motherhood

Lately our lives have gotten even more hectic. Bryce is now in speech therapy 1x per week, baseball practice 4 hrs a week, and 3 mornings a week we have to go do sessions at the local elementary school (long story but we are doing "interventions" so that we can get him tested for language / learning disorders). So, all of this running around has got me thinking about how much more complicated and crazy motherhood really is.

Before I had kids I had this really rosy, warm picture of what it would be like.....toddlers with rosy cheeks and big eyes gazing up at you adoringly. Laughing children holding hands at the beach or at the park with pretty dresses and rolled up pants. Children sitting quietly while reading or playing board games. You know the pictures I'm talking about. The same one's that are hung in doctors offices and museums. The paintings that you look at and think "I want some of my own". Well, I have quickly learned that real children are nothing like the ones in the paintings. Rosy cheeks are usually accompanied by high fevers, tears, and sleepless nights. Kids rarely stay as clean and pretty as the ones in the pictures.....sand and dirt are in their hair the first 5 minutes you get to the beach or the park. And quiet moments reading are a rarity....at least at our house. Rambunctious children screaming and laughing is more the norm around here. Even with all of the screaming, the hectic schedules, the stained laundry, the scraped knees and bumped heads, the lack of sleep....I wouldn't change it for the world. Yes, being a mother is not what I expected. It is so much more, so much better then I expected and I wouldn't trade it for the world.