Dear Moms -

I just wanted to let you know that you're okay. This will get better. It will get easier. This is not the end. Things will not always be like this. This season will pass, and your life will be different than it is now.

I know that feels impossible sometimes.

I remember how that part of my life felt - like a never-ending slog of diapers and not napping and grubby hands in my hair and on my face and cutting endless meals into small bites and fat tears on fatter cheeks and reading and reading and reading the same books again and again and on and on and on...

 I remember falling into bed like a wobbly tower of Duplo blocks so early every night that my college self would've been horrified. I remember struggling to the surface of wakefulness every morning, hearing the noises from the other room that foreshadowed an epic mess in the making.

I remember the time I was on the phone with a friend on a Saturday morning around 9 a.m. and she admitted that she was laying in bed (still!) and reading a book (a grown-up book!), and at my shock, she laughed and told me that my day would come.

I remember not being able to believe her as I wiped best-left-unidentified substances off the walls.

I believe her now, as I sit on my couch with my coffee, my book, and my dog, enjoying the peacefulness of kids at school. Life is still difficult, but it's difficult in different ways. More mature and challenging ways, but ways that are different. That season passed. Life got easier.

Moms, you're okay.

They grow up. You grow up. Together, you learn how to grow up.

So to all of you -

... the moms of littles, the moms of the kids who scream always, the moms of kids who can't talk, the moms who forget to pack lunches, the moms who lock themselves in the bathroom for just one moment of peace, the moms who cry into their pillows, the moms who feel they Just Can't Do This today, the moms who want to go just five minutes without anyone touching them, the moms who suck up Legos in the vacuum after stepping on one for the last time, the moms who hate themselves for yelling at their kids, the moms who lose their cool and toss their kids shoes in the trash at playland, the moms hunched with guilt over all the things they're not doing, the moms who just can't...

I want to tell you, from a mom that totally gets it, that you are okay, and you aren't alone, and things will be better.

So hang in there because You Have Got This.

Fingers Crossed

Multitasking has never been my forte, so I'm not entirely sure why I thought it would be a good idea to reach for the dog's collar while my hands were full of hot coffee, chicken feed, and my cell phone. Suffice to say, it didn't work out so well for me or for the chicken feed. The phone, dog, and coffee mug were fine. 

I am excellent in a crisis - calm, cool, collected - I am the gal you call when you need someone in a pinch. These are thoughts that went through my mind as I calmly, coolly, and collectedly gathered up my keys, purse, and kids to drive myself to the ER. I thought briefly about popping my pinkie back into place myself, but just as quickly dismissed that idea, deciding that the kids finding me face down and unconscious in the yard would probably have a slight traumatizing effect on them.

So one Very Exciting Ride to the ER during which I passed out on my neighbor, two hours of staring at my Dr. Seussified digit, three e-rays, and four shots of happy numby time juice later... I was off to the hand surgeon, and considering a new line of children's counting cards.

Typing, painting, writing, everything = impossible.

 Unless something needs to be bludgeoned. That I can do.

There's nothing quite like hearing your doctor casually mention the words amputation, deformity, and permanently crippled in passing. I'm sure she came away from our appointment concerned about my hearing and my intelligence, in addition to her concerns over my pinkie finger. I just know I've never said "Wait, what?" and "Are you serious?!" and "No, Really?!" that many times in one sitting since the time the boys tried to come up with a better explanation for why they'd sent their little sister into the middle of the street than "just to see if she would do it".

So here I am, one lengthy, elaborate, and sure to be expensive surgery later, and I am even more dramamartery than usual, which is really something. I haven't seen what's under my elephantine bandage yet, but I really am hoping they were able to pull off the Swiss Army finger attachment that we talked about in pre-op. Fingers crossed. Maybe. I can't feel my fingers.

I'm off to start physical therapy asap, so, as my surgeon likes to say, my "fingers don't atrophy and fall off!" He always laughs at that point, but I'm fairly certain he's serious about it. If they do fall off, I'm absolutely getting a hook with a swiss army knife attachment. In the meantime, farm chores don't wait. I'm off to wave my club arm around and force the kids into doing my work for me.

Fun Fact!

Remember that kid from the movie Jerry Maguire? You know, the annoying kid that the movie producers tried to make all cutesy with his big glasses, frothy mop of hair, and adorable dimples? Sure, he was cute. Cute as a honey badger. I know better. And, if you've ever spent more than five minutes in the presence of a kid, you know better, too.

Honey badgers have blond, spiky hair, too.

Here's what the movie producers didn't take into consideration. We know that kid wasn't messin' around with all those facts he kept spouting. We know he meant business. Kids are natural born badgerers. I know this because I, too, have one of these honey badger children. As in, I am badgered relentlessly with random facts and information. And when I say badgered, I am referring to the steady stream of trivia, factoids, one liners, "Fun Facts!", and "Hey, Mom! Did you know...s" that run as a nearly non-stop accompaniment to my parenting life. 

While I have no doubt that I am currently raising the greatest trivia master that the world has ever seen, it's a little difficult to appreciate at times, seeing as she's currently too young to cash in on it. Trivia night at the local pub tends to be a 21 and over affair. 

As I type this, I am being regaled with facts as far ranging as video game trivia, the origin of chocolate chip cookies, quirky traits that twins share, and the intricacies of watermelon hybridization. I'm sure someday, as I proudly watch her raze the competition on Jeopardy, I'll understand that all this was totally worth it. 

But in the meantime, I'm starting to consider the possibility of instituting a trivia-free zone for the summer. Or, perhaps I'll prohibit the reading of anything educational. Maybe I could reinstitute a "Quiet Time" like when I still outweighed them and could make them stay in their rooms for an hour after lunch. Or at the very least, I could try banning the words, "Hey, mom!" from my offspring's vocabulary. 

Fun Fact: Summer vacation is exactly 74 days long! That's also about 1/1,000 the length of a Giant Tortoise's life span, and about 6,000 times the length of Louis-Antoine's reign in 1830 in France.