Embrace the Chaos

The other day while carting around Noah on my variety of errands, I spotted a mother with her toddler daughter doing what looked like what I was doing a year plus ago – chatting, laughing, and being silly. Tear, tear. Somehow when I wasn’t looking the tides have changed. Instead of running errands and being my right hand lady while Drew was at his variety of activities, I’m doing this with Noah and Gabby is off. How did THAT happen???

I spent the next day whining about how my older two are so old and how depressing it is. It’s only just the beginning. And that’s when Adam, my lovely partner in this roller coaster ride of parenting, reminded me ever so nicely how my children ARE still little and I’m wasting these days longing for the old days. Say what?!?! Got me thinking…

It’s possible, I’m not committing to definitely but it’s certainly possible, that I’m overlooking some of the fun of Gabby’s current stage (wearing princess costumes 24/7, coming up with some of the craziest stories one has ever heard, or over accessorizing to the umpteenth) because I get frustrated with the wild woman she is (the defiant, mischievous behavior). And I’m about 100% positive in a time span as small as one year, I will be crying all over again when I see a wild woman similar to her and she will have graduated on from this phase. So perhaps I should just, dare I say, ENJOY this current phase of wild woman days instead of battle it so much. Gasp.

Well then, it got me thinking. If I’m wasting a trip running around town being sad about Gabby being older, perhaps I should think about the little man I’m lucky enough to run around town with. It just so happens that recently he’s been driving me as crazy as his older sister (also known as the wild woman) because of his maniacal ways – desire to crawl everywhere and get into everything. I’m almost equally as positive that the time will come in the very short future that I will look at maniac men such as him and wish I had one in my grasp. So perhaps, once again just putting this out there, I should ENJOY this current phase of my maniac man instead of battle it. Gasp.

It’s entirely possible that I spend way too much time being frazzled and frustrated with the wrong things that my days bring. I’m not sure it’s possible while I’m in the nitty gritty of it all to stop and really smell the roses. But I know with complete certainty that I’m going to miss these crazy days. I already miss the crazy ones from before now. So as I pack up my entire family for ten days and complete a death defying task of taking us all, sick baby in tow, to Disney World, I’m going to try and cement these days in my memory. As painful as some of the moments are, it’s more painful once they’ve passed.