I've Got This

So I've been slightly stressed out this week. It's just been a Bad week. A yesterday-I-cracked-and-started-weeping-openly-in-front-of-people kind of week. And unfortunately, Lou's been in her "Why? Why? Why? Why?" mode this week.

It hasn't been pretty.

But last night, Joe and I were playing with Lou while Banana was asleep, and I had a lot of fun. We played beauty parlor and they made my hair so...beautiful? And then we built a fort on our bed because the lions and elephants were going to get us. It was great, memory-making kind of fun. The kind where you just should've been there.

But today when I woke up, I was back to being grouchy and irritable. And I kept coming down too hard on Lou. But I was like a speeding train. I just couldn't stop. I was on an important phone call when Lou walked in eating a bag of cereal. I told her not to carry around the bag and to wait just a minute and I'd get her a bowl. I walked into my room and quickly finished my call and yelled out to see if she still needed a bowl. Her response? "No. I've got this, Mom."

Now, if any of you ever hear her say "I've got this," you should be worried. It's kinda like the redneck saying, "Hey guys, watch this!" You know nothing good is about to happen. Normally, she's either holding a pitcher of kool-aid or has Banana's poopy diaper off. So when I heard her say that, the alarms went off. She had gotten a huge bowl and had poured almost the whole bag of cereal into it, and she and Banana were sitting next to it, munching away.

You should have seen the look on her face. It was that look where you knew that she just wanted to be invisible. But instead of yelling at her, I did a strange thing: I laughed. Who cared if she had poured out all the cereal? It just felt good to laugh and to hug my girls. I get so caught up in the dredges of every day life that I forget to enjoy it. I go through the same routine every day, just waiting for the next hour because then it'll be ____ time. But Lou is so mischievous right now and so sweet and so wonderful and so full of life and love and energy, and I'm missing it because I'm caught up in my prison.

This afternoon we just had fun. We caught a firefly and a frog, we read books, we played, we made Banana giggle hysterically, and we giggled hysterically. It was great. Lou must have told me she loved me a hundred thousand times. Thank you, God, for giving me two of the greatest kids on earth! Thank you for using them to help free me. Thank you for loving me even more than I love them. I pray that tomorrow will be as good as today was.

I just hope that I've got this.