Black hole

As the mom-sandwich walked out to the parking garage from the gym this morning a seemingly sweet woman admired the two little boys and then asked me the question that 9 out of 10 people ask me each day. "How many months apart are they?" Usually when this question is asked it is because the asker has had two or more children who were close together in age as well. I do the same thing when I see other insane mom's and dad's out with two little-little ones - just hoping for a little sense of relief that I am not alone. This woman had two grown children who are 19 months apart and she commented that they are best of friends. Now. Implying.....they weren't for a long while. And then she walked away saying, "You'll come out of the black hole in about two years. Just hold on."I thanked her for the advise and went on our merry way to the Pediatrician office. Luckily both of the tired boys fell asleep in the car on the way there so rather than being 20 minutes early as I have recently began doing just because I give myself plenty of room for ruined clothing, projectile spit-ups, and morning-blow-up-diapers, I decided to just sit in the car and soak up every second of the quiet and warmth of my car.
Of course my mind started racing as that is what happens when there is actually calm in my midst. Along with thoughts about finishing my Christmas shopping and finding the 2 credit cards that I have somehow misplaced in the last 3 days, and needing to send out my last 20 Christmas cards that I have yet to address were thoughts about this apparent "black hole" that I am in but wasn't even aware. Don't get me wrong - there are some really really low moments where I want to go hide in the dark crawl space below the house and not come up until summer. Truly, though, most of the time my spirits are far higher than what they should be for having 100% of my "me" time along with any thought of consistent sleep stripped from me 4 short months ago. So I sat in my car today just very grateful. I am grateful for the patience that has been injected into my veins like an i.v. as it certainly does not come naturally. Somehow when Brooks uses the most blood curdling whine in America to try to get something he wants I am able to ask him to speak to me in a normal voice. He usually then just takes the whine up a notch but I am then again ask him to please stop whining and then I will listen to him. If you don't know what I am talking about I'll email you a short video of just 3 seconds of the most irritating-annoying-horrific sound you've ever heard. I think if it weren't for whining I would have 9 kids, seriously, it's that bad. Anyway, luckily, in the past 4 months I have been gifted the virtue of patience - right when I needed it most. More so, I have learned how to have grace towards myself and the other sweet person named my husband. You see, along with my racing thoughts are these incessant, heavy thoughts that are always there - just knocking at my soul begging for some attention. Usually, I just push them a little farther back behind the "survival list" for the day so can really spend some time on them later. But many of these thoughts are tough things like where should we plant our roots? Or have we already planted our roots and now we need to just be okay in a small house in a neighborhood we love? Or will I ever get my pilates certification like I would love to do and have the free time to put it to use? Or how in the world will Brad and I ever be able to nurture our marriage if we can barely afford babysitting in order to be alone? These rich, gooey questions deserve a discovery retreat in the woods or something but seeing as how that is not in the near future I just give myself a little grace...and then a little more...and then a little more. I tell myself and Brad daily that this is just a phase and that this, too, will pass, so in the mean time all of the big stuff can wait. I know from the outside we look like we have things down but on the inside we are truly just surviving right now - and this is enough for us. We are grateful for even the small stints of quiet we have these days....like when Brooks spends 10 minutes lining his shoes up at the bottom of the stairs. The activity may create more mess but it lends us 10 minutes of peace - we'll take it!

Even though I am able to give myself plenty of grace these days - I wonder? Do the people around me? This weekend some of our favorite friends stopped by after their breakfast out. It was a rainy, cold, lazy Saturday after a too-late Friday night out. There was literally a wet opened diaper on the floor, dishes stacked beyond their limits, pajamas on inside out, toys everywhere, broken tree ornaments on the floor and anything else that should have been in a spot was out and scattered on the floor and on the furniture of our teeny (but cozy) house. We chatted and watched the boys who are only 6 weeks apart play and mess with each other and then they left to enjoy the rest of the Saturday. We shut the door and both agreed to never ever ever let our house get to the point it had that morning. We would never want our friends or family to not want to come around because of the tornado that seems to take over on the weekends. Even though we made this vow to ourselves I know for sure that these kind of friends don't care at all. In fact, they are about to have two little ones very close together and Brad said, "they'll understand very soon." Thank you, friends, for loving us just the way we are right now...in shambles but atleast smiling.

But what about our family? Yesterday we showed up 20 minutes late for my family's annual Christmas reunion. We were delighted with ourselves but we seemed to make a few people a little perturbed at our lack of promptness. The fact that everyone in our family had bathed and gone to church and actually had clean clothes on was enough for us. Plus, we didn't think we would even be noticed among the 70+ people in attendance! Maybe next year we'll make it on time and have a homemade salad rather than one I put together in the car....
But even worse, we have yet to even get the littlest boy down to South Georgia to meet Brad's extended family. We'll be making our first trip on Christmas day and though we wouldn't miss it for the world - we know that taking the two boys out of town makes for two tiring parents. We sure are grateful that South Georgia has sent a whole bunch of that grace to us over the last three action-packed years! We look forward to the calm that we hear about that we'll start to experience sometime next year and then we really hope to get the boys down to the "woods" quiet often.

So I guess this is just a little reminder to ourselves and our quite understanding friends and family - that we may be dirty. We may forget your birthday. We may completely miss a date that is on our calendar. We may not match. And our eyes may be puffy but I promise we will only be in this hole for a little while. Luckily, because this is all we know - we don't even see ourselves as being in that black hole that the woman spoke of today. This is just our normal! Thank you for baring with us while we figure things out.....and mess up alot along the way!
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Among the three Christmas parties we attended this weekend and the welcomed-chaos of the season - we did manage to get a few still shots of the boys together. Let's just say - these pictures don't do the whole moment justice. If only I could know sweet William's thoughts.....