The Bewitching Hour

Hey Mamas, it's that time of day again.

Some of us have been chasing the day to get to right now. Some of us have been so busy having fun that it seems too early to end the day. And some of us just throw our hands up as today is just like every other day at this time...a challenge.

 Some people call it the "witching hour". (When I was single, I called this time "disco nap happy hour". Boy times have changed!) When you are a mama, whether it be to one baby or many, this is the time of day that can go either way, good or bad, very quickly.

Now that my son is not a tiny baby, I try to take this time and turn it into the "bewitching hour". I want this time of dinner, bath, and bedtime to be a precious time. When your kids are very little (mine is 19 months old now), it seems like the day was a marathon and this is right when you exhaustively cross the finish line. The days are long but the years are short. We've got this mamas. It can be a long day as a mom. As a stay at home mom, it's a 12 hour work day that has come to a close. As a working mom, you are just getting home and have a host of jobs still left to do for your little ones. As a single mom, you know there is no one to hand that little one over to for a few minutes, it's all on you. We all wish we had a moment to just BE.

 But I think we can just BE, with our little ones. My son is ON THE MOVE now, all day long. I take this time and turn it in to cuddle time and kisses time, a time filled with twilight and moonlight and magic. It can be very easy to forget that this time is fleeting and that in a few months, in a year, in 5 years, there will be no cuddling with this little one or ones in this way. They will be busy growing up, growing independent, growing away. When it seems like your child is a koala bear, attached to you at ALL TIMES, remember sooner rather than later, they won't want to be held or cuddled or kissed. They are going to want to be a big boy or girl. And that this moment, no matter how today went, is a gift.

It's ok, Mamas, we've got this. We can find a way to just take a moment to savor these wee ones, to find that pause in a hectic day. We can take this "bewitching hour" and let it cast its spell on us. We are all trying to do the best we can, juggling our obligations, tending to our marriage and relationships, and finding the balance in a very off-balance season of our lives. We are ok. Some days we are just managing. Some days we are exceeding expectations. And some days, we just get into bed as fast as we can and hit reset for tomorrow morning. But we are all ok.

Mamas, let's try to pat ourselves on the back and give ourselves some credit. Managing the lives of PEOPLE is not easy. We are the human resource department of our families. We carry the burden of integrating personalities with schedules, plans, events, activities and emotions at play. We have the demands of other people, of jobs, of financial restrictions and of our physical location to consider when planning our days.

Let's try to savor this moment, to either laugh or cry about, to either embrace or run from, to FEEL or to IGNORE without judgement. Let's acknowledge that it's a hard job raising human beings who feel and love and cry and rage. It's our time of day to take the "just" out of "Just a stay at home mom", "Just a working mom", "Just a single mom" when we describe ourselves. It's our time to embrace the "Bewitching Hour" in all its glory and make it our own.

Tonight, Friday night, I am taking the time to touch little fingers and toes, to make my little one giggle so I can giggle too, to honor the mother-child bond and to remember that the moments in the day that are hard are the contrast of how easy it is to just love my child. I've got this... and you do too.

“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”

"Today was one of those days. Teething baby up all night so he woke up a crabby toddler, very clingy, very sad for being so tired. We didn't get to go to a play date. We didn't get to leave the house. But we did get to cuddle, which I hear is a commodity that dries up sooner than you think. We got to laugh a lot and play with some of the favorite toys, read the favorite books. We did what it took to make us both feel better. The day didn't go according to plans. But that is usually the day I know the little fella needs me the most."

 This was my Facebook post a couple weeks ago.

Does this sound like you? More often than not, it happens. You don't have it all working well. Nothing goes right. You are NOT in control. The pieces don't all fit and everything does not get done. But guess what mamas, it's ok. This constant striving to keep it all together can be exhausting. Taking these moments and turning them into mama gold is the challenge. When you can't get out of your own way, stay home. I don't believe in being that mama who is telling her wee one to "hurry up".  I remind myself in these situations that we are not performing brain surgery. No one's life is on the line if we don't show up to that play date, class or other engagement because the day isn't working. Sometimes you know it by 7am. Other days it creeps in on you all day long in series of falling dominoes of everyday life with a baby, toddler or preschooler. Those are the days you realize too late that you should've thrown the towel in. Quitting is not for losers, quitting sometimes is for those who realize it's not working, it'll get worse, and our little ones can't always vocalize their feelings in time.

If we are feeling overwhelmed, imagine how much worse it is for our child when things are flopping. It can be the time where you turn around, take them out of the car seat, go back into the house and take a stack of books and sit quietly to read with your child. Or where you take the detour from where you were supposed to go and do something different like swing on a swing in a quiet park. You step away from the art project that is not going well or that your child is just not feeling. Or maybe just give hugs, lots and lots of hugs to our little one. The modern culture is full of people suffering anxiety. I think there's so much pressure of failing or not living up to expectations put onto us and our children. They learn from us at a young age that things "have to get done", "we have to succeed" "we need to go NOW!"

  What we don't teach our kids or remind ourselves, is that a failure is a learning opportunity and that when things don't work, be ok with a Plan B or Plan C. Instead of rushing into that doctor/dentist/haircut appointment late, call and cancel and regroup. No one will be crushed if you do so. You might just save the day by turning back and holding your little one's hand and saying "let's slow down" instead of screaming "hurry up!"  We're not always going to be in this season of our lives and things will evolve. It's ok mamas, we got this.


“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
-CS Lewis

Anybody really know what time it is? Anybody really care?

 
The whole time-space continuum goes into bizarro mode once you have a baby. I used to be that person who lived by the adage that "being early is being on time, being on time is being late, and being late is unforgivable." Then along came the BabyGuy. The first few months you just have no concept of what day it is and what time. You spend endless hours stuck on the couch with a tall water bottle, the remote control, and a baby on your lap who is either eating or sleeping. People tell you, "I'll come by around 11" and you are genuinely surprised like it's the first you've heard of it when they show up. You retain no knowledge, you keep no clock, you are in survival mode. Where does the time go?!? Admittedly, you know there's some falling asleep that goes on...by you. It's hard to be tired and timely!
   Then the time comes when you can get out of the house to do errands and be out in the world of other humans with your child. It's all fine until you have to meet up with someone at a certain time. I never knew how hard it is to get somewhere on time while handling a small human being. There are always diapers that go wrong as you are about to leave, shoes that are lost, hats that are thrown into the deepest depths of a pile of snow. Trying to arrange doctor's appointments becomes a crap shoot. I began to refer to a meeting time as "a window of time when I most likely will arrive....or maybe not." This of course goes against all my innate punctuality. But, I had to throw in the towel on this one. In trying to be the best mother possible, I had to concede that being on time was not going to be part of the package.
   Over the course of the first year of your child's life, things get a little more social. You have classes you start taking with the wee one, play dates, and mother's group events. Leaving an hour beforehand to go ten minutes down the road is not unheard of. Why would anyone do this? Well, on your way to wherever you are going, chances are you forgot a bottle. Or your diaper bag. Or sippy cup. Or your dear child has decided to fall asleep in the car and you don't want to wake him, so you will sit in the car and let them nap for an half an hour until they wake up. And you will still be ten minutes late. I don't really understand how this crazy math of being a mom and being on baby's schedule works, but YOU WILL NEVER BE ON TIME. SO STOP TRYING.
   I do have to say, being a student of meditation has helped me tremendously with all of this. Doing mindfulness meditation has given me the ok to live in the moment to experience fully the precious time I spend with the BabyGuy. Kids are slow, mainly because they are learning to do something new nearly every day. They don't just go for a walk with you, they savor the click-clack of the stroller wheels over blocks of cement on your stroll through the city. They enjoy grabbing and examining the leaves of the trees you pass on your walk through the park. Everything ordinary can become more special to you if you enjoy the gift of time, the time you are spending with your child. Using mindfulness to be organized helps but the factor that is constantly changing and can't be guaranteed is the personality of your child on that given day that you are trying to get somewhere or do something.
I find that I am very tired...and it comes from trying to keep a very fast tiny human from doing dangerous things like pulling furniture down on himself, putting things in his mouth that he can choke on, throwing himself headfirst off of his high chair, etc. It's like being an on-duty cop, you can't ever shut it down, you have to be vigilant.
  The time doing something is always three times as long for you as the time it takes your child to un-do it, cleaning for example. It's a new kind of math, the mother math. Time for yourself, well, that goes away for a while. It's been eight months since a haircut, nine months since a weekend away, seven months since a romantic date night out. But as they say, the days are long but the years are short. Every night before I put the BabyGuy to sleep I tell him, "you will never be this little again. You are only getting bigger each day." So I try to savor the slowness of the day, the magic of little fingers that are trying hard to do something new, the tentative steps that soon turn into a run, because as cliche as it sounds, it all goes by so fast.
 So to everyone I am late for, I'm sorry, but it's just where I'm at right now. Bear with me, it won't be forever and it's not an implication that your time is not valuable to me. I'm just on the mommy train and it never leaves the station on time. And as BabyGuy would say, "toot toot beep beep." We'll get there eventually.