Tired momma
One of my older daughters and her two tiny humans came to spend some time with us. Needless to say, this mommas heart was ridiculously happy to see her car pull into the driveway. It’s been seven long weeks since I snuggled my Ohio grand babies. I was about to hit serious withdrawal!
One look at my sweet girl and I could see the tired radiating off of her. Oh how I don’t miss those days. Feeding babies in the middle of the night. The diapers. The heart breaking cries. And the laundry, laundry, laundry! Not to mention the four dogs she has at home. I can’t imagine why she looks like I could knock her over with a feather.
Being super mom, I quickly donned my cape and jumped right in. Whisking the chatty two year old and the squiggly baby out of the sun, letting my sweet girl breath a minute and focus on simply getting things into the house. Nothing like a four hour car ride, with at least one stop to eat, with two kids alone to make you a little twitchy.
Enjoying the flow of words that takes a special degree to fully understand, I settled my little chatterbox down with a snack. Oh how my nana heart soared looking into the sweet face of our newest Chaos Crew member and seeing all smiles. I know they say red heads are fiery, but this one is all snuggles and love. My precious daughter is a lot like me. She likes getting things settled. Unpacking and putting things to rights, so I gave her space to do just that and reveled in baby smiles and toddler snuggles.
While I love my granddaughter to the ends of this earth, she is two handfuls! I often look at her and see our youngest daughter. Right down to the epic temper tantrum’s. This adorable tiny human has the ability to crumble into a screaming, kicking, snotty pile of limp attitude in the blink of an eye. My patience for tantrums has grown ten fold. Now, instead of wanting to tear my hair out, I get down on her level and wait her out.
During one particularly righteous tantrum that papa rode out because I was cleaning fruits and veggies, I glanced into the living room to find my sweet girl out cold. Her and my little red head, snuggled deep in my chair snoozing away.
I stopped for a minute. Fruits and veggies drying on the counter, music playing in the background, to-do list running on a loop in my head. None of it mattered. I stopped. And in that moment I saw my daughter. My beautiful, strong, worn out, tired as heck daughter. And my momma heart ached a bit.
I remember being a single mom and not sleeping well. I remember having a five year old and a newborn with a husband working midnights. In that moment, I remembered what that tired felt like. Standing in the kitchen, watching her sleep with the newest angel on her chest, I prayed for my girl.
I prayed her nap would help shake away some of the mom cobwebs. I prayed she’d feel a little refreshed when she woke. I prayed her other tiny human, still heroically throwing a tantrum with papa down the hall, would be calmer when she woke up. I prayed her momma heart, carrying heavy loads, would have a little bit of peace.
Everyday I am watching my kids move forward and go through life. We have so many different phases happening at once, it’s hard to keep up. I worry about them each in varying ways, but gosh I sure do love them tremendously. And to both my adult daughters, working their way through motherhood, I pray for sleep because you won’t get enough even when their kids are grown!
