Normal…

Today was an incredibly normal day. Or at least it was what I remember normal feeling like. We had no extra kids over to babysit. I didn’t have an enormous to do list. The house was not ready for a scrub-bathroom/vacuum-a-thon quite yet. There wasn’t even any laundry to wash, and it was my day off from running. It was Jay, Rose, their Mom, and a Day.

I was surprised with how slow things felt for a while this morning. Normally I’m such a home-body (slash hermit) and I always find so many things to occupy our time that the day flows by without my notice. But today’s lull in our most recent version of everyday life (babysitting, housework, etc.) made me feel sort of limp. It felt like I had been pulling hard on a rope for days when the other end came loose unexpectedly and I suddenly had a big floppy, slack pile of rope in front of me. I didn’t quite know what to do with it.

This feeling was probably intensified by the…intense weekend we had. Saturday morning I had my most therapeutic, glorious run all month. It was sunny and in mid-50s. I picked my safest almost d0g-free route. I managed to kick the only pip squeaker that chased me, without even breaking my stride—a classic heel-extended jaw-clip. I wish it was always that easy to get rid of evil dogs while running. That run gave me a much-needed boost of vitamin D and endorphins. I even extended it because it felt so good. When I got back, we did almost 2 hours of family yard work, clearing out the old garden and taking down the wobbly section of fence. Saturday afternoon, I drove into “town” to run some errands. It was a go-go-go kind of day.

My friend went into labor on Sunday so I went to her house at 5am to stay with her two boys while she and her husband went to the hospital. When the boys woke up, I brought them to our house and they played with Jay and Rose until our 1pm church. Jeff left early for choir practice, and I somehow managed to bathe Jay and Rose and then wrangle 4 kids (ages 5, 4, 3, and 2) into Sunday clothes, load them into the van, and arrive at church a solid 3 minutes early. I was so pleased to see them all dressed up and ready to go that I took a cute picture of them sitting in a row together. But alas, my camera deleted it. I almost wish Layne had been here so I could have said 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off!

It was a fun challenge, and I actually really enjoyed having 4 exuberant kids running circles around me through the church parking lot on our way in from the van (in a slightly stressed, don’t-run-in-front-of-that-car way). Sacrament meeting was like an obstacle course. I was the obstacle and the kids were trying to get on me, over me, under me, etc. There were at least 3 kids touching me at all times for the whole hour-plus. A few times, Layne came toddling over and requested a piece of my lap too. I sat there and just hugged all those sweet kids and tried my best to keep them from wrestling or throwing finger puppets across the pews (don’t ask me what the speakers said).

The baby was born and my friend’s husband came and picked up the boys after sacrament meeting. Then Jeff and I went and subbed for the Sunbeam class in Primary. I was pretty tired after that long day, but it was fun too! Just yesterday, I got to go over and hold that tiny new 2-day old baby boy. For a whole hour. It was divine. So maybe all the excitement over the past few days has left me feeling kind of flat. Maybe I’m in kid-withdrawal. I only have time with just Jay and Rose all day once or twice each week these days. I definitely cherish days where it’s “just us” at home (for one thing, it feels so easy!). It just caught me off guard today. We did projects (plural)! We went to the library! [the friendly librarian who loves Jay and Rose noticed that we didn’t have an extra baby in tow, ha ha] We read a stack of stories! We had grilled cheese for lunch! And it was all smooth sailing!

This morning, the kids obligingly played in the basement while I read my scriptures. They stayed down there without coming to visit me for longer than usual, so I, in turn, read my scriptures longer and more peacefully than usual. I’ve been studying the creation this week, and I’m really basking in the single verse: “And I, God, said let there be light, and there was light.” Obviously I haven’t gotten very far in the story. But LIGHT! It’s beautiful. It is the result of TRUTH. It forsakes the evil one. It defines the Savior. Eventually Jay and Rose came up and we did a turkey-handprint project per Jay’s request (it had been a while since our last project, so we had to make it a good one). I mailed visiting teaching notes to my non-phone-answerers. At 9:30am, I looked at my watch and thought “Wow, it’s not even 10am yet? What now?”

So I voluntarily tackled the mountain of clean laundry on my bed. Before lunch. Less than 24 hours after it was washed. Without Netflix. Without calling and moaning about it to someone. And guess what? Without all those distractions, I folded a giant heap of crumpled clothes in record time. Normally I can barely finish the task in one Netflix episode (45-55 minutes) or two hefty phone conversations (20-30 minutes each). Today I coasted in at a shockingly speedy 24 minutes. I detest laundry-folding so much that I always put it off or find some elaborate distraction to help ease the mindless agony of folding it. But until today I didn’t realize that those distractions actually prolong the agony. I wonder if I’ll have the fortitude to fold it alone again next week. Laundry brings out the hidden procrastinator in me. Laundry and toilets.

These rosy little bedheads loved pasting scraps of paper “turkey feathers” onto the outlines of their hands. I was so pleased to have thought of an age-appropriate project for once. It seems like I usually have to help with their projects way too much. Maybe they’re just getting older. Sniff.

Jay and Rose have such issues looking at the camera. They always look at each other instead. I tell them to say “cheese” or some other phrase designed to put a smile on their faces for the picture, and right when they start to say it, they look at each other and grin. I guess it’s pretty cute, but I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever get a picture of them full-on smiling at my camera.

I had them each think of one thing they are thankful for so I could write it above their turkeys. Jay said he was thankful for turkey. Such a boy answer. Rose tried to copy him, but I encouraged her to think of her own answer. The next thing that popped out of her mouth was “I’m fankful fo duh gospel!” I asked her if she knew what the gospel is, and she said “no.” Jay piped in and said that it’s something about Jesus. Reigning in a belly laugh, I told them that the gospel is what we learn from Jesus—what Jesus wants us to know and do. Then I asked Rose again, “What are you thankful for?” ---again, the gospel. So I wrote it on her paper. Then we hung them all up.

   

Today was normal and not normal all at once. I’m glad that life is interesting enough to have more than one version of normal.