Rock Star Baby

Noah is a fount of delight.

Words bubble out of him that make me chuckle for days on end.

For example, one morning I came down wearing bright coral pants (and a black blazer) and he exclaimed "Mommy! I like your pants! You look like a rock star!"

We are not a household of rock-related influences so his word choice was hilariously special.

Noah imitates his idea of a rock star, one of his professed future career options

But that's Noah. He often comments on my wardrobe in a way you'd expect of a 20 year old girlfriend, not a 4 year old preschooler. Often if I wear a new shirt he'll say - I like your shirt mommy!

Groupie Fact #1: being kissed by a rockstar makes YOU feel like a rockstar.

If I wear a dress on an odd occasion he'll say - you look beautiful mommy!

And because he is my no-filter, non-consequence-thinking, impulsive kid, I take everything he says at face value - and it truly makes me feel like a beautiful princess rock star.

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Noah is also in a phase where he likes to tell me he farted. But he does it in the most charming of ways.

The other week he farted just as he snapped in the last piece of a puzzle and said, "Mommy, I finished the puzzle and my butt said 'good job!'"

Noah (and his butt) gives thumbs up!

Judah and I had a good laugh over that. Now whenever we fart we say our butt is applauding us.

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Another endearing trait of Noah's is his random questions. He will sit quietly in the car for 7-8 minutes, pondering life, and then his little voice pipes up, Mommy, what do BART police do?

Noah, puzzler of life, and ball mazes.

Or, Mommy, what's more expensive, a house or a car, or a house-car?

Or, Mommy, what's your favorite kind of door?

Door?! Did you say door? As in, open the door to get inside the house?

Yeah, like do you like wood doors, or glass doors, or red doors?

Uh....glass, I guess, I like glass...

And you, Noah, I like you. I really, really, really like you.

In the Land of Triage

Every day I'm faced with this time dilemma:

I have one hour ONLY and I need to decide what task to do in that precious time. Do I...

1. Workout?

2. Clean (crumbs, dishes, little pieces of paper blanketing the floor because Noah is really into making snowflakes right now)?

3. Cook?

4. Email?

5. Read?

Ideally I would be able to do all these things every day, but I can only choose one to do well and thoroughly. So my solution?

Half-assing everything...and never working out!

Workout - meh, my pants still fit, it can wait - thank you Lycra and Elastene.

Clean - I'll just clear the obvious clutter away (by frantically stuffing them in closets and other dark recesses of my home and garage in no meaningful order) - no wonder I can't find anything that I "put away"!

Cook - Prepackaged, pre-cooked food is my best friend. Rice? done in 3 minutes. Veggies? defrosted in 2-3 minutes. Protein? thank goodness for canned beans.

Email - Many get written only in my head and no matter how hard I try, I still have 1,310 emails in my inbox. I'm making progress - it was 1500+ last year!

Read - There are SO MANY books I need/want to read. Sigh. My to read list is at least 5 books long and sadly it keeps growing. Currently on the burner:
1. Parenting, by Paul David Tripp
2. The Explosive Child (because Noah is killing me with his chronic inflexibility and inability to handle frustration)
3. Word Centered Women's Ministry
4. Adorned (Titus 2 Women's Mentorship)
5. Raising a Secure Child, How Circle of Security Parenting can Help You Nurture Your Child's Attachment, Emotional Resilience, and Freedom to Explore
6. Cutting For Stone (a rare fictional novel because my friend says it's her FAVORITE book of all time and I just HAVE to read it)
7. The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs (because it's an achingly soul-baring memoir written by a women of my SAME age with two young sons LIKE ME who died of cancer at the SAME age as I am now. How could I pass up something so eerily relatable?)

So, where am I going to find an extra few hours a day? Nowhere. Never. Not going to happen. Ever. Goodbye hopes and dreams and desires.

You are done.

By the way, nowhere in my life is there room for "fun." There isn't even room for the necessities.

Motherhood is triage.

And constantly coming to terms with living without the things you really really really want to do. And a fierce urgency to CHOOSE gratitude, CHOOSE contentment, and THANKSGIVING because bitterness is an ocean that I could drown in any second of my frantic, too-short, no-fun-for-me, only-chores-and-errands day. Day after day after day after day, after forsaken day.