It's Normal

I know what I went through yesterday was totally normal mommy stuff. I'm sure it won't be the last time that I feel like a parental failure. And it's not even so much that I feel like a failure but that I feel like I was being looked at as a failure or that I must be hiding some big bad secret about our home life. Nope. I'm a pretty open book and I think that my kids have it pretty good. I just wish that the thought that maybe the stress isn't coming from home, maybe it's coming from school would have been considered. Or maybe he's just a 4 year old little boy with a lot of little boy energy. I used to suck on my hair. I chew the skin on the sides of my fingers. I can't just sit and be still. I have to be reading or researching or working on something. Sometimes I can't find the words that I want. My mind is always going. Jim bounces his feet. He twirls hair. He bites his fingernails. We tend to be the type of people that need something to do. I guess our little apple just doesn't fall too far from the tree. Anyway, he's done with school on June 11th and doesn't start back until September 20th. Over three months of vacation that we can work on redirecting some of that energy and his speech. We'll probably let him chew a bunch of gum and play the copy cat game a lot. He enjoys both of those...

So, we're just normal.

Today it poured down rain. Again. I know we live in the lush, green Pacific Northwest but man we've really had a very cold, wet spring. When I was still pregnant with Stella, I had all these little day dreams about having her outside while I weeded, or put her in the shade while I soaked up some vitamin D... those days have been few and far between and instead they've been spent doing lots and lots of laundry and dishes and cleaning up toys over and over again because we're just not getting much outdoor time at all. I was doing dishes again this afternoon and just had to laugh. I had the washer and dryer going, Stella strapped on, was doing dishes, listening to the ipod and as much as there was going on, I felt oddly centered and calm. I thought "I bet I look like a total loon." Standing and bouncing the baby while singing (poorly I'm sure) her to sleep and attempting to scrub dried on oatmeal out of bowls... I decided to set my camera on the dining room table and set the timer. It's funny to me that I don't even want to forget the mundane things...

If this is the anxiety provoking stress and chaos, I don't think I want to "fix" it.