it is day 4 of single parenting and everyone is still alive and even quite functional. this only comes as a huge surprise seeing how I BARELY made it through Friday. My dear friend Kim can attest to it, i looked at my mini person SO many times on Friday and wondered what on earth i was supposed to do with her. whether is was her throwing an object at someone, yelling "NO!" in my face, taking 20 minutes to do a simple task like putting socks and shoes on, or slamming doors, i seriously wondered if someone had delievered an alien to my house. oh, and then the fact that she, my otherwise potty trained child, REFUSES to poop in the potty even when she is in immense amount of pain. it's awful and obviously signals some screw up on our part and led to a Friday night dinner debacle where we were packing up dinner at friends 5 minutes into the dinner because she kept crying that she needed to go and even with the dearest peer pressure refused to go without a pull-up. we were rescued by finding a single stranded diaper that she instantly went in and i can't finish the story because she'll kill me when she can read but let's just say that there was enough wine in the house to calm my nerves.

the thing is, i literally didn't know what to do over and over, and kept thinking. oh my goodness, is this my new life? oh no, oh no. i know how to manage the stress of crazed mornings and long days of highly stressful work and moments of totally asinine work situations, i can do that stress, but this one... oh no oh no.

a few days and a hundred more moments of bewilderment overlapped with some absolutely perfect grins, beautiful laughs, and a few "this is so fun momma" and i end the weekend with more energy that i started it with and a real tenderness about what lies ahead. i am absolutely petrified for one, and i really really may not be cut out for this (stephen actually ran a heck of a household), but i am also dumbfounded at how deeply i can love someone that i wanted to give away on Friday night. and i am aware of how much i have to learn.

with the grace that i can always expect from Kim, she treated my lostness lovelingly and it gave me the strength for the weekend. we ended the night with a bag full of prizes from my friend Janet and dinner out that perfectly sustained us and i think she actually went to sleep without calling me 200X after the first good night.

so really, its tenderness all around tonight as i think of my time with Hannah Mia over the last few days and what is ahead for us, as well as i think of tiny moments with words or not with friends like Kim and Janet that feel entirely irreplaceable and my heart kicks in a notch that i hope this depth of goodness can hold me over and continue to strengthen me.