I don’t know what I imagined being a momma would be like…but this was certainly not it.
The screaming fits for a pink sucker that we do not have in the pantry. The great, big, from the depths of his soul tears for the green light-up shoes instead of the red ones. The frustrations of enormous emotions and limited vocabularies that lead to complete meltdowns almost always while in public.
No. This is certainly not what I imagined being a momma would look like.
Messy hair and backwards shirts and pants with grape juice on them with unplucked eyebrows above sleepless eyes.
I am sure I saw myself in the grocery store once years ago and didn’t realize my future was leaving me clues.
I had a million, “Well, when I have kids…” moments in my pre-mommy days that have since swallowed me whole. The vow to never let my children speak to me like that in public… and swearing that I wouldn’t allow my own kids to do this or that… the promise that my own perfect ideas would always act the way I wanted them to because back then… they were just that… an idea in my mind of what my parenting would produce. My greatest ideas had not yet been put into little people suits with thoughts and feelings and wills of their own.
And then they came with thoughts and feelings and wills of their own… and since that day, I have tried to stay one step ahead of them. I have been waiting to say that I know what I’m doing… that I have it all figured out… but the second I feel like I know which way is up… they are bigger and my parenting needs new shoes.
No. This is certainly not what I imagined being a mom would look like.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that in my quest for everything in its place parenting, I didn’t see that I was chest deep in messy little moments that make up childhood.
And the more I recognize how quickly time is passing, the faster it seems to slip through my fingers.
There is something very special about realizing what you have while you have it… about choosing to live life on purpose, today. Maybe my future is leaving me clues again… Maybe all too soon, I will be writing about these days gone by and longing to again be in the beautiful mess that is my life. But in the end, I know that they will only be this little once.
So, today, I promise to cherish every second.
