THIS is What I Signed Up For

Most days as a stay-at-home leave me feeling a lot like this picture--pale, harried, and exhausted You're trying your very best to make life run smoothly--even be fun--for your children, while they both seem to be doing their darndest to make things complicated.

Or it can look like it did yesterday morning when Pace came running into the kitchen, where I was cleaning up breakfast, screaming "Mommy, Mommy come look! Quick!" She was grinning from ear to ear and clapping her hands in anticipation. I don't know if you've learned to dread your child's excitement much more than their cries, like I have. I know, when Pace gets like that, it's really bad, and she can hardly stand the suspense of seeing my face when I encounter just how bad it is. I follow her into their bedroom to find Mary Aplin standing by Pace's big girl bed (the one with the white background), with the sheets and comforter smeared with...poop. I wish that was the worst part. What was even worse was that little Napoleon was standing guiltily by her artwork SUCKING HER THUMB!!! Isn't there somebody else who is supposed to deal with mess like this? This is not what I signed up for when I volunteered to be a stay-at-home Mom!

However, there are also days like today when I look around me and say, "Wow, this is precisely how I pictured my life would be." Summertime, at the swimming pool with two tow-headed little girls in matching swimsuits that make them look so cute I can't stop grinning when I look at them. The baby is trying her best to do what I've taught her and kick her fat little legs behind her in the pool. My "big girl" wants to be like Mommy and has spread her towel ever so perfectly on the chair beside mine where she is doing her best to sun-bathe seriously. I am able to spend a good fifty percent of my time actually SITTING in my chair because both girls are playing so happily and obeying so perfectly. Thank you Jesus! THIS is what I signed up for!

Now don't think that it was perfect...Mary Aplin had a big fat poo in her swimsuit at the end of our time (is anybody else noticing a trend here??), and the only way to get off the swim diapers (that our pool forces babies to wear) is to pull the tight, wet, poo infested article down their legs. And, we were having so much fun that I let the time get away from us and both little parties were in stages of starvation melt-down as I drug them through the parking lot. HOWEVER, I will take little issues like these any day if I could have those three perfect preceding hours.

Now they are both sleeping soundly after wearing themselves out in the good 'ol fashion sunshine. I love summertime, and I love being a stay-at-home Mom...