Carry on, Warrior!

Sometimes days being a mom of little kids is hard. Really hard. So in the future I can be reminded of how hard it really was, when I am staring at darling pictures of my girlies' cute little faces, let me remind myself. 

Incidents that happened in the past two weeks: 

A full bottle of Febreze sprayed into the buttons on our tv, an entire package of bologna secretly devoured, half a bottle of aloe vera painted onto the tv screen, nail polish painted onto my bedroom wall, bedspread, and sheets, a morning of scrubbing and cleaning lightly colored chair cushions gone to waste with four little chocolate pudding handprints, a bottle of rubbing alcohol dumped into a new 5 gallon batch of homemade laundry detergent, pudding dumped on the carpet, then later after the carpet was cleaned, a bowl of mac and cheese was dumped in the same spot, my entire dresser was emptied, granola thrown all over a room, 3 toilet papers rolls given a bath in the sink, pudding rubbed onto the shower curtain I recently washed, a bottle of conditioner half emptied, nail polish painted again but on the inside of my closet door, pee all over bathroom floor, and again, and then again on my bedroom carpet, loosing Kendyl at church (she hid herself in the chapel choir seats), Josie taking off her diapers 10+ times a day and screaming when I try to put them back on, late nights, early mornings, playing musical beds during the night, most showers accompanied by the girls, all bathroom breaks chaperoned, toys emptied out of their buckets and into the pack-n-play, some shoes and a pile of blankets got a healthy dusting of cinnamon, the vacuum bag emptied on the ground, and finally Kendyl screaming “Shut up Josie, just shut up!!” (Um…where did she pick that up?? Definitely not from home!)

As I was recalling these incidents there were I few things I realized:

1. Why am I still serving chocolate pudding?

2. Hiding nail polish is not good enough.

3. I should stop cleaning so much. At least for a few years.

4. Vacuums are a wonderful invention.

5. Houses are designed with locks on all the wrong doors and all the wrong sides of the doors.

6. Maybe houses would function better if they had no inside doors at all.

7. Motherhood is a good laboratory for learning patience. I obviously need lots of practice.

8. I read this article a while ago, Don't Carpe Diem by Glennon Melton, and I love how she explains parenthood. I can relate to it all.

"I think parenting young children (and old ones, I've heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they've heard there's magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it's hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up."


Read the whole article!


9. I read this article recently, Because She Is a Mother by Elder Holland, and I love it even more.

"The work of a mother is hard, too often unheralded work. The young years are often those when either husband or wife—or both—may still be in school or in those earliest and leanest stages of developing the husband’s breadwinning capacities. Finances fluctuate daily between low and nonexistent. The apartment is usually decorated in one of two smart designs—Deseret Industries provincial or early Mother Hubbard. The car, if there is one, runs on smooth tires and an empty tank. But with night feedings and night teethings, often the greatest challenge of all for a young mother is simply fatigue. Through these years, mothers go longer on less sleep and give more to others with less personal renewal for themselves than any other group I know at any other time in life. It is not surprising when the shadows under their eyes sometimes vaguely resemble the state of Rhode Island.

One young mother wrote to me recently that her anxiety tended to come on three fronts. One was that whenever she heard talks on LDS motherhood, she worried because she felt she didn’t measure up or somehow wasn’t going to be equal to the task. Secondly, she felt like the world expected her to teach her children reading, writing, interior design, Latin, calculus, and the Internet—all before the baby said something terribly ordinary, like 'goo goo.' Thirdly, she often felt people were sometimes patronizing, almost always without meaning to be, because the advice she got or even the compliments she received seemed to reflect nothing of the mental investment, the spiritual and emotional exertion, the long-night, long-day, stretched-to-the-limit demands that sometimes are required in trying to be and wanting to be the mother God hopes she will be.

But one thing, she said, keeps her going: 'Through the thick and the thin of this, and through the occasional tears of it all, I know deep down inside I am doing God’s work. I know that in my motherhood I am in an eternal partnership with Him. I am deeply moved that God finds His ultimate purpose and meaning in being a parent, even if some of His children make Him weep.'"

Definitely read the whole article!

10. Even though some days I cry, I'm so blessed to be a mom.

(While I wrote this, shredded cheese was scattered over the living room carpet, butter was painted all over the tv, Josie's head, and those newly cleaned chair cushions. NOT. EVEN. KIDDING.)