Today

Today was rough around the edges. Today had moments so sweet, I truly felt my heart was going to break. Today I was so tired. Today was probably the closest day to what our life is going to be like in just weeks.

For starters, I am just plain roasting and plentifully seasoned with allergies and sinus headaches. It's hot (nope, no AC at our house yet) and tack on expecting a baby in 5 weeks or less (or God help me more) and all of my emotional and physical being is practically on fire. I find the last weeks of pregnancy to be the hardest and this time I have a toddler who has to witness me at my lowest level of mamahood, like today. Well, actually I'll start with yesterday. We went to Target. After an hour and a half of shopping at a snail's pace, Theo getting less patient and irritated sitting in the cart, I then made him sit and behave while I made my way back to the magazine aisle and read US magazine, not yet ready to part with the luxury of being in an air conditioned space. He sat unusually quiet with his head down, kicking at the cart in a totally kickin' tires sort of way. Seeing him like that, at my expense, was something I hope will fade from my mind although something tells me it's going to haunt me for a while.

Now for today. Today I am officially exhausted. And when it comes to Theo I feel primal, like a mama cat who's kittens keep pawing at her and she kind of throws them off, irritable and in need of her own space. Almost always I am able to calmly and patiently deal with Theo when he's being trying. Today I was short and my voice was harsh.

At one point Theo was wanting a fort so I made him one. Then he started crying and telling me it needed a roof. I made the roof. He kept standing up and the roof would come down around his head. He began sobbing and fell into a heap on the floor, irritated that the whole thing kept collapsing and not totally understanding why. Any normal day and I would've gotten on the ground with him and calmly talked out the whole situation until we both came up with a solution that would work. Today in a not so nice tone, I told him that if he couldn't get control he was going to have to go to his room and there would be no forts for quite some time.

Sigh.

And here's where we shift gears to the happy, albeit, eye-opening part of the day.

Theo picked himself up off the floor, snot dripping off his upper lip, and walked over to me. He wrapped his arms around me and held me in the sweetest hug I think I've ever felt in my whole life. At the exact same time coming from the TV was a recording of Michael Jackson singing Human Nature. My eyes were soaked and stinging.

In that moment, I realized that for him life is a lot like that fort right now, the roof coming down around his little world that he knows and loves so much~and he doesn't even get how much that roof will be coming down around him so soon. And me, during the whole fort thing, well I was folding baby laundry and having massive acid reflux and thinking...Oh my God, this is how life is about to get for us~full of change, drunk on fatigue and hung over with little glimpses of the day getting brighter.

Our little chicky is so close to making his way into this world. And Theo is going to have to learn what I think will be his hardest most frustrating lesson yet~that he will have to share his two very best friends. And the roof might come down around us more than once while we all figure it out.

Tonight, as I sat and watched Theo eating Dibs after his cool bath and looked at the stacks of clothes for chicky on the couch, all of us wrapping up this exhausting hot summer day, I realized that I am going to bed tired and hot but full. I am full with this wondrous baby inside of me. Full of Theo in my heart. Pretty sure that I, too, will be able to share my love for Theo with our new babe and absolve myself of these rough days, for realistically I'm sure there will be more to come.

Mostly tonight, I'm understanding that my life is getting bigger.