Congratulations, you have arrived at your destination

I've probably said this before, but I'm not a baby person. I thoroughly enjoyed my own babies, and I made a conscious effort to soak up all the newborn cuddles I could get with Sadie, because I knew she would be my last. But, I'm not that "OMG, a baaaaaaaby!" person. Yes, for about 0.1 nanoseconds, when I see a newborn, I wish I had one to cuddle. But then I snap out of it and think "no way, I don't miss that AT ALL." My ute is perfectly fine with it's retired status.

You know that feeling when you finally finish something you've been working on forever? That point where you feel like you've been holding your breath, but now you can take one giant breath and the weight of the world just lifts off your shoulders?

I'm there. I.am.so.there.

I'm in looooooove with Kindergarten.

I'm excited and giddy when I wake up in the morning, because my son is now in Kindergarten.

Do you know why? Because I finally feel like I am the mom I always wanted to be. Sadie naps almost the entire time Ben is at school. Sometimes we'll have an hour for "just us girls", but for the most part, this is her naptime now. I have almost 3 hours to sew, to actually CLEAN my house, do laundry, drink HOT coffee, and just sit in the sun room breathing in fresh, cool fall air.

Congratulations, you have arrived at your destination. We'll call it..............HEAVEN.

And when Ben gets off the bus? Sadie and I are well-rested and can enthusiastically listen to him talk about his day. We talk, we do homework, we play. I get to be THAT mom now. I get to be the mom I fantasized about while my sleep-deprived self sat up night after night nursing a starving child every 2 hours. And I'm the best mom I've been. Well, at least it feels that way. When I'm tired and grumpy, I just feel like a big mom failure, but now that things have fallen into place and I'm getting things accomplished, I just FEEL like I'm such a better mom. It's not as much the break I needed, as the feeling like I was achieving more in my day than keeping my children from killing each other.

I may regret saying this in the middle of the tween/teen years, but, I like older kids. :-)