Organized chaos

We're winding down our girls weekend while Daddy is away. It's been a fun two days. We had a lunch and playdate at the library with my friend Emily and her daughter, Lily one day and we went swimming with our nanny from the past school year, Sarah, today. We made cookies and pancakes and did lots of snuggling,but I think we're all ready for Daddy to come home tomorrow.

We did have a few small mishaps. Averi tricked me into thinking her sister had a dirty diaper when in fact she had shoved the lid to the shape sorter perfectly into the back of her sister's diaper. Our trip to the library was pretty uneventful until I had to try to figure out how the new self checkout system worked for books. As I m trying to figure out this new technology, I hear this shrill librarian's voice screeching, "Whose child is that?! Would you please remove her from there?" Of course, I knew it just had to be my child. Where was she? And what the hell was she doing now? There was an circular shape oak three level book display right off to our left. And my daughter was sitting on top of it! Averi has done a lot of crazy, sometimes stupid things. But this time I found myself rather embarrassed. What was she thinking?! Where does she get crazy ideas like this? She's three. Can't she rationalize yet what makes sense and what is a bad idea?

Then I told my sister earlier I understand now why sometimes parents don't take their young children out very often. Somewhere in the chaos of trying to get the baby in those stupid heavy carriers, my wandering three year that I don't like to take my eye off for a second, and the two or three bags I was trying to keep track of on the way out the door of the restuarant after lunch yesterday I lost my credit card that I used to pay for lunch.

I'm an oxymoron; my life is in a constant state of organized chaos. Some that know me will vouch that I am a little OCD at times. I do not like clutter, everything has to be in its place, I tend to be a neat freak, I have a minimum of probably five sticky notes of reminders and to do list at a time, my life is planned out and organized around probably three different calanders or planners. But yet I LOVE to be busy and go, go, go (which drives my husband crazy). But because of that I feel like I'm always running around like a chicken with my head cut off, forgetting this and forgetting that, not paying attention to this or that (which I think is when Averi gets into mischief half the time). I once walked out the door with my two kids, my husband in tow, and all the ridiculous amount of bags that always seems to have to go with us everywhere on our way to spend a fun day with friends that we rarely for a  birthday party. Except I locked the keys in the house. So we couldn't drive our car and we couldn't get back into our house. We ended up sitting on our front porch on what was luckily a nice January day for two while we waited for a friend with keys to our house to come let us in. And because the party was over an hour away we didn't end up going. And I'll just add that this was the same week that I drove to work with both sets of keys in my pocket so when my husband got up to go to work he didn't have any keys to get there. That was all my first week back to work with two kids.

My husband and I want one more child, and after actually being able to spend quality time with my two girls these past two weeks, I would love to have a couple more. I've always loved children which I guess is why I became a teacher. But I'm a basket case with the two I have now!!! Two kids, a husband , a career, a household to manage, and with everything else in between I feel like I'm two steps from the cookoo's nest half the time as it is.

Sometimes, after incidents like yesterday with Averi I just kind of worry that sometimes Averi's daredevil, silly behaviors are because of something we're doing wrong, which we need to know to correct. Some kids act out for attention, and because Averi is so constantly showered in attention she does occassionally misbehave for attention when her dad and I are distracted with something else, which her dad and I can usually pick up on. But I have no doubt she is a child well showered in love and she shows the same affection back to her sister and others. She starts preschool in the fall, which she is super excited about. She loves people and she is her mother's daughter in that she wants to constantly be busy. The first thing out of her mouth every morning is "Are we doing something today? what we doing today? I wanna go somewhere. I wanna do something." So I'm thinking school will be good for her. 

What was going to be a short update, turned into a rather long list of worries, stories, and rationalizations. I guess parenting is something all of us do without experience. By the time we have the experience, our kids are grown and have become who they are going to be. We all learn as we go. But then once I've figured out how to handle the little girl stage it'll be the preteen stage,  and then the teenage years. Well, there s my crazy stream of consciousness in parenting. I'll take the craziness, the worries, the frenzy, and the chaos. Every moment is worth it to be their momma.