Week one for the boys is in the books!

Cary and Dean finished up their first week at their new school, with nary a complaint to register.

No tears, no mishaps, no nothin'...It's amazing.

Here they are when I picked them up on their first day. See something missing on Cary? Yes. My child broke his glasses. Again. But look how happy he is. Dean was happy too. But he was too busy asking me if we were going to the playground to be bothered to smile.

We also had two-plus days of the new sitter, Miss Arlene. And although Clair is still not really feeling her AT ALL, when I get home from work, she is usually happily ignoring the sitter and playing boisterously with her brothers. As long as she isn't sitting in a corner sobbing or shaking in fear, it is all good with me.

I did come home early the first day of her working and was surprised that no one was there. I called through the house, peeked out the back door, checked upstairs. No kids. No Arlene. Her car was outside and her purse was in the living room. She must be here, I thought. The last place I had left to check was the basement. I put my hand on the door knob to go down there and in a split second, my brain conjured up an image of my children with their throats slit and Miss Arlene dead.

That is how crazy I am, y'all. I just knew this new babysitter had murdered my children and committed suicide. My heart was beating out of my chest. I was freaking out.
When I finally gathered the courage (and the common sense: "Get it together, Tanika!") of course, she wasn't downstairs. And neither were my murdered children.

In fact, she had just taken my very happy and safe children for a walk, because Dean had written a "letter" - literally, he wrote the letter "D" on a piece of paper, folded it up and put it in an envelope - to no one in particular and wanted to mail it. So Arlene drew a stamp on his little envelope and walked with them in search of a mailbox. She didn't kill them. She was actually being VERY sweet to them.

I felt like a heel. And a nut.

But I'll get better. We'll all get better. We're all getting adjusted to the new, much more hectic schedule, and by the end of the day every single one of us is pooped. The kids crash at bedtime like they were working in the salt mines all day. Last night I was asleep by 8:50 p.m. 

But I can tell things are going to get easier. Today, Clair still clung to me for far too long, but didn't cry at all when I dropped her off. In fact, when her teacher took her hand, she simply said in a small voice, "Bye, Mommy," and I closed the pre-K 2 door, and walked away.

Of course, I felt a mixture of pride and happiness and sadness.

Our babies are in school. All three of them. They leave us in the morning and we don't see them again all day long. They are learning things that we don't teach them. They are experiencing things that have absolutely nothing to do with us. In fact, most of the things that happen in their day, we won't even know they've seen or heard or done or felt.

This is the natural course of life, I know. And it is good. And sad. And crazy.
And normal.

"...but the years are short."

I have quite a few friends who have recently had babies.

They are exhilarated by their newest loves. They are also exhausted. Some, I can tell, are wondering how they will make it through the long nights and the topsy-turvy days.

I remember the feeling, oh so well. Keenly, I can remember my eyes burning from sobbing and sleep-deprivation. I remember my body's soreness, my fuse's quickness. And that out-of-body, nerves all a-fire, slightly manic feeling of being mother to a new human being -- a feeling that dissipates at moments, but never seems to fully disappear.

Or so it seems.

The fact is, my friends, you will get back to a semblance of normal. Not the old one, but a new normal, and the you you used to be will slowly return. You will get through these upturned days and bleary-eyed nights.You will flourish actually. You're doing so much better than you think you are.

If you can remember to in the midst, drink it all in.

Because one day, before you have time to really register that it has happened, this:

...will have turned into this:

Right before your very eyes.

And you'll think back on those nights of holding your baby close, while you were all she needed.

And your eyes will burn again - a warm and bittersweet sting. Because it's true, what they all told you.

The days are long. But the years are so, so short.