One Breezy Morning

I became a full time SAHM and left the hot rod shop I was working at about 6 months ago mostly because of my then 10 month old. Yes, I blame her. But in a good way. As much as I loved my job, my baby loved me more. It was a sad decision but a good decision.

 ​This week I was asked if I could cover a couple days while the boss babe was on vacation. Clara, now almost 16 months old and not as dependent on me, and Kate were over the moon excited to have some other toddler interaction without me around all day. Henry was in school so it made it easy for me to say "Yes!".

I prepped well. Or so I thought....I made childcare arrangements early on. I packed lunches the night before and (maybe) even went to bed early.

​Then morning came...

​Getting all three babes dressed didn't seem like a big deal. It started out easy, like every other morning for us, me working or not. Getting kids dressed, check! Then came a new pair of shoes for Henry that involved actually tying his shoes. To be fair, he is still learning, but I thought "he's got this". He didn't have it... and he got really frustrated, really fast, and turned his bunny ear loops into tight knots which made me really frustrated. Small setback, but he got one shoe on and headed downstairs to put the other one on so I could get breakfast going.

​Now, I sometimes take a little pride in my morning routine. One kid goes to school, the other two don't; but I get all three ready for the day at the same time. So, giving my almost 16 month old her morning applesauce pouch planned to be, ya know, breezy. Notice I said, "breezy." You can't SAY "breezy"... that negates the breezy! Clara actually squeezed the sauce all over her fresh onesie that I had just put on her 10 minutes before. All the while, my oldest was a hot mess over attempting to tie his second shoe.

​Believe it or not, the only child holding it together was my middle child, Kate. She owed me though, as the day before, she whined FOR AN HOUR because I had the nerve to pick her up after being away from her for 8 hours... "Nice to see you too, sweet baby Kate."

Wait, there's more...

​In trying to prep ahead, I thought it'd be a great time to run four lunch boxes, a backpack, a diaper bag, a blanket, and two stuffed animals out to the car while the babes seemed to be pulling it together, so I got everything together and went to grab the car keys.

​I know that I know that I know that I CLEARLY remember bringing in the car keys from the night before and putting them on the counter... like I do at least 85% of the time. But as I dumped the diaper bag out and searched every room three times, frantically looking for my keys and trying not to lose it, I lost it. Particularly the moment when I found them laying on the backseat of my very locked car.

​I wept. Like a baby. I could no longer hide the exhaustion I was feeling.

​I actually thought that all these morning events were trying to steal my thunder of getting some "me" time at a place I so dearly loved and at one moment declared, "I JUST WANTED TWO DAYS OF ME!!".

​In all the chaos, I still made it to the shop on time. My car stayed in the driveway, but with the help of family, some venting, and adjusting plans, all the events that happened in a 40 minute time span had faded by noon time. It all worked out. I got my two days.

​I'm not entirely sure how working parents get thru the week and look like they have it all together. Maybe they don't. But, I'm grateful that I actually get to be with my kids full time. I'm grateful that on occasion, I do get to have "me" time. Day or night. Working. Not working. I'm grateful that my everyday mornings don't look like this particular morning. I'm also grateful that Henry has slip on shoes, Clara has more than one onesie, and that Kate channels in on my moments of weakness and gives me grace!

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