If I had only known...

I was talking to my friend on the phone earlier today. She has kids about the same age as mine - her oldest is a year younger than Brody and her youngest was born a week after Jameson. She had just gotten back from bringing both of them shoe shopping (nuts I know) and was clearly worn out from the experience. I love talking to this friend because, although she stays home with her kids and I work, we are in relatively the same place in our lives in that we're trying to balance family and all of the other things that fill our lives. We are trying to make magical childhoods for our kids while still finding time for our husbands and ourselves (more so than the occasional shower and solo trip to the bathroom). A not-so-easy feat for anyone who hasn't tried it yet!

I don't know how the conversation got to this point, but she mentioned how she was thinking about life before kids and how much sleep she used to get. Like oodles of sleep. And it made me think...mmm, sleep. So true, sleep was abundant before children. I slept so much, I got tired from all the sleeping. Then we thought about all the other things that were simply abundant and far under appreciated before we had children - like collagen in our faces, spring in our step, gravity-defiance in our bodies, and time. We had so much time on our hands...for movies and dinner with friends and haircuts. Oh my God, I just realized that I haven't had a haircut since August! How is it that these beautiful, amazing, angelic (when they're sleeping) creatures have stripped us of these things.

Then we thought - it's not just the babies. She told me about some issue with filing her taxes and interest on savings bonds. I told her about refinancing our house and how much extra paperwork is required because Ryan is self-employed. And I realized that, while I blame these babies for the bags that reside under my eyes, the dark circles, my post-partum funky hair, the new found body-sag (I'll spare you the details), and the general "old face" as my friend calls it, it is not only the babies that are responsible. It's this whole "being a grown-up" business that is making us not so aesthetically pleasing. While my being - my soul - the thing that gets filled up with love and joy and happiness - is in relatively good shape (yeah, yeah, the anxiety issues sometimes get in the way of that. I'm choosing to ignore those issues for the moment), my body looks like I got hit by a truck and was left of the side of the road to be slowly picked at by crows. Not.really.exaggerating...

Being a grown-up is completely exhausting. Paying bills? Exhausting. Grocery shopping? Exhausting. Raising children? Exhausting. Trying to find clothes in my closet that still fit my body after having two babies? EXHAUSTING! Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot to do about that...I can't stop being a grown-up.

And so we hope. We hope that someday when our kids are grown, when they no longer cry from their cribs because they are lonely in the middle of the night, or call out for us because they have to go to the bathroom and don't want to go by themselves, we will get more restful sleep. Right? Somebody please tell me this is true. When our arms are no longer full of squirmy little baby bodies that want to be held, no they want to play, no they want to be held, no they want to play (Up or down kid! Up or down. I'm not an elevator!), we hope that we will find time to make these bodies strong (and sexy) again. Ummm...stop laughing. I realize that this might not ever be possible, but a girl can dream. And so maybe five (ok 10) years from now, we will look rested and actually be rested...and we can be grateful that we're not the new mom's who we see in the shoe store, looking like they haven't slept in a week or showered in even longer, as their child tries on ten pairs of shoes and the baby gnaws on the Teva display.

We hope. And in the meantime I'm beginning to think that the next 5 years are going to fly by. I have most certainly reached the point in my life where the "days are long and the years are short." I mean how is Brody almost 5? F-I-V-E!

We ended the conversation laughing at ourselves saying, "if we had only known..." But after I got of the phone I thought about it. If I had only known...what? What would I have done? Not had kids? Not built a house? Not grown up? If I had only known...I would probably be exactly where I am. Exhausted. Pretending that my pre-baby clothes are still appropriate for this post-baby body. Hair in a ponytail hoping that my co-workers can't tell I played Little People and Legos before work instead of showering. If I had only known...I guess I probably couldn't have planned it any better.

And now I know.