On the edge

If I don't get to the end of this post, here's one thing to remember: Try using a neti pot for sinus problems! Google it or just go to your Whole Foods and buy one. It has changed my life.

Something was weird to me about that year in review that I wrote a few weeks ago, and I think I know what it was. I didn't really blog that much about what I was REALLY thinking about. I blogged between diapers and in the middle of general chaos, or at night when my brain was mush from, well, all the yelling and wiping that I do on a daily basis.

This year, though, I feel different. I still live in constant fear that we will be struck down by some awful virus for days and days again (of COURSE we will), I still wipe and yell on a daily basis, I still feel taken up by my children and their constant need for a sippy cup or to get some blob of something out of the DVD player, but something has shifted.

I think it's okay to write about this. Maybe. I'm so superstitious about it though, especially the sleep part, that it has taken me so very long to even hint at the possibility that I may (though I am NOT saying for sure!) make it through most nights without a small person crying out for me and my breasts. I'm superstitious that something is going to crash, that someone is going to wake up every hour on the hour again, that one of them is going to morph back into an infant, needy and attached, literally, to my body, for days on end.

The chances of this, I know, are slim.

But here's the funny thing. Lovely partner is out of town this week, and I don't even seem to mind. It's not that I don't miss HIM....I do, in that funny way that I remember missing him before it turned into NEEDING him and then resenting him for being gone and being able to pee by himself for days at a time. I miss him because I like having him around, because it's nice to talk to someone else and catch their eye over the head of a small hilarious person. But I don't miss him because I can't handle it. I don't miss him because things are completely going to shit around here and I'm about to lose my mind. This would be a significant change from this time last year.

I feel like I'm on the edge of something....like graduation, spring, fill-in-a-transition time. The signs are everywhere...I'm writing again, I'm meeting friends for drinks and even (gasp!) movies, I can pee alone, most of the time. I'm even thinking about writing some poetry, taking a class, taking a trip.

My friends talk about third babies on nearly a daily basis, those with two. I know a few lovely third and fourth very wanted babies. But aside from a miracle of birth control malfunction or insanity, I am done. My children are the funniest, smartest, stubborn-est, creative-est people I have ever met, and I cannot imagine my life without them. And now, I plan to spend the rest of my life enjoying them. And occasionally peeing with the door SHUT.