Time.... or lack thereof.

As many of you may or may not know, I started my 12 weeks of student teaching Monday. This means that I am away from my boys for over 8 hours each day. This has been the hardest part of it all so far. I've been away from them for hours at a time - but it was always with the satisfaction of knowing that the following day would be spent with them. I won't know what this feels like again until August. :-(

So this brings me to my current blog posting.

There are so many things I need to make/prepare/organize/arrange/set out/put together/think about before I can leave the house. I'm sure that whoever is watching the boys is able to fill a sippy cup with juice, make breakfast, warm up a bottle, pick out clothing, etc. etc., but my OCD ways force me to spend countless minutes in the morning arranging and putting things together for the boys for the day.

As a mom, I find myself trying to squeeze and make time shorter. I try to convince myself that a 30 minute activity or procedure could be squeezed into a 10 minute time block and then when it doesn't work that way, I run around like a chicken with my head cut off. Like anyone else, I learn from my mistakes. So this morning, I set my alarm 20 minutes earlier than usual so that I could accommodate my morning routine. And wouldn't you know it? Those 20 minutes came and went... and I was still short of time. Even if I set my alarm clock for an hour earlier, I will still find ways of using up every single minute.

As I was rushing around tonight trying to prepare as much as I could ahead of time, I realized that time doesn't stop for anyone. We're given 24 hours every single day. We choose what we do with them. I have so much in my life to be thankful for that I'm going to make sure I take the time to stop and smell the diapers. Err, I mean... roses. I enter my own little world when I have bottles to wash, mail to sort through, bills to pay, coffee to brew, and a lunch to pack. I'm so focused on these tasks that I lose sight of what really matters in my life..... my boys.

Tonight as I was walking to the kitchen to wash some bottles, AJ stopped me and asked me to dance with him. I started to tell him to "give mommy a few minutes" when I finally realized that the bottles could wait to be washed. My little son-shine actually WANTED to do something with his mommy, and I wasn't going to pass that opportunity up. So we danced. And I loved every single second of it.

And when the song was finished.... I washed those bottles. ::Sigh::

Until next time,
Mama Brown(ie)