The real deal

If I had to describe it, parenting 4 kids is like moving from crisis to crisis all day with very brief commercial breaks of warm and fuzzy mom moments.

Like at any given point, someone will have a problem that needs fixing. Or a situation that requires immediate attention NOW MOM!! Or someone else is in my face about needing a snack/cookie/goldfish refill. Or the baby is facing imminent mortal danger.

That’s on a good day.

On the not so good days, someone is pooping on the floor while two other someones are engaged in a yelling match about whose turn it is to hold random object while one more someone is trying to lo hei their noodles like it’s鱼生. Nobody wants to learn their 听写 and then five minutes later, someone is calling someone else a grouchie pouchie, upon which that someone else loses it and starts crying about how “names are mean and it’s not fair”. And I have to yell at everyone because hey, if you can’t beat them, join them right?

On these sort of days, it’s like I’m on netflix, where there ain’t no commercial breaks of fuzziness.

I don’t even want to think about how it’ll be like when baby Hayley comes along because I like to avoid my problems until I have no choice and absolutely have to deal with them.

This one particularly tough day, I declared it a playground day and sent them all out to let off some steam and Kirsten was all “mom, mommmmm, come quick, you need to take a photo of us.” So I ran back into the house to grab my iphone and I come out to see this.

In this one moment, it feels like the entire day has been the commercial break and this is the real deal. This fleeting moment that tells me I’m doing an excellent job at raising these kids.

I’ve been nailing this parenting gig all day – one more day of crises averted and everyone is (relatively) happy. And I can do this again tomorrow.