On Staying & Going

I leave for Paris tonight and today will be a day of scrambling to get ready. The truth is I feel overwhelmed at the prospect. It doesn't help matters - at all - that Little Girl whimpered on and off all night. My exhaustion from a night of broken sleep is only adding to my anxiety, but I'm a few sips into my coffee and feeling better already. The reality is that there is a really profound part of me that doesn't want to leave my little girls. I look at the picture above - of the three of them on the way to school yesterday - and I smile and kind of wish that I wasn't going.

But I am going. And I am really excited, too. This will be a nutty day of errands and organization, but I will do it and I will heft my suitcase into the back of a taxi this evening and go. At the airport, I will settle in and read a book and have a bite and then I will board a big plane. And my palms will sweat and I will feel my heart race, but we will take off and I will be fine. And then I will be in Paris. Paris!

I'm not sure there's any important point to this post. I think, more than anything, I continue to be amazed by how hard it is to be a mom and how hard it is to take time off from being a mom. I want to stay and I want to go. I find this interesting; my simultaneous desire to be tethered to my tiny things and to escape their orbit for a day or two.

Anyway, off to sip some more coffee from my favorite meow-meow mug and ponder all of this before wrangling the three chickadees above toward school. It will be a good day. It will be a good weekend. I know this. I do. Now it's your turn to tell me that it's a really wonderful thing for me to get away, to spend time with my man, that my sweet trio will be beyond happy (with Grammy, Dad-Dad, Moo Moo & Nanny!) while I am gone.

{Hope you all have a great weekend. I will be back next week with stories and pictures. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Instagram as I will be snapping oodles of pics of my trip. I am newly obsessed with Instagram and am trying to convert everyone!}