OK- I didn’t know the thursday thing had a name, Ok. so disregard the whole next line about my stupid nickname for it because this is way cuter. Gotta love Fussy, don’t cha.
(begin disregarding now)
I know the Thursday thing doesn’t really have a name yet, but forgetting to participate 3 weeks in a row has really hit me. How can you forget to be grateful? It’s easy, isn’t it.
(stop disregarding now – now that my double negative is over. If you can’t get over it then begin to regard now)
This week, My most immediate thankful feeling comes from being able to be home with my kids. When we owned the restaurant a ten hour day was a short one. Seven days a week. I missed them so very much. I’ll never get that time back with them. I don’t know when M2 was potty trained, I don’ know when she walked. I don’t remember her first words very much and poor M1 had to teach herself how to read.
Each day that I spend watching them grow lately has been a gift. OK, so they fight. I’m glad I’m here to retrain them to deal with conflict differently. OK, so they’re messy. I’m glad I’m here to teach them how to clean up.
Yesterday I read a blog post called Where is a Woman’s Place? and it echoed a few things I had thought of, but hadn’t really mulled around long enough to put together coherently.
I realize other women might disagree, and I understand why they do. The desire to use your brains & talents in the workforce is culturally supported, rewarded and, dammit it’s fun to go to work.
But for me, I never want to do it again. I’m glad I can make a living working from home and I don’t want to miss another minute of them growing up until they move out.
OK, that was some idealistic bullshit, because to be honest, I love me a late-night Starbucks meeting with friends. I swear, sometimes moms form committees just to keep Starbucks in business. And there are some minutes I’d love to miss, the screaming, fighting minutes where they can’t even hear me asking “what’s wrong?” or maybe the minutes when they wake up all sunshine-y before I’ve had my coffee and follow me around the house telling me all about the dream they had and how they feel about it. Yeah- that was this morning, three of them following me all around to tell me their dream. Luckily one of them is perceptive enough to notice my bleary eyed forced smile and say “Maybe we should tell her after she’s had her coffee.” and another says “Yeah- and one at a time. I get to go first.”
I braved a public place with just my 4 little ones today, we went to Taco Bell with no backup support. It was nice. They behaved. A lady in the next booth got a kick out of my 7 yr old reciting lines from our manners book. “No whining when dining, it just isn’t fair to all of the people who like quiet air.” then the 5 yr old says “Who would want quiet air- that’s so stupid.”
I like to think everyone in Taco Bell enjoyed our lunch today. But between wiping refried beans out of the baby’s eyes and monitoring the fruit freeze smoothie turns and making sure everyone sat on their bums and said please and thank you, I really only noticed the lady in the next booth.
And if you see the blob of cheese in her hair, I swear I don’t know how it got there. There wasn’t a nacho-cheese-flicking rhyme in the manners book and I didn’t even see it happen, one moment it- was- just- there.
And OOh OOh- a last-minute thing to be thankful for, the camera I won on ebay arrived today, even thought I paid for it 2 weeks ago. And I love it, It takes pretty pictures. I cant wait to fill this blog with a ton of pictures, sorry in advance.
Lotsa crazy crud going down at the Hannigan house. Don’t miss another post,
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