Moments

The best parts of motherhood come in moments - little seconds-long blips of wonderful stuff that fill your heart and totally compensate for the longer-lasting tedious stuff that fills so much of a mother's life. I'm trying to record more of these moments - so here's what I have for the last couple days:

This afternoon, as I laid down with the twins to get them to sleep for their nap and firmly repeated, "goodnight boys, no more moving or talking," Oliver replied in his deep husky little voice, "goodnight, my sweet mommy." Oh, that made my day. Then the icing on the cake was hearing Silas say, "goodnight, my sweet Oliber" and having Ollie reply, "goodnight my sweet Si Si." I love laying down with my little guys - it always seems like such a crazy hassle to get the twins to the potty and to their beds over their many protests in the midst of the big kids needing my attention, the phone ringing, etc. But once we get in there and lay down together, I get to snuggle with the cutest little boys in the world and stop everything else for 15 minutes or so as I lay by them and watch my sweet sweet angel boys fall asleep.

Yesterday after a crazy morning of teaching 10 little kids in my "Little Chefs" summer workshop about nutrition and recipes and helping them chop and measure and mix for 3 solid hours, I was cleaning up the mess and wondering if all my efforts were actually creating the fun learning experience I had in mind. Jared called and Ashton answered the phone. I heard him say "Yeah Daddy, it was SO fun! We tried these bean sprouts that we grew ourselves and we made pizzas NOT from the freezer - we totally made them ourselves and we got to each make our own little pizza and we put as many different colors of toppings on as we could and we learned about what those labels on packages of food mean....." The excitement in his voice and listening to his description totally made my day and made everything worthwhile.

Lately Eliza's always saying, "you know what, Mommy" - and as I mentally gear up for her to bring up an argumentative topic (one of her favorite things to do - she's often following up "you know what, mommy" with something like "I don't think I ever want to take off the training wheels on my bike"), she'll often say, "I L-O-V-E you!" then flash me a smile and skip off to play. The relief that she didn't bring up another tiresome topic combined with the joy of having her express her love for me really makes for a great moment. She's generally so so good - just has this argumentative streak going on - no idea where she could have got that from...

Isaac just gave the twins a bath. Ollie woke up wet from his nap (he's been great at staying dry lately so we've stopped doing diapers at nap time) and I suggested that both twins strip down and hop in the bath and I'd be there in a minute. Isaac went in there and totally bathed them - ran the water, shampooed them, everything. The three of them came out together, beaming with pride, the twins wrapped in towels all clean and fresh. There's nothing like a couple sweet-smelling freshly bathed tow-headed chubby sweet boys climbing up on my lap while their big brother smiles proudly.

Good stuff. Good good stuff. And to top it all off, Jared's taking me away on a surprise get-away tomorrow - surprise as in I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. And I'm so excited. Yeah! Better go get packed and get the instructions ready for the babysitter. Life is good.