What I like about work.

There are some days when it's hard to leave the girls at daycare. When I look at their sweet smiling faces and want to whisk them back into the car and straight to the beach.

But there are other days where work is like a drug I can't quit taking. I mean, yeah, my work is creative and fulfilling and all that jazz. But it's mostly the intangible benefits of going to work that make it all worthwhile. For instance, when I go to work no one is hanging on me. That's right - hanging. As in Lauren hanging from my thigh until I pick her up, or Grace (who is nearly too big for me to pick up without getting a hernia) reaching up to hug me, only to pick her feet up off the ground and swing from my neck like we're a pair of orangutans.

Parenting is an incredibly physical job. In fact, it's the sheer physical labor of it all that makes me relieved to go to work by Monday. Everyone at my office can walk up the stairs unassisted. Everyone here can go to the bathroom all alone. No one here has to be lifted into their booster chair or car seat or swing, or carried down a mountain of blistering hot sand that shifts with every step (much less carried back up!).

Best of all, no one here is crying. Which is good because, in our house, crying is contagious.

Exhibit A:



I guess it's the contrast between worlds that makes each one so great.