Reality Check

I'm coming to the end of my first full week home alone with both kids everyday. Talia is in the middle of her daycare transition, so she's been home full time. At the beginning of the week, I wasn't sure how things would go - we had a full week planned, including lots of "firsts" for Mommy to handle with both babes. But it went great. I have 2 wonderfully easy babies, although each can have their moments, and the week has flown by. I had a great time being out and about with the kiddies, Talia is becoming such a chatterbox and interacts more and more everyday, and of course it's a big deal when Declan actually keeps his eyes open for a few minutes. I loved watching Talia being "big sister" - always eager to help and run to "brutter's" side whenever he makes a peep.

Our outing this morning lasted much longer than I had anticipated, so that sort of threw off our day. I have a mental list of things I want to get done each day, and after Talia got up from her afternoon nap approx. 1 hour earlier than usual, I was pretty behind on my list. So after I changed her diaper, and she ran over to the rocking chair and asked me to sit down ("Down! Down!" while signing please and tapping the chair) for the 1 millionth time today, I said "Sorry honey, Mommy doesn't have time for that right now." And that's when I saw this face:

. I think I actually captured the moment her heart broke (or at least got bruised.) And it instantly hit me: this year of mat leave is for me to spend with Declan and Talia. I have many friends who don't have the benefit of mat leave, and have to go back to work a few months (or in some cases, a few weeks) after having a baby. So sure, I didn't get as much done today as I had originally planned. But did that really mean I didn't have 5 minutes to sit with my daughter in our side-by-side rocking chairs while rocking like a crazy person and singing "Rock, rock, rockin' in our rockin' chairs, we don't care if we don't get nowhere!"? I don't think so.

Neither does she.