Love tastes like shortbread and sprinkles.

Our days usually look like some variation of this:

Most days staying at home with a toddler is fun, but some days it's just overwhelming.  It's like constantly being behind the curve and having a desk full of stuff with big, red PRIORITY stamped all over it, and an angry boss who changes his mind every 12 seconds.

Finn's favorite thing to say is: "I don't know." and "No."   To everything.  All. day. long.  Is this normal?  I feel like he's spending more time than usual in the uncooperative chair for not following directions, but seriously?  He refuses to tell me his colors and if I ask him any questions - anything at all - he just says, I don't know in his little sing-song voice.  I know I'm putting too much pressure on myself...I feel as though by staying at home we should be doing something every day to engage his little mind.  And usually I remember to sing the Alphabet song and play with puzzles and playdough and his shape ball.  But some days I don't.  Some days it's all I can do to get dressed and keep up with the very short attention span.

Abby is still as disorganized as ever.  She took 3 of the 4 movies that she rented back to the library.  The one she didn't take back?  Yeah, that was the one that was actually due back.  She's been writing notes to herself on her arm in pen.  Because it's easier than writing in the 2 planners that she just had to have this year.  Yes, even I, queen of lists and planners, do not have 2 of them.  Abby insisted and I know that I should have known better.  Nobody can successfully manage two planners unless they have a personal secretary whose only job is to manage two planners.

And so some days I ignore everything piling up - all the priorities and the dust bunnies and the tempers - and we make cookies. We get flour on the counters and on the floor and on our clothes and in our hair. We sneak bites of dough. We sprinkle generously, as if the very act of sprinkling will erase the feelings of inadequacy.

My job right now is to raise some kids and keep the house and juggle everyone's schedules and be a sounding board for my husband.  I am on call 24/7.  I am a cheerleader and a fixer of owies and the cruise director on the Lido Deck.  I get dressed up to go to the grocery store (which means I wear jeans in stead of yoga pants) and I almost never wear make-up (unless we're going to church, and even then it's if-y.).  Some days I would like 30 uninterrupted minutes to take a bath, but would settle for 10 minutes to take a shower.  But I know that as much as I'd like 10 minutes to myself, I'd also like to spend time with my husband, so when he's home that equates to dishes not getting finished after dinner and frustration when a load of laundry isn't pulled from the dryer and folded and resentment when, after I've put in a full day, too, I'm still doing to baby-bath time and and bedtime snack and reminding Abby to brush her teeth and wash her face and straightening up the house a little after the kids are in bed and falling asleep during the ten o'clock news.

I like being married, I like having a partner and I like being able to tag-team when the going gets tough, but these days it really is so hard trying not to be an "old, married couple," (we're only celebrating our 3rd anniversary next month, after all - we're not rocking chair folks yet!).  Right now I feel like an exhausted, married couple.  Raising a teenager and a toddler requires talking about them and their needs constantly and most of the time putting us and our needs to the back burner.

So we make cookies, where there is order and consistency in following a recipe.  Where smiles come easily and all is right, for just a few minutes, in my world.  Some days our cookies have bites out of them because certain little boys cannot wait.  And a few days later I will find that all of the cookies have mysteriously disappeared (probably into a perpetually hungry 12 year old's belly after school and volleyball practice) leaving behind only an assortment of crumbs and sprinkles.  And I realized that, even if I was snarky and even if I didn't fully challenge their little minds, even if I didn't feel like I loved them, I fed them a little bit of love.

Some days that's all I can do.