Remember About October

I've been woken up early today by a doula call, a happy call, a little girl born healthy and happy. A doula bubbling with the kind of joy only a birth will bring.

I couldn't get my mind to settle back to sleep, despite the cuddly toddler beside me and further unsettled due to a not-so-cuddly 9 year old curled in a ball at my feet (trying to be inconspicuous about coming in my bed in the middle of the night).

So instead, I sit at the computer. Checking work email. Responding to work email. Wondering if I can change the time settlings on my email so I can disguise the fact that I'm working on a holiday before sunrise. It's barely 5am. When did I become this person?

Trying to stop the ruminating, I decide to upload the pictures off my camera so I'll have some fresh ones to look at while I'm away for work next week. As I sift through the pictures of my family life, the other stuff that's living in my head releases. LOOK at these beautiful people, this nice life we live. There is so much, all at once, that it's hard to grasp how absolutely miraculous the simple things are.

Such as a boy learning to talk and express himself and anything exciting by exclaiming "AWESOME!" and labeling things he thinks are cool as "AWESOME" in noun form [Aidan's toy car's name="awesome"--"Brother, I plaaaaaay with Awesome?"; Shawn's grout job in the kitchen-awesome--"Mom, Meemo go see Awesome?". You get the point.]

Such as a 9 year old being able to let his Mom know he needs more of my time, time to just be. In turn, letting me know what I need too. He asked me if I could just lay with him and listen every night. His first question? "Mom, remember when I was your special little boy?". My heart. These talks have been amazing. And I usually don't say much. Other times we just cuddle.

Such as a little girl wiggling with joy at her Mom joining her class for a day and hardly being able to contain herself. Any moment of my time focused on her is greeted with such joy and love it really god smacks me every time. I laid with her in her bed a few nights ago and read her a book, just the two of us and she acted like I flew her to Paris.

These are the things to focus on, to draw on when other things are outside of my control. There isn't really a point in feeling bad about what was. Now is more important. Moving forward from there.