Thank Goodness for the Moments

At one point last evening, I really thought I would be writing one of my pity party blog posts this morning. If it could go wrong last night, it was, the kids were whiny, Brad was away, and I was near mommy-meltdown. I would tell you what was running through my head but I really try to avoid that kind of language on the blog. It was not nice. I wrote a while back about Glennon Melton (one of my favorite bloggers) and her philosophy of carpe kairos--the little moments when the whole diem is going to hell in a hand basket. Around dinner time, I was praying for any kairos moment because I couldn't even carpe 30 seconds at a time!

The three of us made the trek to Issa's ballet class, which should have been a sign. As soon as we turned out of the neighborhood, I realized the rest of the town was without power. Which meant I got to navigate five stop lights at rush hour with no power and a village full of idiots who don't know how this works. By the time we got to ballet, I was thrilled to see the power was back on...and then devastated to hear they were just calling because they had sent everyone home and closed the studio because they had been told power wasn't going to be back on for until 8. Needless to say, I now had two very unhappy kids and a particularly disappointed Issa. We were supposed to have leftovers for dinner, but we decided maybe we should stop at McDonald's on the way home and play on the playground since the power was back on...except they close for an additional thirty minutes after the power comes back on to prep. Now the kids were very unhappy and clearly it was all my fault.

By the time we got home and I warmed up dinner, we were all on each others' last nerves. It was ugly. No matter how much Pollyanna-ing I did they weren't having it. I finally launched into the "Do you know how many people would trade their problems for yours" speech. It's always so helpful.

Then...magic. I sent them up for showers, which gave me five minutes to reframe and them some time to chill. By the time we came back downstairs, I had happy children. Issa and I finished creating everything she needed for her science poster, and she was actually laughing. She made her first line graph and was elated.

And...we have triops! We finally just requested new eggs since our old batch seemed to be duds (after three failed attempts), and the new ones hatched yesterday. We watched them swim and eat and life was good. There were dinosaurs in the house.

I was still exhausted, but we had finally found our moments. I tucked happy children into bed, and all was right with the world again. I'll take it.