To be honest, we’ve never been the kind to have 9-5 jobs.  As soon as we were in the workforce as adults we were working two jobs and weird hours.  Sometimes we strive for normalcy, but at this point, we’ve just realized that our lives will never bring the consistency of a 9-5 job. It’s just not who we are, and that’s fine!

Instead, we find little pockets of family time and maximize them.  I say all that because often there are weeks where I have no clue what day it is.  I simply know time as today and tomorrow.  There are moments where people think I’m totally off my rocker.  Someone will mention our weekend plans and I give them a blank start while I mentally sift through my calendar to figure out what day it is and how many days there are until the weekend.

Last week was certainly one of those weeks!  I have a friend who was hit by a car a few weeks ago and has been in a coma ever since.  His vitals change from bad to worse to better quite rapidly and I’m constantly checking on updates or raising funds so that his dad can be with him during this time.

And then this weekend started off with an awesome concert, piano lessons, visits from friends, photo sessions, editing, two trips to Wal-Mart (oh my– how I loathe shopping trips!), dinner guests, church (we got to sing on stage together again!), leadership training at our house, and ended with a pot luck with friends.

Then on Sunday, the pearl stone on my wedding ring fell off (we found it!) and I realized my only coat had a large rip in it.  By that afternoon, I was totally spent!  When our daughter got up from her nap, she was quite cranky.  Honestly, my plan was to just go through the motions until her bedtime.  Sometimes that’s just how it goes in this parenting gig!

But then the tears subsided and she came to me excitedly saying, “Mommy!  I made a picnic for us!”  When I looked up from my phone I saw that she had neatly laid out her plastic picnic items (see the picture).  Want to talk about a drastic mood change?  How could I not be thankful that she cared so much to make this for me?  We sat and chatted over our pretend plastic meal and had a grand ol’ time.  Then we stayed up past her bedtime to paint.  I let her paint whatever she wanted in whatever colors she wanted… and all over the table.  As it turns out, she’s a mixed medium artist– she likes to add water to her acrylic paint.  😉  She was so serious about it– it makes me want to let her paint every single day!  I love the crazy stuff she comes up with.

Josh got home as we were painting and after her excited hello’s, she said, “Hey daddy, can you make us some food while we paint?”  The phrases she comes out with totally crack me up!

Finally she was headed to bed, an hour past her bedtime.  She picked up a Christmas themed music box my dad gave me several years back and looked at it with complete wonder in her eyes.  She’s played with it before and each time she is totally mesmerized.  We pointed out each character or tree in the little scene and she talked excitedly about the snow.  It was adorable.

As I went to tuck her in a realized… there were weird things in her bed… oatmeal!  Dry oatmeal, thank goodness.

Me: “Hazel, why is there oatmeal in your bed?”
H: “I couldn’t sleep at naptime, Mommy.”

I thought she’d been awfully quiet during nap!

I just laughed, though, and thanked her for being honest.  I love this age where she doesn’t try to hide things from me.

And so that’s how I found myself vacuuming her bed at 9pm on a Sunday night.  We snuggled and laughed about it, along with a stern conversation about how food doesn’t belong in the bedroom.

That, my friends, is how I fell in love with my daughter all over again.  At the end of a crazy weekend where I was ready to coast on autopilot through the last few hours, she reminded me that her little life is important.  That even when I’m tired, sometimes it’s just best to laugh and snuggle.  She really is growing up so fast.