I'm free, to do what I want...

So, the kids are back in incarceration..uh...I mean school. Hub's back to the daily grind. So it's just lil' ole me, here by my lonesome. What to do, what to do....
Get my life back, that's what I do! 16 days of uninterrupted family time is quite sufficient, thank you very much. More power to those Super Mommies out there who can't stand to be separated from their offspring for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. Who weep mournfully as their kiddies get on the bus. Who then race down to the school at 11:00 so they can all have lunch together, every single day.
I love my kids very much. It's a cliche, of course, but I sometimes feel like I was just biding time until they were born - like I didn't really 'get it' until I had them. I adore the time we spend together and I try to make it fun, meaningful and fulfilling. That being said, I also recognize the fact that we are separate entities. They have lives and interests and things that do not include me. Likewise.
This is as it should be in a healthy growing process. I can not invest my entire sense of worth and well-being into my children. Not when my biggest purpose in their lives is to raise them in a way that will ensure that they grow up and leave me some day. If I am doing my job properly, I am raising healthy, happy, stable, balanced human beings with dreams that they are completely certain of fullfilling. Human beings with hopes of their own for new experiences and adventures, in whatever form those things may take. If I succeed at motherhood - which is sometimes iffy, I'll admit - my children will leave me alone in the nest that I have built for us, take flight and soar.
Do I want my beautiful babies to leave? Never. Do I hope that they do? You better believe it. Because that will mean we've made it, wound through the dark and tangled woods of childhood/parenthood and come out on the other side.
Plus, I will no longer have to turn a million grubby, little boy socks right-side-out before putting them in the washing machine, step on legos in the middle of the night, give time-outs and get called 'Mean Mommy', and help with math homework (which is getting surprisingly difficult, I'm embarrassed to say!).

..............Wow, I really missed them today. I think I might go down and meet them for lunch tomorrow. Whadda ya think?