Being a mom is crazy sometimes. So often my kids do things that are completely unexpected and unbelievable. And sometimes they get you into weird predicaments that you're not sure how to handle.
The back of the picture says this was in April 1990. I had just gotten into the flour bin. I'm sure it was a huge mess (flour is a pain to clean up), and based on the date my mom was also pregnant with Melissa at the time. Apparently she took time to laugh about it and take a picture, though.
One of my earliest memories happened when I was maybe three years old. I waited until my mom wasn't looking, then I found a bottle of Head and Shoulders, hid under the piano, and proceeded to squeeze an obscene amount of shampoo onto my head. The carpet still retained the smell and a slightly soapy texture when we moved when I was eighteen. Of course it trickled down into my eyes, and if you've ever gotten Head and Shoulders in your eyes you know that it's an especially evil kind of pain.
So my mom was left in a big predicament because my dad wasn't home and she had Baby Melissa to take care of and I had shampoo all over my face and hair. Fortunately, a neighbor (Jerine Smith) was able to come over to take care of Melissa so Mom could deal with me. She ended up giving me a shower, and I'm sure I cried and struggled a lot, but afterwards I think I bragged that I had had my first shower and I was only three years old.
Moms deal with this kind of stuff all the time. It seems like when one kid dropped a jar and is surrounded by glass shards, another one is having an accident and another one is eating a roll of toilet paper.
It's easy to get caught up in the frustrations. But for us that's not actually what this is all about. We're committed to our children because we have a goal in mind. We're not just cleaning up messes and trying to keep the children alive until they're adults.
In the midst of all the crazy stuff, what we really want is to see our children become people of character. We want them to be kind. We want to be with them in the temple. We want them to be in our eternal family. Deep down we see what's special in them even though they can be so challenging.
It's hard to treasure every moment. Sometimes the weight of everything is just really hard. But I try to treasure the special moments. I'm not great at it, but I'm trying. When Heidi is telling me something important to her and she gets a sparkle in her eyes, I stare into her eyes and try to save a copy of that image in my memory. When Kevin asks questions about the important stuff, I've learned to drop what I'm doing and take advantage of those teaching moments. When Ann Marie wants to help put the dishes in the dishwasher I let her sometimes, even though she does it wrong. It feels like the everyday things like breaking up fights, washing the dishes again, and cleaning up the messes take up so much of the time, but really those good moments--teaching, listening, working together--are the ones that are quietly making the difference.
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