Sigh ... the end of the day

So I met with my nutritionist today while Tim came home to be with the kids, then stopped off and did a couple errands on the way home. Apparently the whole time I was gone, Caroline alternated between announcing her need to poop and insisting, "I want Mommy." Well, by the time I got home, she wouldn't let me out of her sight. Around 6 PM, this is what the scene looked like at our house: In the kitchen, Tim works on dinner as per my instructions, feeling very tired from lack of sleep and from basically being ordered around at school and at home -- yoiu know, the classic "overworked and underappreciated," LOL. In the kids' bedroom, an exhausted woman (me) sits on the floor nursing a headache and trying very hard to focus on both the 4 y.o. who is draping her in scarves, chattering on and on about giving her a haircut and keeping her warm (this "haircut prep" lasted a good 10 minutes), and the naked 1 y.o. (she had been pouring water into her diaper) who is playing with Thomas trains, also chattering nonstop, and stopping every few seconds to try to dive down her mother's shirt, which ruins the scarf arrangement, which means big sister has to start all over again. Why is it that the very things our kids seem to love most (our playing long drawn-out pretend games with them), are the things that come hardest to us as adults? It seems to take herculean amounts of concentration and imagination , often at times we we least feel inclined to do so. I guess that's why it's called love.
A couple things happened to restore some joy to my evening. One was that as I was getting dinner onto the table amidst the surrounding chaos, the Lord brought me a verse: "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in good season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." That little reminder was like a drink of water in the barren land of my late-afternoon mood. The other was a phone conversation with my brother, involving much hilarity at, I must admit, our lovably quirky father's expense. Thanks for the laugh, Pete. Your timing was perfect.