Eat. Play. Love. Repeat.

I don't have anything to say.

Truly. I keep wanting to post something new on the site and find that there are some things I could complain about, other things I could celebrate and still more that are just the teensy tidbits flying around in my brain like fluff. Not worthy of a big ole "post"!

Still.

I read recently that when you feel adrift or amok or a-whatchamacallit you should muse on the fact that a dead person would give ANYTHING in the world to just be in your skin, just for an hour. To feel life. To smell your child. To wipe a toddlers ass. To bake for your loved ones.

I've had a bit of thing lately about playing with my kids. I don't want to. I usually love to have chats in fairy wings over garlic and lettuce sandwiches on a tin tea set. Or watch a Triceratops "show" at DinoWorld complete with a water, dragon fountains and flips. Who knows? Maybe I never really liked getting down on the floor and making petting zoos out of Legos.

I try to wake up and say "thank you" as I fall out of bed (like the part time Buddhist that I am) and bound through the house like the image I carry in my head of what I would like to be as a Mother. Fresh. Open. Endlessly creative. Ready to make a bundt cake quick as you can say "Supermom." And hey, I am sure most people see me this way. (I am after all a recovering actress) But what if it's all just smoke and mirrors. Something my Mom drilled into my head that she herself never did.

So. I just breathe. Slow down. Eat my peanut butter with apples. Throw back the daily vitamins. And today when Grand Slam bounded up to me with sparklers in his eyes and asked if he could whisper something in my ear I said yes. He stage whispered 'I wanna play with you!' and I had to laugh. Life, like children, will always give you what you need to work on right now. And as I helped him lay out his dinosaur flash cards across the floor in a line and as I was eyeing my book I'd give anything to read at the moment, I suddenly hear...Pointasaurus. Jagged Eye Rex. Snortadactyl. I realize that he is making up his own names for these dinos! And I get to hear them! And they are mindbogglingly cute and hilarious and absolutely one hundred percent my son. No one else. And how could I want to be/do anything else?

We learn this over and over as Mom's. It's like those self help books you read that blow your mind open sideways with a life changing concept. But, by mid turkey sandwich at lunch time you've forgotten how to even spell the word peace and are telling off the counter person for putting too much mayo on the wrong side of the bread.

Today I will try and just wake up. Eat. Play. Love. And, thankfully, repeat.

Stop it! Stop it with the growing!

Stop it! Stop it with the growing!

4:34 AM.

Grand Slam cries out in the night for me. And when I say cries out I mean yells out at me like he's been doused in burning lava. I run through the house. My heart is flailing. I'm imagining he's chewed his own arm off in his sleep. Or some swamp snake has made its way into his bedroom. Or he's drowned on his sippy cup of lukewarm water. It could be anything! I brace myself and open the door....

"So Mom, what does Charlie Brown mean when he says 'Oh Brother?'

Oh, and I need you to pull the covers up."

I stand there waiting for the rest of my brain and body to catch up to me post hallway renegade run. He's all cute and sweaty in his dino pajamas, holding his stuffed T-Rex, rubbing his grubby little feet across his wall that I painted the color of Decembers Eve three years ago. Not a care in the world. Just, ya know, thinking about Charlie Brown dialogue at 4:34 AM.

"It's like when you say...Oh man! I think honey." "So is it like calling people stupidhead? Does he get in trouble for saying ugly things to people?"

Stumped. My tongue feels like a sloth tail. My brain knows I have to get this right and yet has no caffeine to arm itself. I bait and switch..."Baby, tomorrow is pancake day. Let's hurry and get the sleep part over with so we can go stir up the batter."

Thud. His head body surfs into the Tonka scene on his pillow case. I pull up the construction vehicle comforter and tuck the tip of the digger right under his chin. I notice his body is the length of the entire excavator truck right beneath it. In fact, I'm pretty sure if he were totally stretched out his toes would be in Concrete Mixer territory. How can this be? Just yesterday he was barely long enough to reach past the windshield and now he's two trucks away!

I lie down next to him. Really, just because I'm his Mom and I because I can. I wrap my arms around his little Humpty Dumpty tummy and shove my nose into his hair. I suck up a snort of sand and make mental notes about moving shampoo night but let's face it- shampoo night is so hideous on the entire family maybe I could just suck the sand out with the mini Dyson. Kinda present it as a game? Remembering I don't even own a mini Dyson brings me back to the night. And his little snores bring me back to him and all at once I am screaming in my head, "I wanna put him in a box! I wanna smoosh him down and stop all this growing up! It's going to fast! Can't he just keep on asking me things like "What's dirt?" and "Why can't we go to Australia today?"

Have I wasted too much time running around cleaning my house, doing errands, texting on the phone, surfing the web for things to do with my kids while my kids are right there asking me to build a fort out of brown sugar? What's the big deal about building a fort out of brown sugar? At the end of my little life I'm sure the Brown Sugar Casita would stick out in my mind far better than the improvising I did to get them interested in Legos vs. brown sugar.

Sigh. I have to let it go. They are growing up. No way to stop it. Gotta just ride that sucker as hard as I can and enjoy the heck outta bolt upright sleep stops. And missed chances to further the career or make dinner without breaking up fights. Or learn to play piano or make more money. Hell, I gotta let go of ever getting the garage cleared out and EVER having all the laundry put away.

But here's the rub. There's a little dino in my bed that's betting I won't regret a minute.