You know what I am grateful for? Messes around my house that I can complain about. Like little crumpled up socks on the bathroom floor because Teags always has to strip down when he poops on the potty but never remembers to put his socks back on when he gets dressed again. It makes me smile when I find army or combat guys in the refrigerator, and I know Easton’s been in there. I complain about my downstairs bathroom smelling like pee every day even if I just mopped it because Teags can’t seem to get his aim right, but I love it because it means he’s just a little boy who’s trying to figure out how to be a big boy. I love cleaning up at night and finding stray toys that the boys forgot to clean up and thinking back to earlier in the day when those toys were engaged in all sorts of imaginary battles that I listened to Easton narrate. I love folding green Hulk pajama pants that Teagan just looks so cute in. And Jacob and I always smile if we lay down on something poky or sharp in our bed at night and find little toy figures or cars or batmans hiding under our sheets because Teagan watched a movie in our bed. All of these things just mean that I have two little boys who bless my home with their innocence and purity, two little boys whose smiles, and even whines and cries, fill my life with purpose and the pure joy that being a mother brings. I get caught up in the things that don’t matter, like cleaning and all sorts of other things. I remember telling my mom one day, “My children think I have nothing better to do than to tend to their whines and complaints all day. They think my world revolves around them. ” And my sweet mother said, “Well, you really don’t have anything better to do. Being a mom is the best and most important thing you can do.” I loved it when she said that to me. Because what matters most is that there are little children running wild in my house (ok, they aren’t really wild and my house isn’t in shambles) being boys, making messes, leaving soapy handprints on my freshly-wiped mirrors. And one day those things will all be gone. My house will stay clean when I clean it, toys will no longer be strewn across the living room floor, and my bathroom won’t smell like pee from little boys who can’t get their aim right. And just thinking about those things being gone makes me miss them. Not everyone gets to be a mom. Or some moms lose children, and I’m sure they long for the whines and complaints and messy handprints and little shoes left on the floor and toys in the tub that the rest of us complain about because it gives us more work to do. But I have figured out that I love that work. I love that work because of the little ones that create all this work for me to do in my day like I have nothing better to do with my time because in all actuality I don’t have anything better to do. I’m doing the best thing I can be doing.
Another added bonus to my blessed life is going in to the boys room at night to check on them and finding Teagan asleep on Easton’s shoulder. I had heard Teags crying, and then I heard a soft sweet voice comforting him, like is just so typical of my sweet Easton, and later found them sleeping like this (The flash kind of startled them). Who cares if my house doesn’t look like it did before I had children. Who cares if I don’t have vacuum lines in my carpet anymore. Who cares if there are soapy handprints on the mirror in the boys’ bathroom. At the end of the day, they – those sweet boys of mine – are the result of my toils, the sweet fruit of my labors.
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