Lucky Duckie

“Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're real quite lucky.”-Dr. Seuss

October was a busy month for our family! I tried my best to squeeze in as many fall themed activities as possible! We were able to go the pumpkin patch & Carter’s school fair. Everyone always says (me included) that time flies with the kids. The days are long but the years are short. People always are telling me to just enjoy the kids like nothing else has to be done! I already have to constantly remind myself to enjoy them. I find them quite charming and irresistible some of the time. Somewhere in between temper tantrums and throwing items out of the cart at Target. Excuse me can someone tell me how to enjoy them when they are just plain difficult to manage?! Enjoy them (instead of freaking out) even when they collaborate in dumping an entire bottle of syrup on the floor. Enjoy them when they color on the walls, when they rub your expensive face cream all over your suede shoes, enjoy them even when they make snow out of Styrofoam packing and in the same night throw eggs out of the carton on the ground. Enjoy them and just accept the fact the three little kids can reduce a grown woman to an exasperated tearful state almost daily?

  That is my biggest struggle, to just ENJOY them. IT IS SO FRUSTRATING SOMETIMES. Most of the time I am overwhelmed with the logistical interworking of life.  I have a strong NEED for organization, cleanliness and my utmost goal is EFFICENCY! I only want to fold the laundry once and put it away (if I get that far), put toys away in their place once, stack the books nicely on the shelves once a day. HAHA do my toddlers reek havoc on this little mindset! That is not what I call efficiency. The truth is frustration describes my mommy style right now. But LIFE texted me and told me to get over it, that I was missing the all-elusive secret to happiness and Zen hood. Um do I look like Buddha? Don’t answer that please.

So here it is people- drum roll please: Real life isn’t like what the ideals we are fed, all happy shiny people who never yell at their kids- its real with grumpiness, mood swings and CRAP constantly happening. But if we get too caught up on that “CRAP” then we miss the pieces of joy bursting through the maple syrup on the floor. If I PAUSE then I would hear my babies talking about making pancakes with each other and the carpet. So being happy or content is not this overarching all encompassing constant state of being. It is SIMPLY an intermittent break in all the other crap of life that has to be dealt with. It is the moments that make us PAUSE and laugh, that make us EXPLODE inside with joy.

MY KIDS ARE AWESOME AT GIVING ME THOSE PIECES OF JOY!

They are by far the most HILARIOUS kids I have ever met! By adjusting our expectations on the happiness factor we can BE STILL enough not to miss those PIECES flying around. So I am still trying to relish in those times and not get to frustrated by all the life crap. So tomorrow I am going to try to catch a few more pieces of joy.