Thankful

It’s been an entire week but I’m still recovering from Thanksgiving -- the hustle-and-bustle of going to three different family celebrations; the resulting three Thanksgiving meals; and the long (although very much appreciated) nearly five-day weekend. My work let us out at noon on Wednesday and we of course got Thursday and Friday off as paid holidays. I enjoyed every second of getting to spend time with my family, but boy do those long weekends make for a tough Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And today was kind of rough too. How long do I get to ride this out?

Our holiday was very enjoyable, although very, very different for me than it had been in years past. This was the first Thanksgiving since I have had children (nearly five years) that I didn’t have at least one of the girls literally pulling and tugging on me the entire time. Up until this year there had always been bottles to give, diapers to change, tears to wipe, or needy babies or shy toddlers to coddle. No, that doesn’t sound like fun. In fact, at the time all of that exhausted me, but it also gave me something to do at these gatherings. Like my daughter, I can be shy around those I do not know very well. Ever since I had children, however, I never had to be concerned with that anymore. My kids kept me too busy and distracted to be worried or concerned with what to say to whom.

Not this year. In years past, as I stated, the girls clung to me at extended family gatherings. This year, my outgoing two-year-old just isn’t a needy infant anymore and my four-year-old has broken out of her shell. At my husband’s brothers’ Thanksgiving gathering, my girls have six or seven young cousins who attend, all between the ages of three and six, most of whom are girls. They all just had a wonderful time running around, playing together, being cute. Neither of my girls found their way into my lap all night.

I found myself sitting in a chair, trying to figure out what the heck to do with myself. It was almost as if my girls had already flown the coop and I was an empty-nester. Silly, I know. My girls are only two and four; they aren’t going off to college. It’s just at that Thanksgiving celebration, in that moment in the chair, I came to the sudden realization of how much my girls have changed in just this past year. It is a huge adjustment when you have spent your existence catering to the needs of your little ones and you start to see the very first signs of that need beginning to wither away. Don’t get me wrong, a big part of me is happy to have a small bit of freedom back, but another part of me can’t help but feel sad. Poor Laur. Queue the violins.

That said, I am so proud of how much my girls have grown in the past year and the strides they have made. Recognizing their growth and watching them start to come into their own motivates me to do the same. To find myself again. The individual. The woman. The wife. Who is also a mom. So of the many, many things for which I am thankful this year, I am thankful for that.