I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. That is the only way to explain the inexplicable exhuastations at 8AM this morning after a good night sleep. Not just the physical kind that makes one's bones ache, but the mental kind that anchors one to the couch, sucks away all compassion and patience, and makes one snap at their cute toddler and husband.
Or... it could be... all the things are catching up to me...
It has been a rocky start into fall for the Do household. September started with the natural disasters that is the hurricane season. My parents came to escape Hurricane Irma. Steve went on his first business trip since we met. The moment everyone leaves me and I am a mother alone with Olivia, I get us into a car accident on the way to school. It wasn't my fault, at all, as I tell myself over and over and over. In some ways that only adds to the trauma, to think that careful as one may be, disasters can still befall us all. We are ok, physically... but the events haunted me for days. It's true what they say, things happen in a flash. One second I knew something bad is going to happen, the next thing I remember is the smell of the burnt plastic as air bags deployed all around me. Then the sound of Olivia crying in the back, and me pushing my way to to get my baby out... I'm not sure why my first emotion was just the uncontrollable tears, on the side of the road, holding my baby. Long after she has calmed down, I'm still a sobbing mess. Thinking back, I wish I was more calm, more gathered.
I wasn't ready to part of my old car, but here I am, in the process of finding a new one. It dawns on me that I will be a mom of two little ones, that there will be two car seats in my car... So many practical things to think about. No I'm not getting a mommy van. But no I'm not getting my dream car either.
Olivia is growing up so fast before my eyes. She sings all the nursery rhymes that she used to watch on repeat. She loves peppa pig, legos, and the playground. I understand only about fifty percent of everything she says, and I have a feeling that vice versa is true. She can be very moody and inconsolably stubborn but mostly, she is achingly sweet. She makes little faces at me and her big eyes are full of expressions. When she lets me put pigtails in her, the cuteness is too much to take. I remind her daily that baby Isla is coming, and she tells me it's in my tommy.