Snot, So Long Summer and Soaking it all in.

Sorry I have been MIA for a week or so...Say and I have had colds and I have been on snot patrol for the better part of a week now.  Do you have your "thing" as a Mom that you just cannot deal with?  Like dirt under the nails, or messy matted hair post nap?  Well mine is a crusty, booger infested nose.  I CAN.NOT.HANDLE.IT!!!  I try to let it go if we are just here in the house and not going anywhere, but inevitably I fixate on the nose crust until it is the only thing I can see...and I have to go in for the extraction.  Now I know most kids do not appreciate it when people pick at them or try and wipe their face etc., but my child wiggs out.  She thrashes around and really goes all cage fighter on me when I go on booger patrol.  But I am powerless to the urge to extract that booger bat from it's cave.  When my mission has been successfully completed...I feel a sense of well being.  A peace comes over me and all is right with the world.  Say on the other hand looks like she wants to jump on me like a spider monkey.  I have no idea why I have been going on and on about snot for so long here and I apologize for monopolizing the bulk of this post with booger banter...but I am just trying to keep it real yo.  There's lots of nose pickin' goin on up in here.

So I was at the grocery store a day or two ago and guess what I saw displayed on an end cap or two...Halloween candy!!!  Huh?  It is 103 degrees outside and you want me to think about candy corn???  It's just unnatural.  Wasn't the 4th of July just like last week? Oh my gravy....did I just say that?  This is how it starts.  It starts with little comments about how fast the time flies by...and the next thing you know your talking about your life alert alarm that your kids got you for Christmas and your fancy new "Safety Tub" that you're having installed so you don't take a spill and break a hip.  Pass me the Geritol with a side of Depends please...

I have been seeing all sorts of pictures this week of kids first days of school and they just warm my heart.  I LOVED the first day of school...even in law school I would get giddy preparing for the first day of class.  It's something about the cleanness of it all.  New clothes, new supplies (oh the supplies...don't get me started on my love of the supplies...I sometimes wish I was still in school just so I could buy new school supplies.  I never met a Trapper Keeper I didn't like), new classes, new teachers...it's like a new lease on life every August.  I miss it for myself...but I am seriously starting to panic just thinking about sending my little tiny muffin off to school someday.  I'm a special kind of crazy I know, as she will not be embarking on this right of passage for 5 more years...but I just get scared sometimes that I am not "soaking it all up" you know?  I mean that is all you ever hear veteran Mom's say..."Oh it all goes by so fast...make sure you soak it all up."  How do you do that?  I mean there are moments when I really try to be so present in the moment and try and etch it into my mind so I don't forget what it was like to hold her, and rock her to sleep.  How her hair smelled, how she makes these sweet sighs at night when I hold her before bed and that is how I know she is really tired.  I sit there and close my eyes and think..."I have to remember this.  I will never have this again with her. Soak it in...soak it in."  But I don't know if I am...it scares me.  It's a lot of pressure. I'm babbling now.  Who am I kidding...I've been babbling for the last fifteen minutes.  But at least I'm not talking about snot anymore right?

OK...going to check on my baby girl...and look down into her crib and hear her snot filled nose snorting through her sleep...and soak it all in.