moon of babes

I've been trying and trying to come up with Five Favorites so that I can join Hallie. I've been wracking my brain. All I've got is chocolate milk, and I just didn't think a pic of Hershey's syrup would cut it. My creative cup runneth dry. At least it's not my chocolate milk cup.

It's my state of mind..no, really it's more my state of mindlessness. This whole week, a phrase has been pinging back and forth across my cranial walls: now I know what my mom used to feel like. Pam in her Prime, or perhaps more appropriately, Pam at her Craziest or Pam at the Height of 8 Children Madness, had homeschooling curriculum for five different grades to plan out and oversee; countless sports and extracurricular events to juggle, chauffer us to and attend; homework to check; meals to cook; toddlers to potty train; babies to bathe; her own blood pressure to monitor; and sleep to lose.

Let me real quick-like give myself a little perspective: I have one child. She's not in school. I'm not even potty training her. She spends most of her time making faces at herself in the mirror, and lets me go about my housewifely duties and/or my mad rush to make myself semi-remotely presentable for work.

Realistically, I have maybe 1/656 the stress my mom used to have (she's on Easy Street now. The youngest is ten and is already quite the mature adult. Like, she shares her sour candies with me and says things like "Don't you think you're overreacting?" to my fifteen-year-old sister. She's pretty much self-sufficient and all that's left to be done is to teach her how to drive and perhaps how to mix my mom a good Bloody Mary.) but this week I feel...how does one say it? Stretched too thin? On the brink of psychosis? Everyday I'm shufflin'? (Fine. That last one is unrelated. But now that screechy techno sound is so running through your brain.)

A combination of factors have conspired to get me here. At home, I'm a little bit drowning. At work, I'm so unfathomably slammed that I'm at the point in my professional career where I don't think I'll ever get right-side up again. The lovely woman that babysits Jordan had her own baby this week (woot! woot! welcome baby girl!) so I've been darting about like a headless chicken trying to find care for Jordan, calling in non-existent favors from my mom, and desperately texting my brother for back-up. Additionally, I'm helping out with the Life Centers' annual dinner dance, and have been coming home straight from work and diving into making out bidsheets for the 75 items up for silent auction. I'm kind of exhausted. Physically, mentally. Yet here it is 4:30 in the morning, and I've tried for the last hour to lull myself to sleep with visions of how I'm going to decorate Jordan's room if/when/if we get a house (Paris themed. Eiffel tower lampstand. White and silver chevron curtains. Pale blue walls but for one panel that my sister's boyfriend doesn't know I'm going commission him to paint a Paris cityscape on. Semi-beadboarding. This headboard in a silver/pewter finish.) I finally conceded insomnia's victory and here we are.

So you know what I'm gonna do instead of Ray LaMontagning about all my worries? Tell you about something I've very very very excited about. Sean and I are going on a babymoon. To Kauai. My parents are generously, magnanimously, I'll-never-be-able-to-repay-them-ly taking Jordan for six days while Sean and I get our white Irish tan on (<---- that's just Sean. I tan relatively easily. It's the Swede in me.) I'm not super excited about being in a bathing suit but I'm excited about everything else.

I think I've told you before that Sean and I got pregnant with Jordan a little to a lot sooner than we expected to start our family. As an engaged couple, we schemed great adventures in world traveling before "settling down." God was like "MWAHAHA!" and four weeks after the honeymoon, I was preg with my Bug. So we did a little revision of life plans and decided to do a babymoon. That way, we'll have traveled before "settling down." Tricked You, God. Taking a babymoon was one of the best decision we had made in our marriage up to that point (six months. a lifetime.) It gave us time to focus on each other and experience completely new things, before our focus was to be completely redirected to the new and miraculous being we brought to the world. We decided back then that we would make an effort to take a babymoon whenever we got pregnant. So that's what we're doing. Admittedly, this will probably be our last full-scale, days-at-a-time babymoon. Two kids is a little more than I'm comfortable unloading on my family for an extended period. But long weekends to gorgeous Central California? A trek down to San Diego? Totally doable.

I'm planning on recounting the tale of our first babymoon to you in the next few days. Since I have all the brevity of J.R.R. Tolkein, I'm anticipating a saga in two parts. Hell, maybe even a trilogy if I really want to commit to the Tolkein persona. Consider this post The Hobbit. Here, I'll give you a little preview:

Guess where we went.