“Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease.” -Lisa Alther

Let’s talk about the last few weeks. To get perspective, it is May. It’s the end of the school year, which is the “end” of the year in our household with both Noah & I working in education. He is currently camping & hiking with his 8th graders in Yosemite (epic!) for 3 days & nights & I’m home with the kiddos. Also epic. 🙂 Anyhow, May is always crazy. We have basically run really hard with life in general since spring break back in March & we are doing our best to finish strong, keep our heads about water, not burn out. It’s a “take one day at a time” point in life & some days are “take one hour at a time”. Catch my drift? I know we’ve all been there. This is a predictable season for us, so we do our best to stay positive & keep our focus where it needs to be.

*My anecdotes do include pee & poop, so if you are not a fan, skip this. But it is funny.

To be real honest, Cabo being on the horizon is helping quite a bit! We (JUST Noah & I) are headed there in June, so our countdown is on. It’s gonna be bomb guys. Laying in the sun, reading a book uninterrupted, sleeping the whole night, showering whenever I want, swimming without worrying about our littles & their floaties, riding jet skies, swimming in the ocean, eating piles and piles of guacamole, drinking ice cold drinks with an umbrella, taking a sunset cruise, staring deeply into each other’s eyes & on & on. DREAMS COME TRUE GUYS. This is the vacation we would LOVE to take every single year. We are going to celebrate life & our 9 year anniversary, because why just wait till our big 10th anniversary?! Every year is significant, vacation is necessary & we want to do it so we are. Boom.

“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.” -Leo J. Burke

Ok, so back to my motherhood currently. What my life has been like the last few weeks. It’s comical. That’s why I figured I’d write about it. Two days ago the day started with us eating breakfast quickly, making lunches & packing to drive down & go blueberry picking in the valley. I did this last year for the first time & it was awesome! It was super hot, but still awesome. Coming home with pounds of fresh blueberries for pennies on the dollar is just rad. Except the hot part. Anyway, I was running around trying to get everything finished so we could get in the car on time & while I was in the back room I heard Eliana (my 5 year old) yelling about Brother (11 months). I threw down what I was doing to discover he had crawled outside to where she was feeding our dog Gypsy & Sebastian was shoving handfuls of the dog food into his mouth. Eliana was holding him by the diaper, panicking and yelling for me. I scooped the food out of his mouth, got upset that she had forgotten to close the door in the first place & brought them back inside. I sat him down & brought her into the other room to explain that Sebastian is SUPER fast & that we all need to be more careful about closing doors… & immediately I heard him grabbing dishes out of the open dishwasher so I ran to the kitchen, closed that, returned to our conversation, then had to jump up again to close the bathroom door before he started eating the used tissues in the garbage. It was a perfect example to Eliana that it’s not her fault that Brother is so fast & we ALL have to be aware & careful to take care of him in this crazy fast super speedy crawling stage he’s in. Anyway, I explained that if that happened again, she needed to scoop the DOG FOOD out of his mouth first so he wouldn’t choke, then keep him away from it. Holding onto his diaper while he shoved loads of dog food into his mouth wasn’t a good way of taking care of the situation. I laughed later. We went blueberry picking & it was super hot, Sebastian didn’t dig it, but we got some berries & came home later then planned but happy.

Yesterday, I had to drive 2 1/2 hours to Sacramento to pick up my mom from the airport. Back into the car we went. No dog food incidents. He decided to poop right when I buckled him in, so that was perfect timing. We got out a bit later then planned but no poop on the road so that was a win in my book. We got more than halfway there & all of us needed a pee break so we pulled into get donuts as a treat. Now, this is not a norm for us, so it was a true treat. I had us all squeeze into the small stall because the handicapped one was occupied so we could all take turns peeing. Have you ever done this? Doing it with an 11 month old makes it that much more interesting. Enough said. The girls each picked out a strawberry sprinkle donut, I got a plain glazed. We went to the car, got buckled up, I gave them each a bag with their donut to eat while I nursed Sebastian. They were content, I fed him then got him buckled into his carseat & we got back on the road. This stop made us late to get my mom, but she was super gracious. Another 10 minutes down the road I grabbed MY donut bag to eat from. It was a strawberry sprinkle donut. Cora had eaten my entire donut without saying anything. I don’t think she even realized. Strawberry sprinkle donuts are not my jam. Give me my plain glazed old fashioned man. So that was nice. I didn’t eat her donut. We picked up my mom, stopped at Fairytale Town in Sacramento for a bit to play, which was really fun & headed back home. About 30 miles from home, Sebastian had had enough. He wailed until we found a good place to pull over, Eliana had to pee on our portable potty, I fed him & changed him & he was good to go again. We finally made it home & it was great.

“You can be a mess and still be a good mom. We are allowed to be both.” -@katiebinghamsmith

A few weeks back, in the matter of 5 minutes, Sebastian was scooping handfuls of dirt out of one of my houseplants & eating said dirt silently until we discovered him. From there, he crawled into the bathroom, where the lid had been left up & was enjoying himself splashing in the toilet water. Once discovered again & moved, he proceeded to crawl all the way into our bedroom, where we found him again, sucking and chewing on a charging cord plugged into the wall. All in 5 minutes. OH the joys.

“Cleaning your house while the kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.” -Phyllis Diller

Last week, Sebastian pooped. Like REALLY pooped. My day started off with Cora, our almost 3 year old (who never pees the bed), waking up in a puddle of pee. On her pillow. She is the craziest sleeper. All of her bedding needed to be washed so that’s what I started with. Not that long after that was when he pooped. This is normal guys. I brought him up to his room to change him, the girls followed & wanted to be with us. I took off his diaper, he grabbed some poop, I moved his hand out the way. He then grabbed a toy with said hand. I removed the toy. Said hand went to mouth. I removed said hand. I moved the diaper, after his feet ended up in the poop too. I asked Eliana to throw it in the trash for me so as to avoid anyone else stepping/touching it. She threw it away & in the process got poop on her hands. I sent her to the bathroom to wash them. I managed to get him clean, the changing table clean, his face, feet, hands & toy clean. All while this was happening, Cora had gotten her stool out the bathroom to have a better vantage point of all of this & was playing with the dimmer switch on the light switch, up & down. Up & down. All while I was changing this poopy diaper. It was a glorious experience. Oh & I totally had poop all over my hands too. Cora didn’t. She was left unscathed. Minus my scolding eyes while she enjoyed her handcrafted light show & I couldn’t see what I was doing.

“Every day when you’re raising kids, you feel like you could cry or crack up and scream ‘This is ridiculous!’ because there’s so much nonsense, whether it’s what their saying to you or the fact that there’s avocado or poop on every surface.” -Kristen Bell

So that’s my life. Currently. I need to be clear though, you guys, I wouldn’t have this any other way. I am SO blessed. I LOVE where I am at in this motherhood thing. I love that I have the gift of 3 littles here earth side with me that I get to play with, nurture, teach, enjoy, laugh with, snuggle with, adventure with. This rocks. It is so hard, at least once a day there is something “hard”, I am exhausted, yes, I have to deal with poop & lots of laundry & all sorts of runny noses, etc., yes, but I am SO HAPPY. Even in MAY! Even in this insane season of life. I AM SO HAPPY. Getting to be home with my kiddos, getting to take them blueberry picking & hiking on the weekends while traversing bumpy roads in our minivan & leaving some of our bumper there on the way all in the name of adventure to celebrate motherhood & to pick wildflowers, this guys! THIS. It’s all so worth it. It’s amazing. AND there is Cabo. 🙂

Ok, there are definitely more anecdotes I could share, because motherhood/parenthood is full of them, but for now I’ll be done. I’m sure something else absolutely hilarious while happen as this day progresses. It keeps me on my toes.

“Raising a kid is part joy and part guerilla warfare.” -Ed Asner

So cheers to you, other mamas & papas out there! Cheers to you, I applaud all of your hard work that is mostly left unseen, I applaud your tenacity to parent your children well, to wipe those bottoms clean & give the best hugs to your littles that you can. I applaud you choosing to press on, even when you are in insane seasons of life, to keep your head up & your focus where it needs to be. You are not alone friend! You’ve got this mama. You’ve got this dada. It’s all about the little things, showing love in all the things we do. Let’s do it well. And hey, happy late Mother’s Day & early Father’s Day to all of you lovely people too.

 

Cheers,

Katie.