Day 615 | On Missing My Life: It's good to be home
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I just returned home from an incredibly lovely, relaxing weekend. Spending day-long quality time with good friends is one of the best gifts ever, isn’t it? One more shout-out to my amazing, supportive, overly-capable, encouraging husband for “forcing” me to do this for myself. I’m feeling very lucky.
In my quiet travel time today (SO luxurious after traveling with the kiddos so much), I reflected on what I missed and definitely didn’t miss during my trip to Cape Cod. Hopefully my post-trip takeaway will allow me to appreciate the items on the “missed” list (below) while giving me more patience to deal with the “didn’t miss” list (to be posted tomorrow). Enjoy!
Things I [really] missed:
- Hearing “momma” and “I love you.” There’s really nothing like it in the world.
- Receiving sneak attack hugs. So unexpected and wonderful. Smile-inducing and an immediate mood booster.
- Quiet evenings with Chris. We’ve had these sweet, quiet post-bedtime evenings together for almost four years now. I’ve really come to crave them to wrap up my days.
- Feeling incomplete. I honestly felt like I was walking around without part of my body intact. And not because I carry Robbe around a bit, but because these two little sweetpeas are just inherently part of my every moment right now. It’s wonderful and exhausting.
- Being a translator. As I’ve mentioned, Robbe is not one for word-based communication right now. Because of that, I’ve become extremely capable at translating his squeaks, grunts, and gestures.
- The dance parties. Yeah, we’ve starting having some pretty impressive dance-offs at our house. Robbe’s song of choice: “When I Grow Up.” Chase’s song of choice: “Let It Go” (from Frozen).
- Our meals together. I don’t know if I’ve ever explicitly noted that the boys and I (minus Chase when he’s at school), have every meal together. We sit down together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day. Sometimes it’s my least favorite part of the day (“Remember? You LOVE sweet potatoes!”) but it’s become so engrained in my day to day that it’s strange to no have that quality conversation time with both boys. Let’s not confuse this with planning/cooking/cleaning up after every meal. For the record, I did not miss that.
- The baby giggles. No explanation needed. It’s contagious and incredibly uplifting.
- Being in control. I’m sure you’re not surprised. I manage every part of those babies’ lives. It’s hard for me to let go and let Chris be solely responsible for meals, activities, discipling, etc. It was hard, but so good for me (also, not surprising).
- Feeling needed. Again, it’s hard and incredibly exhausting to feel needed every second of the day. But when I’m not at all, I feel a sense of uselessness and almost laziness. I’m sure Mary Catherine was annoyed with my constant picking up or attempting to organize and my task-oriented nature during the visit, but it filled that gaping hole of needing to feel needed quite nicely.
Remember, I'll be back tomorrow with the other side of the story...
