Blessed

I often wonder how many of my friends living in close proximity to extended family take for granted the availability of someone to come watch their children for a night, a weekend, a sick day.

Some things I am not taking for granted right now:

• Friends with no children who love our children as much (possibly more) than we do.
• The courage of those friends to take on the twenty-four hour childcare challenge, times three, and then succeed.
• An infant who, in just five weeks of life, has given me confidence that he can be away from mama for twenty-four hours, and then prove me right by being as good as I could have expected.
• Children who can be bribed into good behavior and then totally satisfied with gas station candy as a reward.
• A husband who knew exactly what his vain wife needed after forty-six weeks of physically feeling like poo: an excuse to dress up and wear cute shoes; a hotel; a couple meals I didn’t have to cook or clean up (or entertain children in the midst of); a bed I didn’t have to make; an open bar; eighteen varieties of bite-sized desserts.
• A ridiculous Hotwire deal on the Hilton, the free upgrade to a room on the top “executive” floor, and then a comped breakfast when we mentioned it was our first night away from our new baby.
• Coming home to a put-together house right at nap-time and joining two of my children in that pursuit.

Sometimes it is the little things that are actually really really big things.

And we are blessed.