consternation comes blue -eyed and strawberry blonde

Confession # 12 - I have a clandestine relationship with exhaustion

Sometimes it beckons to me while I am getting my children ready for bed, invitingly with it's promise of idle uselessness.
It sings to me softly whilst I read bedtime stories to my children. Or, after a long day of work it lulls me into a dreamy la-la land of quiet breezes floating over me as I lounge on a warm, sandy beach.  And I give in. Without a fight, I allow myself to drift. Sometimes I pretend to need something in another room just to breathe in the heady scent of it's quiet nothingness.  I can't seem to resist.
Often obnoxious laughter then shatters my quiet reverie " HEY MOM! You're ZONING again!!!"
Just 5 more minutes.

Other times,  it does not wait for my compliance. Like a formaldehyde cloth clamped over my nose and mouth or blunt force trauma to the head, it just takes me and makes me its victim. Suddenly, regardless of where I might be, or what I was in the middle of doing I am forced into unconciousness.  I awaken some time later disoriented, with my contact lenses glued to my eyeballs and hoping that I didn't drool on anything.

Ahh sweet exhaustion. No matter where I go, or how I try to hide from it, somehow it always finds me.
Courts me, woos me. Lures me into the all encompassing folds of its embrace.
But in the light of day, to any who inquire it shall be denied.  All is well here. All is well.

Confession # 13 -  (also known as life lesson # 3,192)  Consternation comes blue-eyed and strawberry blonde.

I didn't know that it was possible for consternation (also, exhaustion, frustration, exasperation, vexation) to come in such a cherubic package.  But I'm learning, oh I'm learning.

Consternation (unlike that which I have ever before experienced in my 31 years of life) has been visited upon me in the form of ocean blue eyes and a mop of strawberry blonde curls. With soft skin and arms so slight you're afraid to touch them lest you bruise or hurt them.  Arms soft and slight which are just long enough to enfold you in a loving embrace, and then you realize are also surprisingly strong enough to put you in a rear naked choke hold.

"Mommy. can't. breathe. Emma!... that's going to be a bad situation for you too, given that Daddy isn't home for another 6 hours... who's going to submit to your demands for cookies, juice, milk, raisins, crackers, tv, and outside play time until then if you finish me off? HUH? Let GO!!!!"

How can your heart break as your hear "I love you Mommy" whispered into your ear for no reason at all, and then break again as you hear ear piercing screaming in your ear during time out while you apologize for the umpteenth time to the parent of a child she has just sunk her teeth into?

How can your eyes brim with tears as she twirls and smiles showing you her pretty dress and then brim with tears in the aftermath of the headbutting she gave you that might just have given you a bloody nose because she didn't feel like brushing her teeth?
How can those emotions be possible within a 5 minute span?

It's because no one told me. And I didn't know.

Consternation can come blue eyed and strawberry blonde.
And can steal your heart inexplicably and make you love her like crazy in spite of it all.