Mommy Yoga - Living gracefully in the chaos.

Every once in a while I realize I'm hyperventilating. Not a lot. Just a little.
The baby woke up early, the husband had to go to work and I didn't have a plan for breakfast and the coffee took just a little longer than I thought it would and the baby is crying and the kitchen is dirty and I need to do twenty things in the next five minutes.
And I panic. Just a little.

Sometimes the idea of peace and quiet and grace seems so far removed from my present toddler-saturated reality that I think I will never be able to breathe deeply again.

I see my chubby got-pregnant-before-recovering-from-the-last-baby tummy and my face devoid of makeup because, really, who has time for that? and I'm juggling a toddler who insists on being held RIGHT NOW and a whisk and something that is about to burn and I feel the farthest possible thing from graceful or lovely.

I think of the days when I took 45 minutes in the morning to drink a cup of tea and do yoga to soft piano music, and I just want to laugh. Or cry. Or possibly both. Because THAT me thought I was busy and overwhelmed. Ha. Silly past me with the gobs of time and silence and peace.

And yet... is that peace and grace truly lost to me? Or am I merely blinded to the new form that it has taken in my life? Will the me of 20 years from now look back on this time and laugh because I didn't realize how good I had it?

I was chopping apples on the countertop for a pie. My son was inventing new ways to wrap himself thoroughly around my feet while whining incessantly at an ear-hurting pitch. I grabbed a piece of apple and offered it to him, twisting around backwards and bending over to get it within his reach. When I stood back up, my husband was laughing, and when I asked him what was so funny, he told me that it looked like I was inventing a new yoga pose: "hand-the-baby-an-apple."

I laughed too, but as I finished chopping the apples, I was thinking -- that is what I am doing. Every day: inventing the new way that grace and peace looks in my current life. Mommy yoga. It is still graceful, and even peaceful, in it's own way. But I have to take the time and effort to search those moments out.  I have to be willing to recognize and accept the moments when they come -- whether or not they look like I think they should, or prefer they would.

I am still lovely and graceful even in my new, squishier, curvier, busier form.

So, as I contemplated this idea, I decided to do a new series of posts called "mommy yoga," in which I outline a "yoga pose" that I have found myself using in my role as a mommy, and under what circumstances such a pose might be useful. Come back next week for the first one! And I hope you find the idea of "mommy yoga" both as humorous and inspiring as I do.