Today their enthusiasm is suffocating. Endless questions, snuggles, and even giggles wear me out. A trip to the North Pole is laced with so many requests for milk and just one snack that the ten minute game of pretend feels like an entire day.
Is it Thursday yet? It must be.
I try to take a stolen minute for myself, but get caught and as I'm dragged back to the North Pole, or China, or wherever else we've paddled or ridden a train to this afternoon, I stomp my feet like a two year old and throw my head back, stifling moans and groans of boredom.
It's the routine.
Even baking cookies has become routine. I believe it's time to hang up the apron.
When things become routine, I stomp and yell and want out.
I dream of luxurious trips to the gym to walk on the treadmill, of afternoons spent at coffee shops with books, friends, or both. Of dropping my kids off at school and having the day to make less routine.
We have to make it less routine. There's no waiting for then. There is only now. That's what I tell myself.
So I walk back to the North Pole where I listen as Santa's Workshop is explained to me by a three year old, filled with animation as he tells me the part about the elves. I'm climbed on by a one year old who thinks she needs to be close enough to somehow get into my skin. Literally. But her cheeks are soft and she smells of soap and sweetness.
I wait with bated breath as my husband walks through the door. We sit down and consume our carefully prepared dinner {please don't make me count how many nights in a row I've made dinner... } and I wail inside. Screaming with frustration as a child climbs onto me, not able to give me enough room to bring spoon to mouth. Suffocating.
After dinner I find a reason to leave for a few minutes. Practically beg to take the keys and get some fresh air. I wonder around the grocery store, a trip for $5 worth of Ibuprofen turns into a $30 grocery run. But the trip is out of the norm. A way to break free for a moment. To walk at my own pace. To live free from little, and big, tugs at the knees.
On the ride home I listen to NPR and think grown up thoughts for a few minutes.
And then it's less. And I'm more.
It's going to be okay.
Tomorrow, somehow, we will break routine. Live on the edge, bake brownies instead of cookies. Something.
And I won't ask if it's Thursday yet.