In the middle

It's Wednesday and it's 9pm and the last of my two restless children has given into sleep. Finally. Ryan is out of town for work, so friends, the days are very long and let me just say that I'm...well, exhausted. Already. And it's Wednesday. Half-way. If you are a single parent, I honestly want to kiss your face right now and tell you what a freaking rock star you are. Just saying.

I'm sitting here with my feet up and my computer on my lap and Idol Gives Back on the TV. I haven't watched Idol even one time this season, but I'm always intrigued and softened and reminded by Idol Gives Back, and so I watch.

I was thinking back on today and when I tried to think about the morning I absolutely could not believe that I was thinking back on the same day I'm living right now. The morning was such a long time ago. It started very early and it went and went and went and so did we. There was a whole lot of fussing and fighting and a whole lot of laughing and chatting. There were fits and tantrums and stories and a walk. There was time at the park and an appointment for me. There were groceries to be gotten, emails to be returned, and phone calls to make. And there are ants in here, so let's not forget the time it takes to try to rid one's home of ants.

I even did one load of laundry from start to finish somewhere in there. Oh, and fed the short people, three times. Sort of. Sometimes a turkey dog kind of sort of is all I have in me.

The funny thing is, even with all of that and more, we still had many minutes in which we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. At one point, we had just played two games of Husker Du, and we were kind of following each other around the house trying to think up what to do next, and then we came up with a new game. It was called JIFOCWITS - Jump In Front Of Camera With Its Timer Set.

OK, it wasn't called anything. I just made that up.

But it looked like this:

~believe it or not, Asher is in these pictures, behind Miles~

And then I let Miles, my budding photographer, take pictures of anything he wanted to capture that he thought was sweet. Because that's the assignment for You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry this week. He did a great job, even while I was stuck on repeat at his heels, worrying over the camera being dropped, Use both hands-be careful-use both hands-it's heavy-use both hands-be careful-GOOD JAAAHHB-

SWEET.

And now I'm looking at these pictures and I'm thinking, Wow, motherhood is such a beautiful struggle. All the stuff we have to do can get in the way sometimes. I mean, when you throw the daily grind and all its stuff into anything, it makes it more of a struggle.

So I guess I'm just sitting here with my feet up and my eyes drooping, and I'm left with only one thing to say: I'm really glad there's so much sweet, so much good wrapped up in the middle of the stuff of life.