You're gonna want this back

Trace Adkins released a song 3 years ago; you might have heard it if you're familiar at all with Country music. The song followed what you presume are the stages in his daughter's life, from teenager to young adult, and expresses the angst of always longing for the next step in life. The chorus says: "You're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back. You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast. These are some good times, so take a good look around, you may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this." The first time I heard this song, I was naturally reminded of how I felt growing up. I think the story line is ubiquitous to us all, perhaps more especially for girls. Please forgive me if that's too broad of an assumption. Anyway, when he comes to one of the final verses, and sings "Five years later there's a plumber workin' on the water heater, Dog's barkin', phone's ringin', One kid's cryin', one kid's screamin'" I remember thinking "this is it, this is where he says 'I told you so. I told you you would miss it." Embarrassingly enough, I was mildly shocked when he went into "I know it's hard to believe, but you're going to miss this."
A lot of my patients at work ask about my children. I generally tell them I have two toddler boys, and it's a nice break to come to work (in an ICU.)
The boys and I had to stay home from church today, mostly because I can't put my contacts in and am too stubborn to get glasses, and chances are I would kill someone if I tried to drive as my blinded self. I felt really sick for a little while this morning, probably because I spent 16 hours at work yesterday after only 3 hours of sleep (I can't do that as well as I used to), so I laid back down for an hour while the boys watched a show. When I woke up there were cookies everywhere (with the frosting licked off), a loaf of bread I just baked was destroyed (not half-eaten, just destroyed), and Jonathan dumped an entire bottle of light corn syrup down the drain (I had plans to use it in a pecan pie for my beautiful little niece's party today.) Also, they laid ruin to a container of baby wipes. Thankfully, no harm came to the computer or the TV (color with Sharpies day was Friday).
Anyone who's known the joy of children knows that they are two steps forward and one step back. We all know you spend half of your time re-doing things you just did, whether it's re-folding the laundry they tossed out of their drawers, vacuuming the dining room because they just finished their snack, or putting their socks and shoes back on at the end of the car trip.
They do come, however, with the sweetest cuddles and kisses, the sweetest "I love you's" in the whole wide world. I suppose if it has to come as a package deal, it is incredibly worth it. And I suppose, some day, I will be recovering from surgery and tell my nurse that she's going to miss it more than she could possibly know.

Be a good mom... you've got to try a little harder.

I've always felt an enormous amount of pressure to be as good as everyone else. And in my mind, everyone else has always been ahead of me in everything. Somewhere around my sophomore year, I decided that I had basically failed at being popular or worthwhile during school, and if I wanted to be happy, I had better start learning what I needed to know to be a good wife and mother some day. I bought yeast and learned to make bread. I scoured tips from the Queen of Clean and cleaned my entire kitchen with Borax. I learned to sew buttons and do a simple ladder stitch. I made lemonade from fresh lemons and practiced piping frosting with the cute little tips. I studied a website on french braiding hair, because I figured that was important too. I remember someone showing this link to me, incredulously, and I thought it was perfect: http://www.j-walk.com/other/goodwife/index.htm.
Even with all of my dedication to preparing and planning and practicing, I've considered most of my performance to be sub par. I've never quite achieved the "put together" standard I've been striving for. I don't even have a cookie jar, let alone one that is always stocked. I have a hard time remembering to even refill our Brita pitcher, so having fresh slices of lemon and lime for it is out of the question. Dinner sneaks up on me 6 nights out of 7, and I consider laundry to be in a good place if my clean pile is bigger than my dirty pile.
The longer I live, the more I realize that my life is more ordinary than I give myself credit for. Expanding my social network, and watching a little TV, I've come to see that I'm not the only one who scrambles to throw clutter into laundry baskets and hide them before company comes over. I'm not the only one who uses breakfast food for lunch or puts the children to bed in mismatched pajamas. I'm not even the only one to send them out in public with mismatched socks. At first, I wasn't sure if this was more a relief ("at least I'm not so far behind") or more of a devastation ("I'll NEVER be a completely put together person, jut like everyone else isn't either"). But don't worry about me, I haven't given up. I still have every intention of buying a cookie jar.