Two and Four.
My kids are two and four and my life is very busy, and I’m enjoying every minute…I’m enjoying it more than I did when they were 1 and 3 and more than when Lilly was first born and Maya was just two. Maya turned two 12 days before Lilly arrived. My life during that early time was in sweat pants, hair in a bun, tired beyond belief and tired. I can remember nursing Lilly and Maya would be screaming for me in the other room. I remember breaking my foot when she was six months old and limping around pushing the double stroller. I remember with pain and annoyance that my husband ran a Triathlon that year and that he was never around. He left me one weekend when I was deathly ill with the two kids. I thought that I might die in the night and my two-year-old might have to save the baby. I was out of my head. I tried to tell a producer and director who were trying to meet with me about a project how miserable I was and that trying to “make a deal with me” was probably a bad idea. I was in a fog.
Things are better now. They still scream for me at night, my two year-old, Lilly especially, but it’s overall less. I hear screams and I put Homeland or Parenthood on pause. Maya at the same age gave me/us I should say me a much harder time. So Lilly gets a set of parents that take less shit…hopefully. And mommy is in a better place.
Lilly takes a “tots” ballet class at 9:30 on Monday mornings these days. We never get there on time, but even the remaining 30 minutes that we are there, Lilly enjoys the mommy –and-me time she gets very much.
“Ballet?” She says as we head the direction of class. “Yes,” I say. “Just you and me,”…”No Maya!” She says. And we dance…and she wants to be held. She’s the littlest one in the class. The other mothers and babysitters who are with the slightly older girls all look upon us with a certain “Oh my god, she’s so cute.” It’s true, and of course, I’m seeing this with the rose-colored glasses that she is my kid, but she is pretty cute. She runs to me after each solo exercise with such glorious excitement and yells “Mommy!” I open my arms and swallow her up. And I remember that two years ago, I was doing this with Maya, and it’s funny, because she also ran to me in the same way – with complete and utter excitement and got the same giggles and smiles from the other parents. And I know, unequivocally, that these moments with my two-year-old are absolutely precious. A gift, a joy, and I’m so happy that I’m in a better place and I’m allowing myself to stop and to use a cliché “smell the roses.”
The PopCycle 