nice words

See that?  That's misleading.  She looks so sweet, no?  So bright eyed and contented?  So quiet?  So ... MG?  Folks, this week, my MG is no MG at all.  She's teething.  One low, one high, neither quite cut through, the bottom one in that awful pre-eruption stage where the gum's all puffy and raw and waking her up at 3:00am going "WAH WAH OMG HELP ME WAH!"  And it's not one of those wakings where you're all, "here's a bottle, back to sleep, little dear."  Oh, no no.  It's a long stretch of screaming, which finally quiets to whimpering and fussing, which ramps back up to screaming if you dare think she's dozed back off and can be set back in her bed, so all this amounts to you ending up passing the baby back and forth with your husband, each of you grabbing little snippets of unsatisfying sleep in between shifts, until he gets up at 5:00am and you're on your own.  And maybe finally getting her back into a heavy sleep sometime around 6:00am, but only if she's RIGHT on top of you, so you both wake an hour or so later in the 7:00 hour when the FakeTwins come storming in demanding Octonauts or someshit, and you're forced back into consciousness with your shirt soaked with drool and your head feeling all fuzzy and like you maybe haven't slept since 3:00am going "OctoWHATTHEHELLNOW?"  Or, you know, something.

Poor MG.  And yeah yeah, poor poor us, with a baby who slept through the night at about two weeks old and basically has ever since, I know, CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA.  Sleep deprivation is part of the baby thing, you don't need to tell me this.  But back when this exact same scenario happened with baby #1, at least I could lay around in my pajamas and fall back asleep whenever he shut his eyes for more than a few minutes.  Now?  If I fell asleep when the baby did?  Fake Twins would probably chew a hole through the wall and hitchhike into town to knock over a toy store.

So this has all been going on for what feels like ten nights but is really maybe like three or four nights (???), and the result is that I'm a little crabby.  But yesterday, it was preschool day again!  Thank you JESUS for preschool!  And despite the maybe four hours of uninterrupted sleep I'd had the night before, I made up my mind while I was washing my face that I was going to make a 9:00am dance class.  Endorphins.  I needed some.  So I busted around the house in super speed mode over the next hour.  Waking kids (they ALWAYS sleep in on preschool days, OF COURSE THEY DO), dressing kids, brushing teeth and hair, packing a backpack with spare undies and remembering the little monkey ice pack for the lunch box and BLABLABLA.  End result?  I got us out the door fifteen minutes early, sparkly clean and with shoes on the right feet.  And took Bug to preschool early.  And rushed the girls back into the car and sped over to the gym and got inside.  Took Vivi to the bathroom (potty training - another post, another day).  Did that whole thing.  Scrubbed her hands.  Scrubbed my hands.  She tells me she has to pee again.  REPEAT.  Change into my workout clothes while rocking MG's car seat with one foot to keep her calm because she's now been in the car seat WAY longer than is MG-approved.  And also maybe because she's got her sister in her face going shouting out the Little Einsteins theme song.  "I HEWPING YOU, MAMA!"  Get the girls into childcare, get my shoes on, set my bags down, get to the front desk ....... and find out there is no dance class.  NONE.  Instructor's sick.  No other classes at this hour.  And it's a small, class-only place, not not the kind of gym where you just go grab a treadmill and watch the Today show instead, so back to get the girls I went.  Vivi was royally peeved that she didn't get to stay and play.  (Ah, my social butterfly.)  So I drag a tearful V and a super pissed MG (CAR SEAT!) back out to the car.  And call my mom and cry because I'm TIRED.  And I really wanted that workout. And WAH WAH WAH FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.

But then.  This is the point of my whole story, and I have no idea why it took me so long to get to it, except maybe sleep deprivation is making me nonsensical.  Anyway.  The girls and I headed over to Starbucks.  Vivi's a sucker for their blueberry muffins and after the "let's go play at the gym!" bait and switch, I felt I owed the girl a solid.  So we go, she eats, I sip my coffee and smile at MG while she takes her bottle and Vivi and I chat about life for awhile.  (Where life = we discuss for the 85th time what she wants to be for Halloween ((10 MONTHS FROM NOW)) and she tells me I'm pretty, and I tell her she's pretty AND smart and nice, and she tells me "no, mama, just pretty and pretty and PRETTY."  Le sigh.)  Anyway.  It was nice, but even with the sweet little pick-me-up, I was still feeling a little deflated.  And tired.  (Did I mention tired?)  As we walked out the door, I notice a younger guy sitting at a table watching us.  21, 22, somewhere in there.  Way too young to be checking me out, because I'm elderly, so I figured he staring at us because he was annoyed by my kids in the coffee shop and glad we were vacating.  But just as we reached the door, he called across his table, "HEY!  Have a good day.  Jesus loves you!  And you've got cool kids!"

Um, how neat is that?  That just in the moment where I was losing focus a bit of what mattered, and feeling pouty about my non-workout and my non-sleep, that God puts someone right in my path to snap me out of it?  Put a smile back on my face, and make me kiss each of the girls as I tightened up their car seat straps because gosh darnit, I DO have cool kids.  And Jesus DOES love me, even tired, frustrated, non-worked-out me.

That just had to be shared.  Use your nice words, people.  It doesn't have to be religious, it doesn't have to be shouted out in a coffee shop, but just make a point to say nice things to people.  You may just turn someone's morning around.  I smiled most of the way home, had a little extra boost of patience and playfulness with my girls all day, and paid it forward in my own little way later in the day.

And now, I try to sneak a nap before any of my three wake up.  Which pretty much guarantees one's going to wake up the second I shut my eyes .... but it's worth a shot, no?