Slowing down to a crawl.

Moving from two to three children and to homeschooling in these last months makes me very, and unexpectedly busy. Two years ago I had two kids: 1 in school full time and 1 in preschool three days a week. The house was clean, the laundry was done. I shopped for groceries regularly, had the affairs in order and predictable. I definitely have the sense that I am moving backwards in life. Now I have 1 in school half-time, 1 I am teaching full time, and 1 that is not quite 7 months old. Yes, that is most certainly full time.

Auden has been "crawling" for a few weeks now. She's really good at the classic yoga move, the "down dog". She seems to know intuitively that she should be able to move while on hands and knees, but cannot coordinate the knee/hand movement. Therefore, she moves on her belly, stops every foot and pushes up into a down dog, drops to hand and knees, rocks back and forth, pushes herself into the air, yells out a little like, "Is anybody around here interested in giving me a little instruction as to what the problem is?!" She is decidedly mobile and really too young to be left unwatched for one single second.


This is all a lot of work. Maybe I am the biggest fool in the house to be surprised, somewhat, by this development? All my plans for organization and order and planning and - blah - gone. Now the days fly by more quickly than I can even think. I will look into the refrigerator and think, "Wow, we need some milk." and I plan, mentally, to go to the store. And then, I will look into the fridge and think the same thing again and I will look at the calendar and see that this last time I had the thought was ten days prior.


The adjustment to never getting to the store and continually leaving wet clothes in the washer (which, above all things, I hate the most) and finally, inevitably, completely and totally forgetting to pick my precious daughter up at school has not been an easy one. (It did not even cross my mind that I had forgotten her until school had been out for 45 minutes!)

It has been a slow acceptance that I will leave the house a lot less, that everything takes twice as long, that the laundry will have to be done at night and folded the next night, and that if I do not write down to pick up my daughter, I may forget. Funny thing is, I feel like I am actually enjoying my children and my life for the first time, instead of wanting another day to be here. I live in today because there is so much to do before it comes to an end.

Every moment I want to feel discouraged that I can't do everything I want, I take time to picture the day, not very far from this one, when my day will involve trips to the post office to mail care packages to my kids in college and no laundry to wash. Due to our stellar family planning, however, I have a fresh eighteen years from now.