Making (Toddler) Time

Leaving the house makes me sweat. Don’t get me wrong, as someone who is tied down to the house most days of the week with a two-year-old and five-month-old, I enjoy breaking free of the cabin fever I often suffer by staying home. However, it is a significant ordeal to get packed, prepared and ready to leave. Regardless of how rigorously I prepare the night before, when I go out with the kids in the morning, the unexpected (which can always be expected), can be an industrial size wrench in the wheel. I can have the diaper bag stocked, lunch-box filled with nutritious snacks and drinks, clothes for the kids and myself neatly picked out and set aside all the night before… and still miss my mark for leaving the house by an entire half an hour or more.
Before we depart, I need to:
Have my toddler sit on the potty. (She sets her own timetable for this)
Change diapers.
Let the dog and cat outside and inside.
Feed the kids. (Have you ever tried to rush a toddler with breakfast or an infant with nursing? Not possible.)
Change more diapers.
Brush teeth. (“I can do it myself, Mommy!”)
Dress kids.
Get toddler to put down toys and have her hair brushed, and/or follow toddler around with hairbrush as she is playing with toys hoping to get a few strokes in.
Get baby in travel car seat.
Get baby back out of car seat because he is screaming.
Nurse baby again.
Change my clothes and baby’s clothes due to additional, unexpected spit-up.
Put baby back in travel car seat.
Put shoes on toddler.
Microwave a cup of coffee for myself to take along as breakfast.
Have toddler try to use the potty before we leave.
Grab keys, cell phone, bags, along with whatever stuffed animals my daughter has chosen to join us for the car ride.
Change my toddler’s clothes due to potty accident.
Let the dog and cat outside and inside.
Set house alarm and lock-up.

By the time I am actually stepping onto my back porch, bearing two kids, a diaper bag, lunch tote and a travel mug of coffee, I am almost always late, certainly sweaty and most unfortunately impatient.
It is difficult for me not to feel rushed and annoyed when I have been nearly ready to leave the house four or five times before having to leap back ten steps and try again. Like rolling the die in Monopoly and never getting to pass Go and collect $200, because you keep landing on the Go Straight to Jail square.
The other morning, I was trying to rush through the routine to get to a friend’s house for a playdate. My daughter was taking her time as God gave it to her to take. I was trying to cheer her on to go faster so we could see her friend (and so that we could take advantage of the fact that my son was finally asleep in his car seat and if I was lucky, he would use the entire car ride as his nap time).
Suddenly, my two-year-old, who happened across a plain brown paper lunch bag, asked if she could make a puppet for her friend we were going to visit.
“We don’t have time…” I answered hastily.
“Sure we do, mama… (hands me a clock) its right here.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I held the toy clock in my hands. If only it was that easy to “make time.” But then I thought, well, maybe it is. Perhaps we do have time, and it is right here, right in front of us always to do with as we chose. In the state of anxiety and aggravation that I self-created, I found myself in too much of a hurry. Through my child’s innocent concept of having time, I decided to take a deep breath and remember that God tells us to wait.
“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” -Psalm 27:14

The paper bag puppet is hanging proudly on our friend’s refrigerator.