The New Me

We've been home almost eight months. Just typing the previous sentence makes me nostalgic. So much has changed, but the biggest changes I've noticed are internal. My kids have always been themselves, they've just adapted to be with us in ways that I'm convinced is nothing but pure divine scheduling.
I'm more patient, more scattered and am always running late (which kills me most of the time). I use to be fifteen minutes early. Now if we show up at all and we're all dressed from head to toe we're deserving of an attendance badge. I am slowly but surely learning to let things go, to get lost in the moment and turn off my phone. I've kissed sleep adieu and have learned that the best luxury in life is a babysitter. I've fallen in love with the hubby all over again. I find myself remembering what I used to be doing on Friday nights and I just feel sorry for that poor girl.
Laundry piles in specific places and is found in the most obscure areas. Belly laughing is my favorite past time and sleeping in is now defined as an extra hit to the snooze. I find that I get to be myself the most when I'm dancing, singing, screaming while making dinner and watching R & A challenge each other to a dance off in the kitchen.
Le and I plot and plan and schedule date nights, only to find we spend our time together laughing over whatever ridiculousness occurred in our house that week.
I use to love having people over so I could display my current culinary accomplishments and now having people over is preempted by "is pizza OK?"
I use to love the latest fashions, shoes (still do) and budget my next designer jean purchase. Now, I judge every clothing purchase by how well it can disguise Cheeto stains and I while I longingly drool over my favorite 4 inch heels, the thought of chasing a two year old in them is enough to earn them a spot back in the closet.
And in the middle of this ridiculous, hilarious craziness, I find myself lost in pure bliss. But the highlight moment of the last eight months was last night. I'm always putting on music because we all love to dance and Michael Franti has a song called "Say Hey" that Alazar can groove to like nobody's business. Last night we had the shuffle on my music player going, my mom was over playing with Alazar, dinner was on the table and we were bandaging Ruta's arm when suddenly "Say Hey" started playing. Alazar stopped, looked for me and told my mom "Oh...Allalar down. Me and Mommy's song. We dance."
He ran over to me and asked for me to pick him up and we boogied to our song and I couldn't have been happy to have had on house shoes.

And yes, we did have a tent in our living room for a few days. Just because Ruta convinced her daddy that she didn't want to sleep in it outside but in our house, because the new version of Le is a total pushover.