The best day…

Had the best day yesterday just being Mama….

I love having four kids. I love the near constant chaos it brings. I love being outnumbered. What I love more is days where I actually let myself be fully present with them, absorbed in who they are. And not just managing them….

So yesterday was the  best day despite the fact that not only did I yell “Give me five freaking minutes or we are not going to paint pottery!!!!” at them…. I also managed to have that little tantrum just as the leave-a-message-beep sounded on a friend’s voice mail. They promised to delete it. Hoping my kids deleted it too.

And it was the best day despite the fact that a child who should remain nameless, stomped stepped on a ketchup packet at lunch and managed to cover the back of my impeccably white tank top with ketchup splatter. And I didn’t find it the least bit funny… And I didn’t rush to forgive her for thinking it was funny. It was the best day despite the fact that my real irritation was that she had completely blown my cover as one of those women who has it all together. Look at me. I can have four children, and beautiful clothes, and work, and love my husband and just manage everything with a cheerful heart. Obviously I can’t. And it was written on my back in ketchup.

And it was the best day even though I had to promise the bookstore manager that we were leaving in two minutes. And I am pretty sure I made some people in this Christian bookstore reconsider their views on quiverfulness and birth control.

But with paint and brush we spent two hours moving what was in our head onto pottery….hoping that what we were envisioning was what would come out of the kiln. Because the glaze looks entirely different before it has been fired, the process is an act of faith.

Like parenting…

Sometimes what comes out is just what you had hoped for… Some times it is actually more beautiful then you could have imagined.

I am holding out that despite all the despites these kids come out more beautiful then I could have imagined.

Still waiting on the pottery, but so very hopeful about the kids.