I was putting away his clothes, folding the tiny t-shirts and shorts and rolling up the little socks while listening to Cole play in Chessa’s room. His feet padded toward me and I looked down to see him carrying a book.

“One second buddy,” I said. “I’m almost done and then I’ll read to you.” 

Then I looked closer and saw the book and a lump formed in my throat. A random collection of nursery rhymes and lullabies that I read to Chessa when she was his age. I had forgotten all about this book. I put down the laundry and pulled him into my lap.  He flipped through the pages and stopped at the same one Chessa used to like.

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here.
Where did you get those eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through. 

I rocked and for a moment he sat still. As I read the familiar poem I was flooded with reminders of rocking his sister in that very chair, reading to her and thinking about all the people in my life that she’ll never know. 

What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?
Some of the starry spikes left in.
Where did you get that little tear?
I found it waiting when I got here. 

I thought of my Pap and how much and he would have loved these kids, hating that he was gone before they came.  And I closed my eyes and prayed that their paths crossed somewhere in heaven.

What makes your head so smooth and high?
A soft hand stroked it as I went by. 
What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
I saw something better than anyone knows.
Whence that three cornered smile of bliss?
Three angels gave me at once a kiss.

Hours later I tucked Chessa into bed. She protested bedtime with the world’s best mean face and I held on tight to my last ounce of patience.  The book that Cole and I had read was long forgotten as I tickled my girl under her chin and said micheviously, “Is that your mean face?”

She tried not to giggle but the corner of her lip and the glimmer in her eye gave her away. “Come on, you can do better than that! Show me your best mean face.” 

I scrunched up my own face, crinkled my nose to demonstrate and she lost her edge and giggled.  As I covered her up with the blanked I told her the story of how Pap used to make me giggle by asking to see my mean face when I was a little girl.  She gasped and clutched her hands to her lips and said, “That’s so silly, mommy!” I kissed her forehead and said goodnight.

“Tell me another story,” she asked.  So I told her about how I used to drive his little red truck on the old back roads.  Again, she giggled and covered her face is astonishment that I was allowed to drive. 

“Tell me another story.” 

And so it went, minute after minute, story after story. Moments of my childhood and memories of my grandfather shared with my girl. 

How did they all just come to be you?
God thought about me and so I grew. 
But how did you come to us, my dear?
God thought about you and so I’m here. 

*poem by George MacDonald.

The air blows my hair and wraps my skirt around my legs. I pull my jacket in close and lower my head against the wind as I walk back into the office, my heels clicking against the blacktop parking lot.  From the car, it seemed warm, but the air is so cold and suddenly I have a craving for my grey sweatpants and a hot cup of tea. 

It’s been a long week. Taveling plus a cold plus parenting plus a landscaping project plus some bad news followed by some (maybe) good news plus plus plus.  You get the idea. I’m ready for 5:00 on Friday, but I’ll take 5:00 today. 

~~~~~

“Mommy, that was not nice!”  Chessa indignantly points out that I poured her apple juice into her green sippy cup rather than her plastic Christmas coffee mug.

“Honey, it was a mistake,” I explained. “Mommy didn’t know you wanted the Christmas cup.  I will fix it. It was just a mistake.”

“You made a steak, Mommy. But I want my Christmas cup!” 

~~~~~

I hear the sound of a small head smacking the tile floor. Why is that such an unmistakeable, yet indescribable sound?

I drop the dishes and run for my boy.  I scoop him up and he pours himself into my chest and wraps his arms around my neck, hanging on tight. His wails are muffled by my shoulder and I bounce and shush him like when he tiny. Only now his legs are wrapped around my waist and his tears are bigger and his cries are louder. 

It only takes a minute until he stops, distracted by the sight of a bird flying past the window. Just like that he shakes it off and jumps down to run away from me and pound on the window. 

~~~~~

I’m in my sweats now and an old football t-shirt of Craig’s. I’m comfortable and cozy and my kids are playing as I finish cleaning the kitchen. The last of the dishes are in the dishwasher and I sink into the oversized chair. Cole pushes his way into my arms but insists on sitting beside me instead of on my lap, Chessa giggles while she crawls up onto the other side. Outside the wind still whips and the rain starts to pour. It’s cold and grey out there. But in here?  (almost) everything is right with the world. 

Four days.

Four days, people. And I get a little piece of my life back. The piece that for the last eighteen weeks has been spent on grad school discussion boards posting about creative strategy (got an A in that class, thankyouverymuch) or consumer behavior (still working on that one, but it’s looking good!).

Grad school has mostly been the reason for my silence here lately. Quite frankly after writing all day at work and then writing in the evenings and on weekends for school, I just couldn’t make myself log in here and write.

I feel bad. Especially when I think about all the stories I have about Chessa at age one and those stories are only in my head for Cole. My momma guilt raises its ugly head and whispers, “One day, he’s going to notice.” So then I feel bad for a while. But then I decide that I’ll just buy him a pony or a car or whatever and that’ll make up for it.  She will have stories, he will have stuff.  Sounds about right?! 

So on Monday I will submit my final paper for the term and wait for my grade. And I will take the summer off to do things like read books! and take long baths! and talk to my husband after 8pm! and bake cupcakes with my kids! and redecorate my office!

And sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. 

And probably write here too. 

I can’t freakin’ wait.

I stand in front of the Magic Kingdom, looking up at Chessa sitting so tall on Craig’s shoulders. On the stage Mickey and Minnie are singing about believing in your dreams and a lump forms in my throat and tears sting my eyes. 

She’s so innocent up there. Her eyes are so wide with excitement and belief. I’m not sure that she’s old enough to understand the message, but I know in her heart she believes.

She believes that Mickey and Minnie are real and that they’re up there dancing for her. She believes that when she wants something she can get it. She believes that everything is good in the world.

~~~~

Part of being a grown up, I guess, is that I know it’s not that simple. There haven’t been many times in my life when I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I may not have always liked it, but if I listened hard enough to that voice that comes from my heart, I found the right answer.

Lately? It’s not that simple. And the voice, the one that leads me, has gone eerily silent.

I try to find it. In the quiet moments between waking up and starting the day; in the space between conference calls and emails and deadlines; in the minutes that follow bedtime… I try to think and pray and believe that it will all work out and that good things happen to good people, but sometimes, I just don’t know.

~~~~

“Just let it play out.” “Wait and see.” “Just going to have to see how it goes.”

When I was a teenager I so badly wanted to be an adult. I wanted to make my own decisions and be in control of my own life. (And also? I didn’t want someone else telling me when to get off the phone.)

I didn’t know that “waiting” was so much a part of adulthood. Even when the itch to just DO SOMETHING becomes almost physical. That feeling like you want to crawl out of your skin and just…. Go?  But “go” is less drive to the mall for retail therapy and more pack the boxes and sell the house?  But everything has to fall into place first?

That’s where we are these days.

~~~~~

“I’m taking him to bed.” I mouthed the words to Craig who was talking on the phone.  He paused his conversation to stand up and kiss Cole on his little blond head. “Goodnight baby boy,” he whispered, like he always does. “I love you, sweet dreams.”

I started down the hallway and heard her feet smacking the floor running after me. “I want to kiss him,” Chessa announced. 

“Oh, OK.” I kneeled down with Cole who was now squirming at the chance to get out my arms.  He reached for his sister as she placed her lips on his forehead with the smallest of kisses and whispered, “Goodnight, baby boy. I love you.”

If there’s anything to be grateful for – and there always is – it’s that we’re in this together. And we have two healthy babies. Who test my patience and throw food on the floor and fight and scream and cry. But who give each other kisses at night and hugs in the morning and who remind me that we have the greatest blessing and that, actually, dreams do come true.    

A few weeks ago my friend Kristi started doing Tidbits of Talk, just a sort of way to wrap up the week. Then, my friend Jess jumped in. So now, I am too.

At least for this week. Maybe it will get my writing juices flowing again.

I’m so far behind on this blog. Cole is about to turn one, Chessa is trying to potty train herself, they are finally playing nice(er) (ish)  together, we’re still trying to figure out the best way for me to travel, and blah, blah, blah. There are so many plates spinning in the air these days that I’m afraid to take my hand off of any of them for fear they will all crash around me.  

Cole is full on walking now. He started taking steps a little over a month ago and now, he’s practically running across the room. Especially when he hears me coming to get him. And, climbing steps is officially his favorite thing to do. Which makes my favorite thing following him to make sure he doesn’t break a bone.  Oh wait, not my favorite thing to do, the thing I do most frequently. Not the same thing. 

My mom helps us out a lot when I’m traveling (as does Craig’s mom). Today when I told Chessa that GaGa was coming to visit, she looked at me and said, “are you leaving again?”  (I know!) And when I told her I wasn’t going away she was downright giddy that Mommy and Daddy and GaGa and PapPap would all be here at that same time. I love that the little things make her happy.

I have the itch to redo my house. Like the whole thing. I want new cabinets and new furniture and new carpet and new paint. I blame pinterest.  But really what I want is to mop the kitchen floors and have them stay clean for more than five minutes. Does that happen to anyone else?

I’ve got one more week of this grad school class left so I think I can safely say this class was much less time intensive than the first class and I’m feeling more confident in my ability to finish this thing out. I start another nine-week session immediately, then I’m taking at least the summer off to catch my breath.  While I do that, I want to do one of those online photography classes and lean how to take my camera off of auto. Anyone have any suggestions? 

While traveling last week for work and at dinner with my new team, a coworker started throwing questions out to the table. Questions like, “if you could only go on one vacation for the next ten years, where would you go?” and “if you were throwing a dinner partyand could only invite four people who would you invite?” I could only think of two people to invite off the top of my head, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since and now my list is up to 17.  Who would you invite?

I alternate between stirring vegetables and washing dishes, stepping over the baby as he pulls every Ziploc bag out of a nearby drawer.  He’s content and happy and I know it’s probably not baby safe, but he’s not grasping onto my pant legs, so I smile and walk past him.

I stop and pick up my phone to check in on Facebook and Twitter smiling at the responses to the photo I posted of Cole in his Steelers jersey. Loving that I can stay connected this way. Especially when I don’t feel connected at all. 

The days slip past me.  Even with the best intentions for a ten minute phone call or time set aside to tap out an email, the times when someone’s not fussing or yelling or laughing or needing me Come! Build! Puzzles! are few and far between.  I remember the lazy Saturday mornings and the hour long phone calls, catching up on the days or the week that had passed.  Updates on our jobs, gossip about mutual friends, the inner most details of our relationships or laughs over bad dates. 

I miss that. But at least this way, through social media and phones with cameras, I get to see their kids grow up and know (sort of) what’s going on in their lives.  Facebook and text messaging will have to do for now.

—-

It’s 1:00 am and Chessa’s awake. She can’t (or won’t) tell me why or what she needs and I desperately want to sleep. Tomorrow, I travel across the state for a couple days of meetings and suits and words like “strategy” and “initiative”.  I try to bribe her with juice or an extra stuffed animal but end up cuddling with her in the guest room until I hear her breath start to slow down. I want to stay here, wrapped around my girl but fears of starting a habit set in and so I carry her back to her crib. She protests a little when I lay her down, but settles in with a Dora under one arm and pacis in both hands.   

Back in bed, I’m wide awake, wiggling my toes beneath the sheets and trying to find my comfort again. The clock keeps ticking and I do that thing where I try hard not to look at it, but I’m playing the “if I fall asleep RIGHT now, I will get three, no two and a half, no two hours and fifteen minutes of sleep” game. To pass the time, I roll over and reach for my phone.  And check Facebook. 

“But I CAN’T take a bath because I have to go downstairs!” she insisted with tears streaming down her face and a voice at a level that was dangerously close to waking up her I just got him to sleep little brother.

I handed her the doll she got for Christmas, the one made for the bathtub, and tried to use the plastic baby as collateral.

Angrily, she threw the baby on the floor and continued to cry and bargain.

“I have to come upstairs for a bath so I can’t take a bath because I. HAVE. TO. GO. DOWNSTAIRS.”

Weighing my options, I gave in. “You have ten minutes to go downstairs and play.  Only ten minutes.”

And just like that she stopped the tears, jumped up off her knees, raised her arm into a “V” and yelled, “TEN MINUTES?!  FOR ME?  I HAVE TEN MINUTES?” 

So that’s where we’re at. She’s using her ten minute delay of game to ask Craig for a snack. A wise move on her part since her snacks never last less than twenty minutes and I’m using her ten minutes to tap out a quick blog post. 

It was hard finding my words over the last few weeks.

Writing is such a part of my routine, mixed in with parenting and work and schedules and dinner and laundry and meal planning and grocery lists. And when I stopped all of the schedule and routine it was hard to find time to write. Or even know what to say.

So instead I spent the last two weeks mostly soaking up my family.  Watching Chessa run full speed into Christmas. Probably not knowing exactly what all the excitement was about, but knowing that there was for damn sure something to be excited about.  She spent Christmas Eve peeking out the windows and yelling for Santa and couldn’t understand where he was Christmas morning.  I guess we forgot to tell her that he dropped the presents off and then went to the next little girl’s house. I think she was expecting to see him eating cookies and drinking coffee, with his red sweater unbuttoned and his feet propped up on the coffee table. 

Cole loved the wrapping paper, the boxes, the extra attention and having his momma home all day long for 12 days.

Minus the attempt at potty training (more on that later), it was an ordinary Christmas vacation with sleepy mornings, lazy afternoons, lots of chocolate and cinnamon rolls, way to much Dora and parents who attempted to lose the batteries from a couple of annoying toys.  

And it was perfect.

When people ask me what it’s like to have two kids so close together and so young, I usually laugh and say that it’s wonderful.  Hard. But wonderful.  Then I tell them that someone is usually crying. I tell them I didn’t know children so young could fight so much.  I tell them that one of these days Cole is going to knock his big sister on her ass and I’m going to let him.  Boy child has a few free blows coming, just saying.   I tell them that there is a good chance I don’t have enough patience left to get us through the next three days, much less three years.

Then I feel bad. Knowing my children are happy and healthy and I’m so very lucky to have them.  So I quickly backtrack and tell them there are good moments, too, of course. Moments when Chessa willingly hands a toy over to her brother, or unprompted plants a kiss on his head. Moments when Cole still snuggles with me or falls asleep in my arm and I keep rocking him, long forgetting what I was in such a hurry to do once bedtime came.  Times that out of no where Chessa starts doing the Pledge of Allegiance and instructs us to put our hands on our hearts and I think I’m going to die from the cute.

But most often, I think that the “other” moments are going to send me right over the damn edge. 

Cole is going through some kind of never-ending stage of hating to get his diaper or clothes changed. He’s perfected a flip-over-and-turn-myself-so-hard-that-surely-my-neck-will-snap move. Getting him cleaned and rediapered could be an Olympic sport.  When I apply enough pressure to make him lay still he sobs like I’ve just told him he’ll never have a puppy. 

And Chessa on the other hand is…  Well, she’s two. She turns on the tears when she needs to and has started the classic move of throwing herself on the floor when she doesn’t get her way. 

And, because I’m now a pro to this maneuver, I typically step over her and go back to other fun things, like moving Cole from the electrical outlets for the 457^th time. At that point, she wipes her tears with the back of my hand and yells at me with the indignation of a teenager that has 12 years on her, “MOMMY, I’M SA-AD.”

We do this dance all day long. Cole gets frustrated over banging his head or falling down and he cries. I comfort him.  Chessa throws a fit. Craig tries to reason with her.

Then Craig moves in with some animal crackers for Cole, while I try to distract and redirect Chessa. 

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The man-to-man defense is still working rather well except for at 6:00 every night, when the day has caught up to all of us and it’s not nearly close enough to bedtime and there’s whining and crying and yelling and probably some kicking and all I want to do is yell, “NOT IT!  YOU BE THE PATIENT PARENT. I’ll be the one hiding under the covers until the kids are asleep.”

I’m still in sweatpants and the t-shirt I slept in last night, trying to shake off the night of not so great sleep that followed the week of not so great sleep.  Cuddled in my arms is a sweet blond boy who just finished his morning bottle.  As I always do, I run my hand over his arm and his leg, feeling the soft flannel. 

The fireplace flickers as it throws off some heat to warm up the living room.  We don’t have anywhere to be and I’m so very grateful that it’s Saturday. 

On the chair, Chessa – still in her pajamas – is comfortable on Craig’s lap. His hair is still disheveled but he gave her donuts so the picture they create – him in shorts and a t-shirt, with sleep still in his eyes and her with wide eyes and powdered sugar framing her lips – both happy and loved, makes me grin. 

We’re watching Elf on a Shelf.  Yes, all four of us. Chessa is captivated, having started our own Elf on the Shelf tradition this year and the colors and the music have pulled my boy right in.

I know we need to start the day. Clothes need to be changed, proper breakfasts need to be eaten and I have a laundry list of projects to tackle (or rather, for Craig to tackle).  But then, on TV, the elf says something about the magic of Christmas living in your heart. 

So I smile at my husband, giving a knowing glance at our big girl.  I pull my boy closer to my heart and I decide the day can wait for just a few more minutes.

The sky outside my bathroom window looks too light for 10:30 at night. Maybe it’s a full moon, maybe it’s the snow or maybe it’s the blinding Christmas lights from our neighbor’s house. Whatever it is, it gives me a weird feeling. My body knows that it’s late and time to throw in the towel and call it a day, but the sky? The sky still looks like there is time. 

Time for things to change. Time for the outlook to brighten.

- – -

When I think about my athletic days in high school, I mostly think about the volleyball court.  I had a damn good serve and could save a ball from hitting the ground by sacrificing my body.  Good times.

But there were softball days too. And when I played softball, I always had coaches that stuck me in the outfield.  I hated the outfield.  I much preferred second base or short stop.  Right in the thick of all the action. 

Second base is also where I got nailed in the thigh with a line drive so hard that when I get cold and the veins in my leg appear, you can still see the outline of the ball.  Damn that hurt. 

It’s funny how you look back now and see that even though the glove has been traded for the laptop, you’re still the same person you were fifteen years ago.  The person who would much rather take the hits on second base than pick flowers in the outfield. 

- – -

Craig’s been spending a lot of time at home lately. Football season was a hot mess this year and we were all so very thankful to see it end.  Now he’s catching his breath and spending lots of quality time with our kids.  The kids are also taking full advantage of having Daddy around, what with the copious amounts of ice cream they’re getting. 

But now, their baths are done, kisses are pecked and their eyes are closed.  And I’m half a step away from tucking myself in, listening to him tell me the stories of their day.  I grin, knowing full well the chaos that he’s referring too when he looks at me and says, “You know, Chessa can have me at completely frustrated and frazzled. But when, at the end of the day, she’s bouncing off the bed and saying, ‘I love Daddy.’ and just like that, I melt.” 

I chuckle knowing that I melt too. And then I think, “we’re so screwed when she’s a teenager.”