love cookie

"Mommy, do you want to have your love cookie now?"

My son is standing in front of the warm cookies, his back facing me and his hand hovering over the heart-shaped cookie. On a whim, he asked me to make some leaf and heart-shaped cookies with the cookie cutter I received as a wedding favour a few days ago. He had been itching to use it since he first saw it laying on the counter beside my purse.

When he asked, I was cuddled up on the couch listening to a favourite lullaby cd of mine and reading through the Time Traveller's Wife. Daughter was fast asleep upstairs, and moments ago, son was playing sesame street games on the computer. A rare moment of quiet in a house whose walls are usually vibrating with high-pitched Velociraptor-like shrieks, barks of a collie chasing my two-year old's stroller as she zooms-zooms her way around the house in a high speed chase of her older brother. So here stands my son at the foot of the couch, looking at me with his blue-green eyes, already starting to vibrate up and down in anticipation of my answer.

The truth is, a week ago I would of probably made up some excuse about me not having the right ingredients for the sugar cookies in a desperate attempt to bypass the layers of flour and sugar on the floor, providing the perfect dusting to track his little boy footprints and a sinkload of dirty baking dishes (only a quarter of these dishes used by me).

But as of late, things have been different. After two years of being a SAHM, I think I am finally settling into it. I am slowly starting to separate myself from my own competitive self, from my own brainwashing, from my own expectations. Lately, I haven't been as compulsive (it's a big step for me) about the countertops being crumb-free, being on-top of the laundry, or even what time it is once we sit down for supper. I am (embarrassingly) finally starting to get that my kids don't care about housekeeping or even if their clothes are clean. And while I am a LONG way from being okay with my husband taking the kids to the park in their pajamas (that's a story for another time), I am starting to lower my expectations of myself, and in doing so, life has become so much fuller than I ever could have expected.

So, yes my little boy, I will have that love cookie now...maybe even two.