Home Again

We are back home from a wonderful Christmas trip to PA.  Once all our pictures are uploaded I'll have some fun ones to post.  A highlight was skating on the frozen lake on a snowy Christmas day.  Mr. Mister got his first pair of ice skates - double runners, which were adorable and made it easy for him to stay standing.

Daddy is on vacation the rest of the week!  Yipee!

We came to a realization today (one that we come to often).  Life with little kids = not restful.  As we stood among bags to unpack, new toys to put away, laundry to fold, mail to go through, emails to catch up on, appointments to make, and seemingly a million other tasks, all the while with kids to play with and feed and put Baby Vick's on for the hundreth time (because Mr. Newton has a cough that seems to never go away), life felt really chaotic.  And as I can still barely walk across the floor without stepping on something, it still does.  If today was a vacation day, why wasn't it restful? we thought.

Enter our realization.  Because a three year old and almost 8 month old are not restful.  Until they are asleep.  So instead of getting frustrated, we choose to change our expectations.  Vacation will not be restful.  Whether it is a day off at home or a week on the beach, vacation looks different now than it ever did in our previous life.

But, we will enjoy this life that we are abundantly blessed with. We CHOOSE to enjoy life when it's easier to feel overwhelmed and tired.  We will love our kids and get on the floor and play with them even if it's hard to find space on the floor among the stuff waiting to be put away.  We will leave dirty dishes so we can have extra time to read and wrestle before bed. We will paint and color and play Chutes and Ladders and sweep dozens of Cheerios off the floor at every meal.  Because this is our life.  It's not supposed to be restful, but it can be fun.  If we choose to have fun.

A friend gave us the book Let Me Hold You Longer for Christmas.  It's a children's book that I think is mostly written for parents, encouraging us not to miss out on our kids' "lasts."  It makes me cry every time and is really good for me to read on days like these. It puts parenting in perspective and helps me choose to just enjoy.  Because even though it seems that the little kid season of life is permanent, it is not.  And someday I'll have all the time in the world to sit and read a book that I want to read.  And I know at that point, I'll be a little sad that my floor is missing game pieces and random toy parts and Cheerios and train tracks and blocks and board books and cars and balls and random articles of clothing that never quite made it to the laundry basket.

How could you not have fun with these boys?!