On Being a Mama

This blog post is coming to you late. I started it, I got distracted, but I have returned...

So..on to some actual content!

A friend of mine posted an entry about the pervasive tendency of many parent bloggers to bemoan the various hardships associated with parenting and how these kind of entries have negatively impacted her desire to ever have children.

I smiled when I read her post. Mostly because she's not wrong and I know I've posted more than my fair share of frustrations here. Blogs have become a great way for many mommy (and daddy) bloggers to share their parenting journey, be it annoying, horrific, tiring or trying. Because I read a lot of these types of blogs, I completely agree that most of them tend to focus on the less than idyllic situations. If their kids are babies, they talk about sleepless nights, bottle confusion, and diaper rash. If the kids are a preschoolers, you get to hear about the latest temper tantrum or perhaps how thoroughly mortified you can find yourself while out and about in public. Oh, the things those little munchkins say! Then there's the challenges of raising school-aged children who aren't exactly known for their superior decision-making skills.

Life is full of potential drama when you have children in the house!

However, in an effort to equal out the bad with the good, I thought I'd include a few bullet points on things that make being a mommy (or daddy) truly, completely, 100% amazing:

• Sitting on the couch or in the recliner with a child snuggled close. This happens every night at my house and I love it.
• Receiving a picture drawn just for me and seeing the look of pleasure in their eyes when I promise to hang it on the fridge or take it to work.
  
• Hugs before school and hugs before bed.
• Tucking in the boys because they want me to, even when they're perfectly capable of doing it themselves.
  
• There's no sound like the sound of my boys' laughter. It's unique to them and has the most amazing ability to make me smile, even if I don't feel like I have anything to smile about.
  
• Having a little helper who is willing to shadow me for hours just so he can hang out with me.
  
• Listening to the boys sing in the back seat of the car. Too funny and too cute.
• Finding hidden love notes in my computer desk (that happened last weekend).
  
• Those moments when I realize their each others' best friend, even if they don't know it yet.
  
• Watching them succeed on stage, on the court, on the field, on the baseball diamond, or on the mat. Proud sometimes seems too tame a word for how those moments make me feel, not because they're necessarily winning at the game, but because I know how hard they've worked to get to where they are.
  
• Kisses.
  
• Their smiles.
  
• Watching them grown into kind and considerate young men (it's still a work-in-progress, but oh, the potential is there and every now and again I get see a glimpse of how truly amazing they will someday be!)
  

These aren't the only things that come to mind when I think of all the good things the boys have brought into our lives. I also think about how becoming a parent made me appreciate my parents more, how it made me want to be a better person, and how it redefined everything I thought I knew about life.

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone