All Done Monkey! Welcome to our world…

All children are angels when they’re sleeping, but they are even more charming when they talk in their sleep, giving us a window into those magical minds of theirs.

One night recently my two year old son rolled over in bed and said firmly, “All done monkey.”  This from the child who once meowed in his sleep, so I already knew animals figured prominently in his dreams, but now that he is talking so much more, we have more clues about exactly what is going on in those dreams.

Or do we?  Was this a statement of fact (the monkey was all done!), or was he telling the monkey to hurry up and finish already? And what was the monkey up to, anyway?

Or, as an insightful friend pointed out, was he the monkey?  After all, Monkey is one of our many nicknames for him.

Regardless, it was one of those charming moments that make you (temporarily) forget the messy diapers, the temper tantrums, and the attempts to scale the bookshelves while balanced on tiptoes on the seat of the toy riding car that is a split second away from rolling in the opposite direction.

The magic in the madness.

My philosophy of motherhood, to the extent that I have one, is that it is akin to standing in the midst of a hurricane.  There is craziness and chaos all around you, but if you stand in just the right spot, there is also calmness and beauty.  I am far from knowing how to stand in that spot all the time (or even a majority of the time), but I am getting better at remembering that that spot is there.

The difficult times are when you are stuck in the biting wind and rain to where you can hardly see to put one foot in front of the other, and you forget that there are such things as calmness and beauty and, yes, magic.

But it is there, and this blog is dedicated to helping others (and myself) remember that center of calm and seek it out.  After all, that is why we started this journey to begin with, right?  Not a single mother I know thought that having a child would be easy, but sometimes we need gentle reminders that for all the sweat and tears and exhaustion, it is a magical ride.

So, until next time, all done monkeys!