It's so disorienting to be on this side of the "it'll get easier" clause.
(It's also why it took me four years to start to sew. I remember those no-extra-minutes. I spent them all wondering why it takes six months for a baby to cut a tooth, as she is doing now. Those no-extra-minutes were long minutes.)
On the other hand, we had friends over for dinner last night whose younger child is E's age. I think what that must be like, to have six as the youngest. G had moments (very vocal moments) of extreme two-ness and they smiled at him indulgently, as friends do. Why? Because they only have to look at him, and then they go home to a place where the youngest of the children is six. "It'll get easier" lives on a bell curve.
And yet: we entertained last night. We've had guests at least once a month of late for real sit-down and dessert meals. Tablecloths and everything. There was a not so long ago that I couldn't fathom that.
And tonight I went out, coffee and a movie with a friend. No children freaked out at my departure. No husband panicked at it. It was a lovely night out but more valuable to me even than the experience I had was the one I didn't: it wasn't difficult to leave.
For all that I think of our life as a work-in-chaos, it's so fantastic to look across the spectrum of what is and what could be and realize that it has, with fact and circumstance, gotten easier.
[I am shamelessly backstamping this to before midnight to fulfill my NaBloPoMo challenge. Why, you ask? Because I was out past midnight, of course. Glory be to second adulthood!]
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