Normal

Life has been rather quiet here lately. Lots of reading, playing, catching up on housework, and going on walks to enjoy the pleasant end-of-summer weather. (HOW is it September tomorrow?) And honestly, I'm loving it. I like our routine. I like not thinking about packing to go somewhere. I like that I'm not stressed about all the places we need to be. I like soaking up the time with Grace. She's growing up so quickly, and I feel that time is just slipping through my fingers. I just had to go through her clothes again to pack away the ones that she's already grown out of... clothes that, such a short time ago, I was so excited for her to be big enough to wear. I know there will be days, even in the very near future, where I'll be tired of "doing nothing" and wish for some exciting, interesting thing to happen. I'll be waiting for anything out of the ordinary, something to break up the monotony of our everyday life. And it will come, these things always do. Friends and family visit us, we visit them, Joe's work will require crazy hours to meet a deadline, the holidays, birthdays, and weddings come and go. We'll thrive on it at first, and then I'll inevitably think, "oh, if only things would calm down again! If only things would be quiet and normal!"

So here's to normal. Here's to the predictability of laundry, the never-ending stack of dishes, toys scattered across the living room, reading the same three books over and over because those are the ones Grace brought me today, to the sameness of life right now. Here's to remembering that some people would give anything to have life be normal again, just to take a break and breathe a bit easier. Here's to finding joy in completing mundane little tasks that come with the territory of my vocation as a wife and mother. Normal doesn't give me exciting things to post on Facebook, but it also means that my life hasn't been flipped upside down by stays in the hospital, earthquakes, or hurricanes. Normal is refreshingly the same, comfortable like my favorite pair of sweatpants. Today, I'm enjoying normal.