Pavlovian whining

I sometimes think that my children look at me and then think of a whine. I can walk into a room where everyone is 100% content and when their little eyes catch sight of me, they reflexively blurt out a need. “I’m hungry!” “Bink!” “My ankle hurts!”

They do not do this with their father, from what I can tell. I am the Need-Filler. He is the Fun Guy. He is the guest star on the sitcom. The one that gets the laugh track and canned applause when he walks into the room. I assume those roles must flip when the father stays at home, so I don’t take it personally :)   

monkey brain

Being a stay-at-home mother occupies loads of your time, but it doesn’t always occupy loads of your brain and I’ve always had a very busy brain. I think about everything. I have LOTS of ideas… with very little time to do anything with them. Ugh. I am the Queen of Half-finished projects, as are most mothers. If I get 20 minutes without being interrupted (three minutes, if my youngest is awake), it is a miracle. You know those witty e-cards that pop up on your Facebook feed? This is my current favorite:

 

My busy-monkey brain weighs the pros and cons of working part-time vs. full-time and wonders what that work will be. It’s both an exhilarating and scary thing to be almost 40 and not know what you want to be when you grow up. I pray about it. God has plans for us. He loved us and knew us by name before we even took our first breath. Jeremiah 29:11 speaks to this: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I wondered if God was nudging me in church last Sunday to get back to my roots, to write, to look inward and upward. Writing is therapeutic. But it can also be a huge time-sucker because I agonize over word choices and re-write sentences ad nauseum. Thank goodness blogger doesn’t give me many font options (only seven!?) because this monkey is short on time :)