Mothering Without Noticing

Fitzgerald and Alexander will be one in six weeks. Six weeks. I've been a mother for nearly one full year. I don't think any of it has really hit me. I've just been moving—constantly moving—towards the next day. I don't spend every day thinking, oh how sweet is this milestone or that. I've just been doing, been mothering, without even noticing.

 

Sometimes I am acutely aware of the fact that I don't have these moments of being extremely grateful and happy to be a mom. I'm just too damn tired and too damn busy.

 

But then earlier this week it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’m their mom. Like, that's it. Me. I'm the one they got.

I normally am not the one to pick them up from school, so by the time we're all at home together, I'm unloading the dishwasher, getting their bath ready, trying to figure out something for Mark and I to eat for dinner…there's not a lot of play time. But it's been different this week, and one day I was the one that got them at 5:40.

Fitzy is cutting two teeth and has been extremely clingy. So when we got home from school, he just wouldn’t settle down. Of course this is happening at the same time Alex has an upset stomach and has been barfing all day. #twinlife 

So instead of dumping them in their exersaucers while I got laundry going or did the dishes or prepped for dinner, I sat on the floor with them. We all played with wooden blocks. I watched them play together and try to play with me. Fitzy took wobbly steps towards me, hands out stretched, shrieking. It hit me.

I'm their mother.

He wants me, because he's hurting and I'm his momma.

That night I did everything I used to make fun of "moms on social media" for doing. I felt #blessed, in the most non-ironic sense of the word. I completely ignored my emails, the piled to the sky laundry, the dirty dishes and the television. I read three BabyLit books aloud and threw a light up beach ball at my son to his peals of laughter.

It was a good feeling.