School has started. Julia has dance and gymnastics. Max starts soccer this week. There’s a pick up line that I’m figuring out, and we’re up earlier than ever to make it for the first bell of Kindergarten. My kids are talking about Halloween and Santa and a Disney vacation we’ve been planning since before they were born, it seems like. And for the first time ever, there’s homework.
Some mornings I wake up, and I feel like I’ve lost myself in the big picture, that life is slipping past without me noticing or (more importantly) enjoying the details. I’m drowning in growing up responsible people, laying groundwork and building a career, reaching for that healthy label, but I’m missing something here. I come up for air before I realize that a new week has even past me by.
Then this morning, my daughter sat in my mother’s lap and just hugged her for a long quiet moment. Yesterday, I ate some amazing blueberry pancakes. And sometimes I lay in bed at night and hear my son on the monitor and my husband breathing next to me and my heart could burst with the ease and joy of it all.
In these seconds, I know that life is in the little things. Always.
The problem is, though, that I’m about to get busy with PTA and being a kindergarten room mom, playdates and yoga classes. As my calendar fills, I find that I lose track of all those special and important little moments. I forget to slow down and mark how happy I was to hold hands with my husband during a movie on the couch. Or the way Julia giggled when we found rhyming words over dinner. Or Maxwell’s pillow-creased face as he walks out of his bedroom in the mornings. Those are the things at get so easily overlooked, but thats what I want to hold onto most.
I hope these 30 Days will change that. In these 30 Days I’m going to record, mark, and celebrate those seconds. I’m going to make the small things matter, make those happy seconds what I remember, what I take away with me when I go.
I hope that recognizing the little things will be the reminder I need to reconnect with the joy, the gratitude, and the love that’s always present in my life.
I think I will join you in this month’s endeavor to remember the little moments. You are right that they have an importance all their own and are worth more than the “big” moments art times. In fact, when I look back at my childhood and try too decide which moments I would want to relive, I would choose climbing a tree or walking in mud over standing in line art an amusement park. Yup, it’s definitely the little things.
Anna, thank you for sharing your thoughts and beautifully constructed essay that hit home for me. I will join you for this 30 days! Each day, I will post an instagram with the hashtag#itsthelittlethings, help the kids journal one of their little things, or add the little things to our fall fun poster AND there will be days I am just glad to have made it through the day and will say a prayer of gratitude for that!