MIA

I've been MIA recently because I left my camera in Dallas a few weekends ago and blogging without a camera seems so early 2000s.  Anyway, I read an awesome article on finding rest, instead of hurry, in your life and thought I'd share it (through a "hurried" medium, because irony is fun).  The article  inspired me to take five minutes to sit outside and watch the sunset, which in turn inspired me to sit down and write about other places of rest in my life as of late.

Caleb and I have managed to find time to ourselves two weekends in a row after seven months of lots of family togetherness.  That is, not a night to ourselves sans baby since New Years Eve.  Except for our anniversary, which we celebrated by having food poisoning, as a couple. SO MUCH FUN! It was also marked by our air conditioner breaking...  For some reason it didn't seem as if that should count as alone time.   

Side Note: {I remember before we had a kid hearing stories from other couples about not having been out since the baby was born and thinking they were just not trying hard enough.  HA!  HA HA!  BWA HA HA HA HA HA.} 

Anyway, it's been really lovely to have some time to focus on each other lately.  And a nice latent effect of that is that when we've gone back to being parents, it's been so much easier to be a genuinely happy parent.  It's a lot easier to appreciate the humor in the things my child does [when I'm not feeling like Jordan in the "My Changing Ways" episode of Scrubs (start at 2:15).]  I can see the humor in the unfolding of all the freshly folded laundry, or her occasional emptying of the diaper pail, making sure to hide one or two diapers around the room.  Or washing her hands in the toilet while wearing a Tupperware bowl as a hat.  Or climbing into the dog kennel for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Or just screaming at every single thing I do wrong... I've been informed it is all wrong.

You're always hearing, with parenting or other struggles, that you will "look back and laugh about this one day."  But I think having some time away from your child every once in a while allows you to laugh right now, in the moment.  And that's a pretty amazing gift.  It's like laughter sent backwards through time.  Yes.  That awesome.

Another benefit? Appreciating the humor in the things my child does also gives me cause to use this maddeningly contradictory phrase from my own childhood "Just because I'm laughing, does not make it funny" and thus get a little bit closer to [inevitably?] becoming my own parents.  But that's a rambling for another day. 

-Sarah-Jean