Happy (almost) Father's Day, Papa!

I spent some time out in the garden tonight while John was putting the kids to bed. He's put them to bed almost every night this week and I am SO grateful for this gift he is giving both me and them.

The gift to me is time alone to write, garden, read, dream, shower -- whatever I am most needing.

The gift to our children is that this increase in creative time/space is helping me to feel less scattered and less distracted and less restless and a little more excited and present and patient and go with the flow-ish during the (sometimes really long) days when I am home with them.

That's not to say I don't still have moments where I just want to scream or run away (or both) but that feels normal and healthy as the mother of two young children.

What it thankfully, does NOT feel like is hours that turned into days that turned into weeks of feeling really sad and frustrated and stuck and not knowing how to un-stick myself, that I felt all too often as a new mother.

I am so grateful for all the ways that I have grown as a person and mother in the last several years and that my husband has encouraged me and supported me and made space for this growth.

And I'm incredibly grateful that he and our children have developed special evening and weekend routines -- like basketball on the front porch and trains in their room and Papa's pancakes and visiting the children's museum -- that are all their own!