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The little moments.
Every little moment.
Living a life of love and passion.
Doing what you love with those whom you love.
Life is short and fragile. We never know what the next moment holds. How do we live every moment as if it is our last? How do we truly live in the moment?
This has been on my mind the last few days.
I saw the dishes piled high and I felt a nagging in my mind to go flip loads and fold laundry but there was a small child with arms wrapped around my leg begging me to go play babies.
What then?
I looked down into their faces and trotted off to the basement to play . I don't want to miss a moment!
How the heck am I to get a thing done though if I am forever living in these moments? We are not rich, I cannot hire a cook and cleaning crew. Finding the balance is something that has truly eluded me.
I think about all the things I want to do. My project list is endless and even the list of projects started waiting to be completed is massive. I have so many idea's it hurts.
Do these things matter though? Am I being selfish?
I want my family to come first. I want to be there for every little milestone, every moment. My longings for my career can wait, I will embrace my mushy mommy brain for a few years, this is what living passionately holds for me right now.
My projects will happen slowly in the night hours when the children are sleeping. The house will be messy...kinda like my brain and we will have fun.
We will live in the moments. Snot and poop, hugs and kisses, first words, bandaged knees and peek a boo giggles. I love them all.
Sometimes I feel like I am loosing my cool. I long for the moment Dave walks through the door. I am spent. But these are moments as well, a little piece of the puzzle of life. Without those moments I wouldn't cherish the awesome huggy kissy giggly ones as much as I do.
Then I have moments where I wish they would grow up faster, get on to the next stage. Pee in the potty already. But those moments will come. Time goes by too fast as it is and I want to soak it all up right now as best I can. I cry looking at photo's past. The moments are flying by, I wish I had a pause button.
Dave and I watched the movie 'Click' tonight. This went right along with my thoughts and I found myself bawling a few times. I have never had such an emotional reaction from an Adam Sandler movie, but this one really hit me. It is about a guy who fast forwards through the little annoyances of life. Fights and showers, traffic and foreplay were all on his list. He always put work first with the excuse of making a better life for his family. Providing the things he didn't have as a kid for his kids.
Does this matter? Kids don't understand this. They value time with daddy and mommy.
We only get one life to live, how do we make the best of it?
I loved this movie and think that I should watch it every few months to keep life in perspective.
Thinking about little moments and what really matters has got me to thinking about how to live simply so we can live in these moments without the mess. Does this make sense?
I think that de-cluttering to the bare minimum would help. Getting there is another story.
I need way more moments in a day to figure this out!
Balance, I need balance.
I think I need to go think about this now, chart and plot a way to live in the moment and still get stuff done, yikes, I am getting dizzy!
This post makes me dizzy. I am sure you must be too by now. I am rambly in my head and I am sure it came out that way too.
Whew!
OK...I am done, good night! ( I wish I didn't need sleep, all those moments ticking away....aggh!)
Life is so precious!
11 comments:
OMG, Anna. That just about broke my heart, too.
Balance.
You know I'm going through something similar, taking stock of sorts with our impending move back to Canada, and I'm reaching very similar conclusions to yours. Every moment counts. But at the same time, certain things need to be taken care of. We must have meals, clothing and an uncluttered path to the washroom, as a minimum.
I'm less worried about being tired. Being tired is OK, if it means having spent my time well. But I AM worried about spending a lot of time stressing about unimportant things.
So, if you find a solution, let me know. In the meantime, I will be sending lots of healthy vibes to Emily and her parents. Goodness knows, they'll need them.
Hugs and have a good night - Heidi
Wow that really does put everything in perspective eh?
I still constantly fight that "balance battle" in my head. But you know... as your kids get older you do see the payback in little ways and are so glad that you took that extra moments (away from housework) to go and help, or see some great thing your kids had to show you "right now"!
Yes we have to do the necessary stuff but everything else if you REALLY think about it can wait!
i battle the same, and lose a lot. of the moments that is. trying so hard to swing the other way. have to a bit as i'm flying solo for the next few weeks and the kids entirely depend on me for the FUN part that is usually provided by dad. thanks for the reminder! flexible structure or something like that ... the list of things that you run do for 10 minutes if you GET the 10 minutes.
hugs!
Beautiful post. I liked Click as well and it also really made me think. I know what you mean about simplicity. Less to dust, less to clean, less laundry etc. would help so much.
I can relate to this post quite a lot Anna. I try to balance and I think I do an okay job of it... I get really grumpy when my house is a disaster and then spending time with the family is lost because I am grumpy. So I have to do the bare minimum but I am taking more time each day to spend with my boys.
They are growing up so fast and I treasure each moment.
:-)
I loved this post, it bared a bit of your beautiful soul!
Anna, I am always inspired by you! Your last post hit home to me and this one has too. I am such a busy person and my boys are a bit older and don't "need" me as much as they did 3 years ago (don't get me wrong, I know they still need me, but they are more independent now with the toileting, feeding, dressing stuff, you know what I mean). BUT ... there are some days where I feel that I don't enjoy the moments like I should. Yesterday instead of getting dinner ready on time, I played Hangman with Ethan. Dinner was late, but we were happy.
I am going to have to do things like that a bit more often, I think. 99% of the time I think I get the balance pretty good, but we all have days where we have no patience (I was having one of those days when I commented on your last post!! I don't always yell at my kids and put a DVD on!!) but today is a new day and I will make the most of all the moments. Thank you, my friend, for opening my eyes a bit more.
I want to watch "Click" again. It spoke powerfully to me the first time I saw it, but it's been awhile, and like you say I think it needs to be watched regularly.
Video store tonight!
This was a great post, Anna. I think the same things. It is such a constant struggle to balance them all.
Beautiful.
I've never posted here before but just wanted to say " What a great mom!" The time spent with your kids is time that you will never look back on with regret! And the housework...it will wait! Unfortunatly!!!
Well that was sure deep. You always make me feel like there is something very universal about the things that mommy's feel. I love your blog. The way that you view life shows just what a great mommy you are. I struggle constantly between dishes and laundry and my wee girl. I too think that time spent with her is far more important than the silly dishes but sometimes its hard to find the balance. Shortly after Hailey was born the battle began and one of my girlfriends said to me, forget the dishes, your kids won't look back and think wow we sure had clean dishes.
You know as I read this I have loads of laundry to do and floor that is need of a clean, but i am heading to cuddle with my little guy and watch some Toy Story. Balance is hard but they are only little for such a short time. I know because I have hardly seen my 11yr old all night because she has a different agenda. You are a great mom it is very evident.
Thanks for visiting our blog, I've visited yours before but hadn't commented as I didn't think you'd know me. I remember you too from conferences. I can definitely relate to this post, I thought it was just me, the mushy brain as you call it. I am always shorter on patience when I try and do too much i.e. keep the house immaculate, get all the laundry loads done in a day. Kids definitely need mommy time and babysitters all the time so you can keep a nice clean house does not solve that problem. From experience as a baby sitter growing up I can testify to that, but it is very temping some days. That said a break every now and again does help some times to put things back in perspective. Sorry to leave such a long comment, I enjoyed your post.
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