Let the games begin!

This is it.
This is my life.

I looked around my living room yesterday and I couldn’t believe what it had become in just three short weeks. Car seat tucked by Larry the Leather Chair. Swing in the middle of the floor. Bouncy seat in the kitchen. Pacifier, tiny socks, burp cloth, and a rattle on the coffee table along with last weeks mail and the grocery store ads I have yet to go through. There’s a basket of clean baby clothes stuffed under the coffee table (out of sight out of mind? I’m going to need the onsies sooner rather than later). Half empty diet Pepsi can on the end table next to a completely empty bottle. Boppy and baby blanket on the sofa. TV muted to the news. And my cell phone half stuffed between the couch cushions next to the indentation of my butt because I have been either sitting or laying on that damn couch in that same spot for 80% of the last 3 weeks.

I used to be so organized. I used to be tidy. On the weekends I would clean my house – the tub and toilet, the dusting, the kitchen counters, the floors. On Tuesdays I would do laundry – I sort whites, darks, colors and pinks. I wash a separate load of towels. I used to bleach on the whites. My plants were watered regularly and my kitchen floor used to be swept clean. I used to have a menu planned for the week – usually 2 weeks in advance – and the ingredients to make those meals! Now I have random things on the counter buried under clean dishes that didn’t get put away and dirty dishes waiting to go into the dishwasher. I have baby diapers in a Diaper Genie that need to go out to the trash and I definitely need to change the sheets on my bed. I need to try on my “old” clothes – the ones that I wore a long time ago when I could see my feet. I can see my feet again, I’m just not sure I can see them diving into a pair of black dress pants and being able to button the top closed. I’m a little gun shy about trying on those clothes, to be quite honest, because I’m afraid they won’t fit and I’ll be disappointed. I have a box of shoes that I haven’t even looked at since we moved because I couldn’t fit in them and God knows that trying to balance in a cute pair of red heels is out of the question when you’re preggo and your feet have swollen to the size of small elephants. I think I’m a little gun shy about trying those shoes on, too, because I’m afraid they still won’t fit and I’ll be really disappointed. But, oh, I long to wear heels again!

So this is the picture of my life these days. It is messy and cluttered and still a little pudgy around the middle. The routine is shot to shit; I’m lucky if I can pull together spaghetti for dinner and sometimes I’ll admit I’ve resorted to cereal for lunch. I haven’t been to the grocery store in over a month. I haven’t dusted in nearly that long. The last time my floor got swept my mom was visiting. And that, too, was nearly a month ago.

But I’ve got a beautiful baby boy who is the spitting image of his Daddy. A boy who loves to be snuggled and looks at me with unabashed love because he knows that I am the keeper of the bottles, the one who changes him when he’s wet and rocks him and sings nonsense songs to him. I am the one who picks him up when he’s sad and comes to him at night when he wakes up. I am the one who smoothes his wild hair and rubs his back and bounces him when he’s bored. I am the one who puts lotion on his skin after a baby bath and kisses his head a billion times a day. He doesn’t care about the floors or the dust or the piles of unopened mail. He doesn’t care that I’ve been wearing the same yoga pants for three days now or that my hair is in a ponytail because I can’t be bothered to take a shower.

All he cares about is me; and I, him. And that, my friends, is enough.