In one hour

In theory, you can do a lot in an hour. Sometimes an hour whizzes by. How many times have you thought, "Has it been an hour already?!" Other times it feels more like an eternity... My mind just recalled the fact that in less than one hour after pulling into the hospital parking lot to give birth to our second child, he was all swaddled up and sleeping peacefully in my arms.

I put Liv down for a nap this afternoon and had grand plans for what I wanted to accomplish in an hour. I had laundry to put away, bathrooms to clean, (not to mention two kids to entertain), etc., etc. I got an unexpected call from my folks and I launched into a familiar monologue about how there was too much to do, and how I was feeling overwhelmed by this, that, and the other. Tosh had been standing next to me (playing with our measuring tape) and a couple of minutes after he left the room, I heard a noise downstairs. It was one of those "uh-oh" noises so I ran down to see what had happened. I found that Tosh had broken his brother's magnifying glass and was gleefully examining some of the glass pieces in his hands! Thank heaven he was not hurt. I grabbed him and put him in the family room (we were both barefoot, of course). The glass had broken into just a few pieces and I was very careful to sweep and clean our tile to make sure I had gotten it all. Just as I finished, I grabbed an empty baby food jar to rinse out and I dropped it! Seriously? Unlike the magnifying glass, the jar shattered into tiny little pieces (still barefoot here), and so I spent the next however long cleaning this up while trying to keep my shadow (Tosh) out of the room.

As soon as I was finished I discovered that Tosh had grabbed my camera and was carrying it over to me saying, "I broke it!" Somehow he managed to jam the lens so it would not zoom or close. I set him at our bar and gave him some Play-Doh to play with so I could examine the camera. I wasn't really all that happy at this point, but was able to "fix" the lens although the back is all scratched up and I'm guessing he dropped it while he was taking photos because I found some evidence...

Relief swept over me that my camera still works, and then I looked up to find Tosh spreading tiny little pieces of green Play-Doh all over the kitchen floor and laughing (a devilish) "Wwwaaahaha" all the while. Okay, so maybe I didn't capture his laugh exactly right, but he was pretty happy with his naughty-ness. I spent the remainder of "My Hour" supervising a two-year-old in "time-out," and then we counted every little piece of Play-Doh that he was required to pick up. We counted 96 pieces (some of them hardly visible), in case you were wondering.

And that my friends, filled ONE hour of my day today.

In church on Sunday, a wise woman said that, "Feeling overwhelmed occurs when we don't believe we have the skills to handle a situation..." or something to that effect. I started the beginning of this particular hour by describing myself as "overwhelmed" to my parents. Although I finished the hour nowhere close to what I was hoping to accomplish, I did NOT feel as overwhelmed when I realized the following: I know how to sweep, I know how to push hard on a camera lens, I know how to set a timer, and I know how to count to 96.