Absolute Poppycock

There are so many things I want to change in my life right now.  Not the big stuff…I’m not going to change religions, leave my family, and head off to Borneo.  It’s the little things…making the girls’ lunches the night before, finding some devotional time that’s not peppered with incessant questions from everyone in my life, reducing the amount of “stuff” that we have, trying hard to reach my goals.  Yes, it’s all little stuff but I think making those small changes could make a big difference in my life as a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, an employee.

The Lorax says  “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not!”

And I do care.  I care an awful lot.

Mardi Gras is a pretty big deal around here.  This year, we had a lot going on and didn’t make it to any parades except for this one at  Abigail’s preschool.  It was supposed to be in front of the community center, but the weather was rough, so we had it in our newly re-opened sanctuary.  Yes, that would be one of the things I love about our church – the sanctuary was closed for several months for repairs and the first event that was held in it after it reopens was a preschool Mardi Gras parade!

Abigail was, of course, ridiculously cute.  And I can add reason number 425,000,000 to why I love my Silhouette cutting machine.  She’d been sick the entire week and I only remembered thirty minutes before school that she was having the parade.  I wanted her to have something festive to wear (like that matters. at all. but I am me which means ten minutes before we needed to leave I was grasping at straws) and luckily I found an old purple shirt of Gracie’s.  I pulled out my Silhouette, found a mask design, pulled out some white transfer material, and voila!  a Mardi Gras t-shirt.  kind of….

The parade may not have had huge floats or moon pies or marching bands, but it definitely made up for that in sheer sweetness.

I love this bead-throwing girl!

I woke up suddenly at 3:00 a.m., a full hour before my alarm was set to annoy me with its chirping.  I tried to figure out which of my senses was responsible for my jolted awakening.

I could hear Ella Bella, our sheltie,  tippy tapping across the kitchen floor and then her quiet whine begging to be let out, usually a sign that there’s an possum lurking on the other side of the fence in the back yard waiting to torment her.  But, I didn’t think that was why I was awake…I’m usually a fairly deep sleeper and there’s the whole single-sided deafness thing I have going on, so it’s rare that a noise, particularly one as subtle as a dog’s nails clicking on wood would rouse me from sleep.

I could smell Abigail’s breath, next to me, as she snored softly. It wasn’t exactly sweet…she is not an infant anymore and her night-time breath is not the sweetness of milk and angel and kisses, but it wasn’t exactly strong enough to pull me from my dreams.

I could feel the tightness in my back as I stretched, but it was more the soreness of a productive weekend than any kind of wrench from sleep pain.

I couldn’t remember any dream that had startled me.  I just shrugged it off to something I couldn’t explain and got up and let Ella Bella out, then came back to bed to sleep for a few more minutes.  As I pulled the covers back up, I leaned over and kissed Abigail’s forehead and instantly realized that the sense that woke me up wasn’t might sense of sight or smell or hearing or touch or taste.  It was my sense of motherhood, that thing when I was younger that I feared I would never have, that mystical ability to sense, on a primal level, when something is wrong with your child.  Abigail had a fever, thankfully not a very high one, but enough to alert my senses and wake me up.  Before I was a mom, I was sure that I would never, ever have that instinct about my own children.  Basically, because I’m clueless and generally non-observant.  The running joke in my family was that I would have a baby and leave her somewhere:  the shopping cart at the market, a bench at the park, waiting on the platform at a train station.  My absent-mindedness is something of a legend in my family.  In spite of that, or perhaps because of it (am I hyper-vigilant because I’m so sure I’m going to do something forgetful that will hurt them), I do instinctually know when something is wrong with my babies.  And, I wouldn’t have it any other way, even when it robs me of an hour of sleep!