Let me just talk to all the not-yet-mommies, want-to-be-mommies, and know-someone-who-is-a-mommy peeps. Here’s the deal with parenting(and life in general really). When you feel frazzled, unprepared, and disorganized life will still happen. When you feel totally on top of your game and Pinterest worthy, something will sabotage you, but life will still happen.
One of the greatest things to happen to me between parenting my oldest and my youngest, is the realization that I am capable of salvaging any situation. I really can. If you are a parent, you have no choice but to roll with the punches. Otherwise you will never go anywhere or do anything because it’s just to damn hard and unpredictable with kids.
Case in point…Lexi’s most recent cheer competition. It was very early Saturday morning after Valentine’s day. Livy spent the night so she could join us. I was up at 5:30 getting myself ready, and woke the kids at 6am. I grabbed my phone to head downstairs and start the car, and noticed a missed call and voicemail from the late the night before. I thought that was odd and didn’t recognize the number, so I quick listened to the message. Sure enough it was Lexi’s cheer coach announcing a change in time for her event. Turns out we didn’t need to be there until an hour later. That would have been nice to know before we got up, but I figured better to be early than late. We took our time making coffee and packing the car, and finally left about 25 minutes early. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and I was feeling on my game!
Foreshadowing…notice the kids in the back of the van reading.
About 20 minutes(into our hour drive) down the road, something hit me. I asked Lexi, “You did bring your cheer bag right?”. She didn’t have to answer, I knew by the look on her face. I reasoned in my head. Without her shoes and bow she can’t perform, so there’s no reason to continue, and we are 25 minutes early. So we turned around to get the bag. I ran in the house, grabbed it, shot a quick explanation to Mark who was looking at me puzzled, and jumped back in the car. At this point we were slated to be about 3 minutes late according to the GPS, but I figured I would be able to make that up on the highway. Off we went again. About 20 minutes down the road(again) Livy moves from the back to the middle of the car with tears welled in her eyes. Lexi explains that she’s car sick and needs to look out the window. I empty a Target bag that happens to be in the car and instruct her to puke in there if she has to. A few minutes down the road she says she needs to use the bathroom. We stop, find a bathroom, breath some cold air, and get started again. Livy rides the rest of the way looking a bit green. We pull up about 15 minutes late and another cheer mom runs out to get Lexi while I park. Livy and I get in there just as Lexi’s team is warming up. Livy is still looking a little rough around the edges at this point:(
Poor baby! She was a trooper. Lexi’s team performed and didn’t miss a beat!
We had time before awards, so I got the girls a pretzel. Livy really perked up after eating something!
The girls had fun running around the event center. Up, down, and around, pausing everywhere for me to get their pictures!
Moral of the story…Parenting is full of bumps in the road. I could have lost my cool, or given up, but you just gotta keep trudging on. In the end, it was a long, but fun day with my middle girls:)
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