Just An Ordinary, Momentous Day

As I sit down tonight after a fourteen-plus hour day of full-time mom duty, it strikes me that often the moments of most poignancy in this role are surrounded by moments of utter chaos. Allow me to elaborate.

Today was a big day for Tommy, and for Lucy, too. Just since my last post, Lucy said "Grandpa!" and "baseball!" (both of which I had to discern a bit, but were indeed verified by a secondary adult party.) Tommy entered what I felt to be a new stage when he went over to play at his friends' home this afternoon without me.

I'm not sure why it felt so monumental to send Tommy trotting off to another person's home. I leave him at the gym daycare practically every day, although I guess that's not quite as personal of a setting (and I also am right upstairs). It struck me as a very grown-up toddler thing to do; to eat lunch and play for the afternoon.

When I picked Tommy up from his adventure, he was bursting with stories of all the things he'd done and all the fun he'd had. He wanted to stay, he told me. When I asked him if he'd like to have his friends over to play at our house sometime, he replied, "That'd be cool, Mom."

As Tommy napped off the fun, Lucy and I spent a bit more alone time together. She taught me what the cow says and what the sheep says. She giggled as she fed her baby doll the bottle and gave her a kiss. She backed her little bottom onto my lap and read her favorite chick book again and again. She snuggle with bunny baby, and danced around her sunny yellow room to the I'm a Little Teapot song.

Perhaps I pushed the kids both too much when we left the house tonight to go to my nephew's baseball game. They were tired and ready to wind down, but I thought a 7 o'clock game would be manageable. Indeed not. Tommy chased his cousin Claudia and her girlfriend all over the place, screaming at them, hitting them, throwing sand all over the place, scrambling over other parents who sent me my favorite look...that Oh my God, you're drowning in kids and you're doing this again??

My heart ached for Tommy despite his unruliness, actually: I knew he really just wanted to play with the girls, but sometimes when older kids get together, they push a little cousin aside and tell him he can't play, too. I guess as a youngest child, I understand that innate desire to want to be included. Nonetheless, Tommy's going to have to learn that violence isn't the answer.

Anyway, it was a traumatic end to a big day. There were tears because the baseball game wasn't over yet. There were tears because naughtiness means straight to bed. There were tears because we'll have to talk this all through with Dad, and I know Tommy doesn't want to disappoint anyone.

And then I realized, in the thick of all this discipline, that this is the first day I remember Tommy not having a single accident. He actually took off the clothes tonight that he put on at the beginning of the day. Maybe it's happened before when John was in charge, or when we were visiting at a grandparents' house, but I don't think so. It seems like we've had at least a dribble of pee up to this point.

And so, we're here, dribble-less for a day. I am so proud of Tom for bravely making his own way in the world when sometimes other kids are just scared and hang back. I am so proud of him for telling me when he has to pee! Sometimes my heart is just bursting.

And sometimes my heart is just burning, in the same moment. Could this kid go to bed? My weary bones can't take another moment today.