VANS...and a circus to go with that

Growing up we had many cars. The first car I can remember was when I was really young...maybe 4 years old. It was our red volkswagen beetle. But before you think that is super cool, try and imagine a red VW bug with a few holes in the bottom where you could literally see the pavement whizzing by beneath you. And by holes I mean quarter size, not ginormous ones. We loved to fight over who would sit up front when it was raining outside because when we'd go through a puddle, it was squirt water up at the person sitting in the front passenger seat. Seriously, can you imagine how MAGICAL and FUN this VW was to us little girls?!? We LOVED it.

After the VW bug, I remember the yellow station wagon. Unfortunately, I don't think ours was cool enough to have the "way back" seat. Some families call it the "back-back" seat, we called it the "way back." Although the "way back" seat seemed cool at the time, today if I were to get into the "way back" of a wagon and stayed facing backwards for more than 10 minutes, I'd probably start complaining about car sickness and gas fumes. Was that why we were so bouncy back then? This was the wagon in which my favorite teddy bear lost its nose. I carried my bear everywhere (lets not forget, I was super young) and one day, I was about to get out of the wagon and realized its nose had popped off! WHAT!? I looked high and low for that tiny little brown nose, and unfortunately, I never found it.

After the wagon, our family had many other cars; of my dad's favorite? The Pontiac Bonneville. Oh yeaaaaah. We were cruising. But then, the family got too big and before we knew it, we ended up spending the rest of our ENTIRE years at home being hauled around in the....wait for it.....FAMILY VAN. Not just one van...many vans. Either we drove the vans into the ground (literally...one lost a wheel on one of our family vacations) or we wrecked it on our way to the airport to fly out to Idaho...vans just kept on coming.

Along the way, we started singing that Circus song for whenever we were getting out of the van. Because seriously, with a family as big as ours, any outsider would think we were pulling a Mary Poppins bag trick as people just kept filing out. One...two...three...four...five...pause...pause...six
SIX KIDS!! And we always felt like a big circus, especially on vacations when not only kids would roll out of the van, but so would bags of chips, juice bottles, mad lib books and shoes.

For whatever reason, that Circus song has been kazoo-ing in my head as of late. My life has turned into a circus, and I only have TWO kids! I know I want more kids down the road, but seriously...how will I do it? I wonder if those times that I was left at home on "accident" (and you just had to WAIT until your parents or someone realized they had left you to turn around because cell phones were non-existent) were actually really moments where my mom was just trying to lose one of us for an hour or two so that her circus of a life was a little less crazy. Remind me to ask my mom that the next time I see her.

Since coming back from Christmas break, Sean has basically been gone for the entire month of January. He had planned to be gone only for two weeks, but then last minute residency interviews popped up, and before I knew it, I was home with the kids by myself...again. But we definitely wanted to grab any interview we could get, and we went with it.

Somewhere in the past 6 months, I think I've lost a screw or two:) I now have THREE calendars to keep me on top of my life so I won't forget anything; one that travels with me in the diaper bag, one in the car, and one in the kitchen.) I have to count to 10 at least 25 times a day so I don't lose it over that simple thing...like a soggy, smashed cheerio that just embedded itself into the livingroom carpet. Or how about Isaac deciding to change his own poopy diaper and lets just say not doing a very good job. At all. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. There, much better.

And yet, amid all of this, life is good. GOOD. The other night while putting Isaac to bed, I was counting down the seconds to leave his room, which is SO not like me. I actually really enjoy bedtime, because we read, we sing, we laugh, we snuggle, we pray. But on this particular night, I could hear Eliza screaming down in the livingroom, and I knew I needed to rescue her eventually. So there I was, about ready to leave, being all huffy puffy when a quiet little voice in my head told me:

Take a few more seconds, and enjoy this. Because someday you'll be wishing he'd cuddle like this with you...

My eyes filled up with tears instantly, and I cuddled Isaac a little bit closer in my arms (as much that still FITS in my arms!) and he reached up with his free arm, held onto my neck and looked up at me and said with his sleepy voice, "Mommy, I love you."

What if I hadn't taken a few extra moments and missed those 4 little words? Would anything that happened that day changed any? No. Those words didn't undo any of those counting-to-ten moments for me. What they did do was make it all seem worth it. Because at the end of the day, what really matters isn't a livingroom minus the smushed cheerio, or a clean empty sink in the kitchen...it's knowing that those we love feel that love and the security that comes with it.