Thrivival Mode

I'm spent.

I just finished filing our taxes and now my brain is fried.

And now my mini-Hawkeye wants to be mini-Iron Man and can't believe I'm taking so long to take his costume off.

"Why is this so taking so long?"
                        he asks, in a little whining three year old voice.

Because taxes take a long time.
             Deal with it.

But two thumbs up for me . . . it's not even April!  Perhaps a new record!


I just read in a parenting magazine (well, Parenting magazine, actually)

         "when you have two in diapers, the family's day-to-day life is more about survival than about enrichment."  (March 2012, page 23)

I'm not sure if they mean literally in diapers (which we qualify for . . . thanks to my almost 3 1/2 year old who yells at the top of his lungs: "I'm not gonna use the potty!  I'm gonna go in my diaper!"  Go for it, kid.)

                  or if they mean having your children less than two years apart.  (which mine are actually two years and two weeks apart, so I guess I don't technically qualify at all.)

Anyway . . . survival more than enrichment . . .

I've been thinking about that statement the past few days.
       
              Am I just in survival mode?
     
                        Like the bikini-clad amazon women who fight for their lives on Survivor?  (I reference the very first season, since that's the only one I remember . . . remember how they all shared the same toothbrush?   Huh . . .)

             Am I changing diapers and barely potty training and feeding and cleaning up and dressing and undressing and bathing and carrying these little ones
                                   without time and space for enrichment?

Or is enrichment deep in our days . . .

             through child-directed drawing and art, dance parties, songs to sing and instruments to pound, floors to sweep and tables to set, books to read and throw and chew . . .

    Maybe instead of survival mode,

                                       we mothers are in thrivival mode.  

        (Get it?  Thrive, not just survive? . . . Thrivive, rhymes with revive?)

Thrivive might be a holy combination of revive and survive and thrive.  A trifecta of mothering awesomeness
             made possible not by our own selves,
                          but by the one who fills us  --
                                   an outpouring of love and grace
                                            so that we can spill out on others.

      (I'm talking about Jesus, of course.)


Here's to Thriviving!

Cheers!


(now I just have to figure out potty training.)