I imagine having dinner sitting on the table, the girls sitting patiently, Stephen walking through the door and greeting us and we have a wonderful dinner.
Real life situation: I'm scrambling with dinner, Pear is chanting "I'm hungry", Jovie's rubbing olive oil across the ENTIRE kitchen floor, Stephen walks through the door and greets us only to receive a harry eyeball from me, an "I'm hungry" from Pear and Jovie wants to give daddy a hug with her oiled hands but he's in his nice dress slacks.
During the girls' nap time I clean the kitchen, organize the toys in the family room, fold all of the laundry and am refreshed as the girls awake from their naps and we read a couple of our favorite children's books.
Real life situation: I get the dishes done. I fold most of the clothes Pear and Jovie wake up happy. They then decide that the freshly folded laundry is the perfect pile of leaves to jump in. I frantically try to put them away before they are all messed up only to come back to another pile of scattered "leaves" every trip back from the closet. 1 hour later- done. We didn't get to read those books. I'm not quite feeling completely rejuvenated.
Saturday morning arrives and we sleep until a leisurely hour, perhaps 6:00 am isn't too high of an expectation. We get ready and leave for a morning in Seattle at our favorite bakery, Cafe Besalu. Pear and Jovie enjoy their pastries and allow Stephen and myself to enjoy ours. We sip our coffee and cocoa and leave with a feeling of great satisfaction and there couldn't possibly be a happier family out there!
Real life situation: Jovie sleeps terribly. She decides that 4:00 am is a better hour to wake. We rush to get ready. Leave the house just a few minutes later than estimated and arrive at Besalu just in time to enjoy fresh quiche, pastries and cookies. Upon receiving our goodies, Jovie decides it's time to have a bowel movement. (For those of you who do not know Jovie, this is a HUGE ordeal.) I take my screaming child into the restroom to allow her a little privacy and 20 minutes later, cleaned, changed and much relieved, we return to our cold cocoa and finish our pastries. It could have been worse but let's just say upon leaving, I hardly felt I'd sat down and wasn't feeling ready to face the rest of the day.
I sit down to write a blog post. The girls play and I'm able to complete my writing within 30 minutes. I move on to do other things all while the girls play happily together.
Real life situation: I sat down 2 weeks ago to write this post. Pear and Jovie had a tizzy over a toy that I should have bought 2 of but only bought 1 and within minutes Jovie is crying on my lap. Once she stops crying, she begins banging on the keyboard. I then give up trying to write a post and move on to the next task. This repeats itself over the following days until I finally get the post done. (You'd think I might decide to give up blogging or decide to only do it during nap time. I guess maybe I'm crazy.)
The bottom line is, being married, having kids, serving God, living life- it isn't always a bowl full of cherries. In fact I often feel it's more like poop (you'd be surprised how literal this is for me at this point). But the fact of the matter is, for some strange reason I find satisfaction amongst the chaos. I enjoy these girls. I love my husband. And I revere God. At the end of the day as I'm laying in bed, I don't think of how terrible my day was. What comes to my mind makes me smile; I think about how I called Pear a stinker and in a devastated state she responded, "I'm not a stinker, I'm a pwincess." Or the way that Jovie lit up as I read Animal Sounds (currently her favorite book) and tried to repeat the animal sounds which in all actuality all sounded the same "uh-uh-uh". I think about how Stephen treasures me and saves a kiss for me before he leaves for work, when he comes home for lunch and again in the evening. I serve a great God who blessed me with a beautiful family. I take comfort in James 1:2-4 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
3 comments:
This post made me laugh so much!! This is exactly how my life is every day! But you're right, at the end of the day, I never remember how horrible it was....well, not usually anyway.
P.S. As I'm writing this, Paige is unloading grandpa's lunch bag, and emptying packets of EmergenC onto the kitchen floor :o)
all of it is priceless...great glimpse inside a mother's mind & life.
This is my life, put on screen by you. Except I'm lucky if Brandon comes home at night, Jackson loves to dump the container of oatmeal on the floor instead of olive oil, and I only have one kid to chase around the house instead of two. I have come to believe that no mother's life is what she expects it to be, but in most ways it's often better than what she could have imagined. We are blessed. And it's amazing to me that in the middle of it all you can take the time to be thankful. My hat goes off to you dear Paige.
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