Nix9to5

Why I’m Doing It

// April 25th, 2010 // Balance, Children and Babies, Life in General

Right now, I’m feeling very close to burnout.  I just keep telling myself that it’s just a few more weeks, and then temporary projects will be done, and shortly after that, it will be summer, and I’ll begin my Leave of Absence.  In the meantime, I’m a little on edge.  In fact, this morning when they sang the birthday song on Sprout, I cried.  I don’t know why.

However, this morning gave me some big reminders of why I’m working so hard right now, and why it is worth it.

First, as Bear and I were playing in the living room this morning, I had the TV on in the background.  I usually have it tuned to Sprout (which apparently makes me cry) because I don’t think Bear is going to hear anything too terrible on it.  A Clorox toilet cleaner commercial came on.  You know the one that shows all the different toilets and calls them by different names?  Well, Bear looked up from what he was doing and called out, “Potty!  Potty!  Poopie!”  So funny.  I don’t want to miss those little moments anymore.

Later, I was drinking my coffee and dipping cookies into it (yes, I had cookies and coffee for breakfast–is that wrong?).  Bear came walking up to me with his big blue eyes and asked, “Coo-kee?”  I broke a little piece off and handed it to him (yes, I gave my baby cookie at breakfast–is that wrong?) and he looked at me and grinned and–completely unprompted–said, “Tay-too!”  For those of you not fluent in Toddler, he said, “Thank you,” all by himself.  My good boy.

Neither of those moments compare to what happened earlier in the morning, when Bear was eating his own breakfast (without cookies).  Because I did not realize I didn’t have any fruit prepared for him, I let Bear feed himself his cereal.  Messy, but it allowed me to chop and cook some pears for him while he ate.  As I was peeling and chopping, Bear looked at me and said for the first time ever, “Ah loo, Mommy.”

Ah loo = I love you.

Sprout isn’t the only thing that made me cry this morning.