twenty seconds on a tuesday

it was a grumpy day.  not just any grumpy day - one of those super, duper, extra grumpy days where everybody just needs to go back to bed and start over.  unfortunately, only mommy seems to recognize the wisdom in that ;-)

 

i'm the first to admit, i was the grumpiest of all, not helped by the 'MOMMMMY... GET UP!!' alarm clock with no snooze button.  (this actually happens relatively rarely on weekdays, to be fair.  the girls are not generally early risers, though they have been more of late.)  what's worse than being rudely awakened?  awakening to a steady stream of whiiiiininnnng.  groan.   i sent chloe back to her room so grumpily that lucy started crying just listening.  not my best mama moment, to say the least.

 

by midmorning, i decided we all needed a change of scene, so we drove down to Cabin John Regional Park.  now that is a playground!  i wish i had gotten some better pictures, but it was all i could do to locate the girls as they explored at least ten different types of play areas. 

jumping is the new national pastime, didn't you know?

 

 

after we made the rounds, we hopped on the train:




 

i had to work pretty hard to keep the girls awake on the ride home.  just as we were finishing up lunch, i was putting away dishes and they started to rattle.  given our neighbor's complaints, my first thought was that someone was refinishing the floors upstairs.  but the whole building was shaking.. i opened the shades to see if someone was jackhammering outside.  right about when i started to get suspicious and move protectively towards the girls, it stopped.  'what is it, mommy?  what is it?'  it wasn't until i got a text from ben - 'hope you got outside' - that i replied definitively, 'that was an earthquake.'

twenty seconds. 

T minus 5:  trying to keep the residual morning grumpies out of my reminders to the girls to finish their lunch. 

T minus 0:  annoyance - who is jumping around and shaking things?

T plus 10:  puzzlement

T plus 15:  enter mama bear.  how do i protect these two disobedient, irritating, infinitely precious children?

everything is an opportunity.  there are plenty of moments that remind us of our fragility.  we can accept the gift and think deeply and carefully.  or we can brush it off as the day's curiosity and be no more changed than a man looking in a mirror who walks away and forgets what he looks like (1).

epilogue
ben suggested that we stay outside for awhile, so i grabbed my handy dandy diaper bag with its half day's worth of little girl essentials and told chloe to grab some books (as if she needed to be told).

we continued working on our vertical:

and left no doubts about what a certain 3-year-old would grab in an emergency ;-)

(1) - james 1:23-24