A Dark Car Ride Home
There are times, and today is one of them, where I look around and I’m so thankful and over the moon happy for this family that I have. Pinch my arm because I’m not sure how I got this lucky, happy. Not all days are like this, of course, and if I’m being honest the whole day didn’t even feel like this. But it ended well, and so as I’m sitting in the dark with a baby that’s almost asleep, I’m holding on to that feeling.
Most days I’m just spinning in circles trying to do damage control and make sure at least the majority of the children are fed and not crying. My mental to do list is constant and never ending, and when I collapse in bed at the end of the day (or the start of the next day? Trust me it’s late) I don’t have a lot of time to think about where we are in life.
But tonight I found myself thinking about it, as I paced the kitchen with one baby, and watched the other two sleeping on the monitor. Two years ago we were driving home from Thanksgiving and I dreamed of the day we could drive home in the dark after a long fun day, with a car full of happy children. It didn’t happen that day, but it happened today.
We went to the Christmas light event at a local zoo, our second year going. And it just drove home how much can change in a year. Yes, we added another child - that one was obvious. But in addition, last year we had two children that were less than enthusiastic and both required us to carry them through the entire zoo. This year, they were running ahead of us, excited about everything, and they actually cared about the animals!
We wandered through, and I didn’t feel like we had to hurry to beat the tantrum that was coming. We had fun, the kids got to try their first fried dough, and G still stole my french fries. At the very end there were also a few rides. I asked E and G if they had any interest in them. E wanted to ride the carousel but it was out of order, so it turned out our only option was a dumbo-type ride where the animals flew around a big circle. “No. Too fast!” E said. He didn’t want to ride. But G said “Yeah! I want to ride that!” I loved that both were confident in their decisions, and it didn’t matter to them that their brother had chosen something else. And so G went on the ride by himself, and E waved to him when he went by.
And on the way home, I handed out candy canes and as we drove home in the dark I realized that we had three happy children in the back. They were talking (okay two of them were talking) about the lights and animals we’d seen, and I was exhausted in the best way. The feeling carried me through bedtime and I just can’t shake how wonderful this spot is that we’re in right now.
Don’t worry, I still had a child tell me that he doesn’t like anything and I’m a bad mama earlier today, so we’re still completely human and full of normal children in this house. And I love it.