The other day Elle hung this up on her door:

Translation: Please put money for Ethiopia.

This makes my heart swell with pride. I love my girls and that they give and have a heart for giving is amazing for me!

I love this picture of her. Her face is just like when she was a baby. Serious.

Once upon a time.  A long time ago. I was an idealistic mother who couldn’t wait for her daughter to grow up and read all the books her mother loved so we could sit around and talk about them together.  I made a list of books I wanted her to read, categorized by age appropriateness and reading level.

Fast forward ten years later and some of the list has been read by Meg.  I have discovered a few things along the way.  One is that Meg is Meg, not me. Two is kids like to talk, a lot, but not about things you want to talk about.  Three is that Meg has given me my own list of books to read.

While Little Woman and Little House on the Prairie will always hold dear to my heart I have fallen in love Harry Potter.  I recently read a fun book entitled Schooled.  I read The Hunger Games trilogy and am discussing it with Meg as she completes it herself. The 39 Clues series is on my reading list as she really enjoyed them.

She likes adventure, mystery, strange languages and hard to pronounce names.  I like history, clean and fun romance and moral courage throughout the pages.

Watching her read a book reminds me of me at her age as I would read all day long, switching positions (Chair. Floor. Hanging upside down off couch.) just as she does now.  She will read for hours until a book is done, just like I can. She gets twitchy if she doesn’t have a book, like me.

Having a child is such a mystery. She is so Hubby. She is so me.

I’ll read what she recommends any day!

It is true that I accomplished much. I’ve also gone hours without talking, skipped meals without realizing it and watched movies I had been wanting to see thanks to Movies On-Demand (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Secret Life of Bees are sooooooo worth watching). My laundry is caught up, I am ready for this coming week’s Girl Scout Day camp. Heck, I even put up my tomato stakes for the tomato plants the kids are growing with my mom! A lot got done, including the shelf-paper I have been wanting to line my pantry and bathroom with.

My mind also became numb. I saw how easy it would be to become a hermit. While I went shopping and had dinner with family, my urge to come home and be alone was strange. Almost like someone had clicked a pause button so I could rest.

I didn’t go in the girl’s rooms. I had planned on giving them a good cleaning, but it was to hard to go in there. It would cause me to think about them and worry. I didn’t need to worry. Hubby is perfectly capable of caring for the kids. The girls do a good job at taking care of themselves for the most part. Plus they are such tattle-tails trouble doesn’t stay a secret for long!

It has been a long year for me as a mom. I sometimes craved being alone so much I felt guilty. Happiness is what I am now feeling, because I do miss them so much. I miss the mess, the noise and the laughing.

In a few short hours they will all come bounding into the house, smelly with dirty clothes and talking all at once with stories of the trip! We will have baths and I’m sure I’ll be watching videos and seeing pictures very soon. My pause button will go back to fast-forward and I will cringe at the dirty laundry. My life will be normal again and I am ever so grateful!

Of course Hubby was dearly missed as well. He is the anchor of my ship called chaos.