It’s started. Those twinges and thoughts of “where are my babies?” J started walking this week and all of a sudden he can wear 18 month sleepers and knows that a toothbrush goes in your mouth and a q-tip is supposed to go in your ears when the right ear hole is not confused with the back of your head.
Hads is 8. What the heck? 8? The tiny ringlets have been replaced with smelly feet and the ability to use a hot glue gun on her own during her crafting marathons.
Macs starts school in 6 months and that makes me want to die inside.
Evs has decided she wants to be a Junior American Ninja Warrior. Yep. That’s my new goal for her as well. I’m a big fan of this decision.
I look around my chaos and, over and over, go back to the moment in the elevator. If you live nearby me and have babies in the same place…you know the elevator. I have always had two thoughts in that elevator. On the way in…holy shnikes this baby is going to fall out of me! (Breathe – is it over yet?)
On the way home. Oh man, the last time I was in this elevator my womb child was about to fall out of me. Wait! Time out! You’re sending me home with this thing?
They walk you down and wait with you until your car is at the door. They check the carseat base, the straps on that little baby, and make sure everything is properly secured.
Okay, let me stop there.
Nurse, you do not trust me (or my husband) to secure this carseat base properly on my own, but you are still going to pop that carseat containing 6/8ish (or just under 10 if we’re talking about J) pounds of newborn baby and send us on our way?
I know. I know it’s protocol.
Some days I sit downstairs and listen to the unfolding chaos. The laughs, the cries, the jumping, and stomping, the fighting, the wrestling, the back-talking, the little yes/no sirs/ma’ams, the whining, the giggles, the cute little mispronounced words and stuffed animal names (Blue Gorilly being one of my current favorites). Parenthood is nutso. Trying to figure out this life is like swimming upstream while raging rapids are putting up their best fight to drag you downstream to the waterfall that is beautiful from beneath, but gives off a completely different feeling if your in the midst of the chaos. (You stand at the bottom and say oh you’re gonna miss this one day…which I know I will, but I’m sure if you think hard you can remember the nasty rapids that left you clinging to that rock that you hoped would hold.)
Jeremiah 10 hit me this week while my preacher taught. In a nutshell and Brooke’s very summarized versions, I know, God, that I can’t run my own life as we little humans don’t have what it takes to be in control…so correct us as you see best.
Adulthood/parenthood is full of big dumb decisions and tiny frustrating decisions, but it is nice to know that God is in control of both the big and the small.
And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Isaiah 30:21.
So maybe the real goal is to stop swimming and frantically grasping for stability and simply listen for that word behind me.
(If you haven’t watched the new Black Beauty on Disney Plus and would like a visual of this river/waterfall, I wouldn’t consider watching it a wasted two hours.)
To all those neck deep in chaos…
Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I…” (Psalm 61:1-2)
Bye friends! 🙂
(Once again, and as always, I did not set out to write this. I wonder what these blogs would like if I formulated my idea before I started writing. Ha…)