Some people, if not most, look forward to the weekend. I, unlike most, am not one of those people. I don't have something against Saturday or Sunday, per se. They're great, in theory. But as most mothers are well aware, your job doesn't stop come Friday at 5. In the world of parenthood, the weekend is just another two days for your kids to be giant assholes and prove, yet again, that you've got a little less than nothing figured out.
It's like they know. My beautiful, sometimes satanic, little spawns have somehow managed to figure out that the two days their parents desperately rely on to refill their engines and emotional energy reserves are the two days they choose to give them the proverbial middle finger.
Hey, mom... Fuck you!
Hey, dad... Fuck you, too!
Mo takes it upon herself to fill a personal toddler jerk quota over the course of those two days. I think it's actually pretty sweet of her to want to include Joe in on the jerkiness. It wouldn't be fair to leave him out of such a raging good time, now would it? Why she maintains a vendetta against the two people who created her is beyond any level of my comprehension.
And Edie? Oh poor, pitiful Edie. That kid just can't catch a single break. She's basically had a double ear infection for almost two months now which makes her the very far opposite of pleasant. She also appears to be either cutting a new tooth or having a massive growth spurt constantly. Oh. And, to add insult to injury, she doesn't sleep. Well, she does, just not consecutive hours through the night. I love that face of hers, but I love even more NOT seeing it for more than four hours at a time when I am supposed to be comatose under cotton sheets. Is that really too much to ask after eleven months? I surely don't think so.
But this weekend wasn't like most weekends.
This weekend was different.
It was good. It felt easy-- well, as easy as a busy weekend with two kids can feel. It felt like pieces of a puzzle slowly coming together, like the fog of the first year of being parents to two kids began lifting. It felt like the unvocalized question of "why did we have another kid, again?" was starting to become clear.
Because it can actually be really, really good.
To end the weekend, Joe and I sat beside each other on the ground at a local park. A man played bongos somewhere in the distance. Mo shocked the pants off of us and played independently while Edie crawled around the grass, pausing only to eat a handful of dirt or crunch winter-recked leaves between her palms. We then had our best friends over for a "possible last meal before you have a baby" dinner. I went to bed before ten p.m.
It was downright dreamy.
Jim Gaffigan once likened parenthood to drowning but, instead of a rope, someone then throws you a baby. Most days feel just like that. Like a struggle to keep my head above the water and the deliberate picking of battles with an irrational and manic toddler and an infant who appears to be allergic to sleep, both whose goal, I often believe, is to just fuck with me.
So, not only was this weekend dreamy, it was earned.