The World According to Mommy

While sitting here trying to recover from the fact that my guy lost, I got to thinking about lost time, wasted time, and all the things I could have done but never did (sorry for the lame segway...it's the best I could do!).

Last week after Nate had only been awake a short time after one of his naps, he was really fussy and seemed tired. I said to Matt something along the lines of, “I can’t believe he’s tired already. He might need another nap soon.” Matt responded with, “Well, he does come from a long line of nappers.” And by “long line” he means me. It’s true, I like my naps.

Just over a year before Nate was born I got laid off from my job. We had actually just started trying to get pregnant, and it has always been the plan that I was going to stay home with our kids, so Matt suggested that I just start the staying home a little early. He said it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to find a new job only to quit it a few months later to stay home once the baby arrived. I happily agreed.

I saw this work-free, baby-free time that I had as a great gift from my husband. I had such freedom! I could do whatever I wanted! Each day was all mine!

And how did I spend this year of freedom? I napped.

I took lots of naps. Most mornings I also slept in. And this is before I was even pregnant and had a real excuse for being a little bit tired. The real truth is that I was just lazy and unmotivated.

But I sure had big ideas of all thing thinks I would have liked to have done. I wanted to (re)learn French, I wanted to learn about photography, I wanted to learn tennis, there were about 53 movies I finally wanted to get around to watching, there were lots of books I wanted to read, flowers I wanted to plant, a home office I wanted to organize…so many things. And none of them done. But man, I sure made time for those naps.

Looking back on this time is incredibly embarrassing, but also eye-opening. I can do nothing to change the fact that I wasted all those days, weeks, and months, but I think it has helped me to see that all the small (and big) things I secretly (or openly) dream of doing, or even the not-so-fun stuff that just needs to (finally!) get done, I need to just do them.

No more regrets. I don’t want two more years to pass where I find myself with an almost three year old or find that another baby has joined the mix (making things I-can’t-even-imagine-how-much crazier) and be cursing myself that I didn’t do all those things now. Right now.