Stephanie Morrill

The ducks have scattered, and there's not a ball in sight...

26 July 2010

As you might guess from the title, life is a little overwhelming at the moment.

I used to be so organized and driven, and now I’m feeling about as far from it as possible. For the most part, I’m okay with that. I’ve done the new baby thing once before, and I had vague memories of the “too much to do, not enough time or energy to do it in” feelings that overwhelmed me during the first few months of McKenna’s life. I knew it would be like this when Connor joined us, and yet…

Today was the first time McKenna, Connor, and I all ventured out of the house together. When we walked out the door on our way to the doctor’s office, both kids were wailing, and I wasn’t too dry-eyed myself.

And the morning played out much like a scene from a goofy movie about parenthood full of cheap laughs. The doctor was running behind schedule, and about five minutes before she walked in, McKenna stunk up the tiny room with her diaper. I had an extra with me … in the car. (Fortunately our pediatrician is super sweet. She grabbed me a diaper from their stash so McKenna didn’t have to ride all the way home like that. And she insisted I just leave the stinky diaper there in the exam room. I felt all kinds of guilty doing that…)

After we got home, I set McKenna up with a lunch of apple sauce, yogurt, and crackers, and zapped myself some leftover spaghetti. Then I attempted to feed Connor with one hand, eat with the other, and talk to my husband on speaker phone. About 5 minutes into the phone conversation, Connor’s diaper started leaking all over me. And then as I grabbed a new diaper for him, he spit up everything he’d just eaten. It soiled my already tainted skirt, the floor, and the vacuum cleaner, which just happened to be sitting there.

I hollered at McKenna that I was going upstairs and that she should come up whenever she’d finished, then I attempted to clean Connor and I up. And tried to not think about everything in the house that might potentially be covered in strawberry yogurt by the time McKenna wandered upstairs.

Ten minutes later, when all of us were decently clean, Connor was back to eating, and McKenna was sitting on the floor arranging her stuffed animals, I said to her, “I’m proud of you. Thanks for being such a big girl this morning.” And she said, “I’m proud of you too. Thanks for being such a big mommy.”

Which made me both laugh and tear-up. I know in the next day or two I’ll find myself once again stressing about the dirty kitchen floor or work I “should” be doing, given that I had a book release this month, but at the moment I’m content with what I did manage to do this morning: hang out with my great kids. And keep my shirt clean.

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