got out of the dirty-clothes hamper, puts on a shirt that fit him two years ago but that now shows his belly button, or just forgets what he was doing altogether, on which occasions I find him sitting on his floor in his underwear, making signs for the aquarium he's going to open in his bedroom, admission required and a Betta fish the main and only attraction).

I realize that, if you'll excuse the analogy, the road of life has potholes. Big ones. The kind you can lose a tire in, if you're not extra-careful, or at least jostle something loose from the undercarriage and spend a few weeks worrying about the rattling sound until it goes away on its own.

But some weeks it's harder to remember that the road always smooths out. Some weeks you're just plain spent. Or just plain anxious. Or just plain overwhelmed. And I've come to understand that those kinds of weeks are okay too, as long as you don't get stuck there and let the mind-set best you.

So now I'm always looking toward the next thing that's going to push me out of the pothole. Alex starting back to school is one. Katherine starting to walk is another, and my back is thanking me for it.

Much less is it thanking me for my recent decision to undertake Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred, which got rave reviews all over the place and which, from my first session, I've decided is a form of preparation for an afterlife spent in Hell. (I need to go to church.)

Alex has a new backpack (it bothers him that it's flat, but I told him it will get less flat when there's stuff IN it) and a new lunchbox even though he usually buys his lunch because I am A Lazy Mother. He has tie shoes and he calls them that, "tieshoes," like it's just the one word, and they come untied about 75 times a day, so apologies in advance to his first-grade teacher.

I know he's ready to go back to school because he's complaining about being bored, which he knows means I'll put him to work, and he's doing weird things like tying his tieshoes together and trying to walk across the backyard, peeing into an empty water bottle and hiding it behind the toilet (???), and playing hide-and-seek with Katherine, who forgets she's playing after 60 seconds and leaves him crouched under my bed for half an hour before he realizes she's not looking for him.

Katherine, while we were waiting for her incisors to pop in so we could have our sweet girl back, cut two surprise teeth at the same time, further back and seemingly VERY painful. So now I understand her weeklong upset. She's back to laughing, walking like a very short, very drunk person, falling on her well-padded behind, and giving everything in sight big open-mouthed kisses. I was flattered until I saw her kissing Steven's shoelaces the other night.

So, all in all, right now things are. We're in a holding pattern while Big Things await. I'm doing some editing for a former co-worker who left the pack, moved to Orlando, and created a wonderful publication called Edible Orlando (edibleorlando.com). I'm doing some editing for Oxmoor House, the book division of Southern Progress ificanstillcallitthat. I'm writing daily health and wellness posts for a corporate wellness company and can maybe feel a bit less hypocritical about those if I manage to survive the next 29 days, JILLIAN. I'm writing for Alabama magazine, and have written for Birmingham Home & Garden. I'm working on a little project of my own, too, and am determined to stick with it this time and not let my muse die as it has so many times before.

I'm busy and I'm stumbling along and I'm no longer feeling guilty for being SO INCREDIBLY READY for my boy to go back to school. I think of Katherine's morning naps and of all the work I can get done in blessed silence.

Sometimes I miss an office, even if it was just two flimsy walls with a big beach umbrella overhead (what WERE those anyway?). I miss people who don't drool on me or try to steal my F2 key. (I'm not sure what it does, honestly, but thanks to Katherine now I'll never know.)

But mostly I feel lucky to be doing what I'm doing and that I still enjoy it and that people still seem to think I'm good enough to give me more and more work.

And aside from the work part, I've recently re-realized the fact that God knew exactly what He was doing when He put Steven and me together and gave us these amazing, frustrating, temperamental, earnest, confounding, fascinating, hilarious, heartrending kids. Thanks for that.