This Is What Real Motherhood Looks Like

Jan. 12, Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.


When I upturned my Advent wreath to knock all the dried wax crumbs out of it, a half-eaten pretzel fell out.

This is a suitable metaphor for living with an extremely active and suspiciously intelligent but mostly mute almost-three-year-old.  Just as I'm trying to go along my way juggling the average life difficulties, something unexpected and inexplicable falls out.  Like a pretzel in an Advent wreath.

Or salt in the gingerbread train.  Or a mascara wand in my face cream.  Or a sodden stuffed puppy in the bathtub with my hairbrush.  He also likes to stand on cardboard boxes simultaneously rendering them useless and endangering his own safety, empty the drawers of folded clothing, push the chair stealthily to access long-forgotten candy and leave the discarded wrappers all around the house and chocolate ground into the carpet.  Sneak several gulps of my energy drinks when I'm not looking, unravel the yarn and wrap it around his wrist fifty times 'til his hand is blue, go through twenty sheets of paper in one sitting and then rip them up one by one, savoringly, deliciously.  Coloring--on everything, with everything.

I hear there are a mystical species of children that exist who sit quietly and color or look at a book and don't help themselves to all the contents of the refrigerator when they want a drink.  Hm.

I do like my quaint decorations, crafty endeavors, and fresh flowers.  Guilty!  But not staying on top of it, every minute of every day, results in a cataclysmic implosion looking like this:





Last night's meal somehow made its way onto the floor and in the fabric of the chair (why?); garbage is in need of constant rotation, but seeing as how the trash bins are down two flights of stairs and around the back of the building, it's not something I attempt with a toddler in toe if I'm not already going out; most everything within little-person reach is on the ground (because . . it belongs there?  Whu?  I just don't get it.)  Orange peels, egg shells, ripped up paper, and wads of tape.  Things that are fragile or projects that are important to me must be set immediately out of reach, and so are usually piled on top of the pretty things for safety, but successfully obscuring said pretty things and contributing to the mess.  Oh, and the laundry.  Always.  Needs.  Doing.  What the heck?  There's two of us here!

I'm putting myself out there to be judged and teased with these photos, but I'm feeling rather brave today.  Anyway, I don't believe in being fake; and impressions of being more put-together than I am may be possible if I only show the carefully staged and cleverly focused photographs.  That's not me.  I'm not a housekeeper and only a little better as a cook.  Do you remember the Amelia Badelia books from your childhood?  About the silly maid who had to be told everything very clearly because otherwise she would misconstrue it--pull out a pen and paper when told to "draw the curtains," mix up a cut calendar in the cake batter in place of dates?  That's kind of me.  Idiot savant.  I can read the heck out of a book, and am fairly good at writing one.  As for knowing how to do anything else, it's more or less a toss up.

The antibiotics my doctor gave me for mycoplasma (pneumonia) seem to be working.  After three days of taking them, I can't believe that I'd forgotten how it felt not to feel bad; not to feel bad for me, which means a great deal of supplementing with energy drinks and medications, but still.  Functioning.  But there's no way of knowing whether I'm just having a good spell and will feel poorly again tomorrow, or the day after that, or the day after that.  Anyway, I've been thinking about my general unwellness and realized that if this does turn out to be something, especially fibromyalgia, which is more or less untreatable (I hope not--I think not), my lifestyle is going to have to change permanently.  It's forced me to appreciate not living in a picture-perfect climate.  It's actually kind of liberating.


Messy Wife, Blessed Life
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10 comments:

  1. Glad you shared, Christie. To tell the truth, the only two things I noticed in those photos was your beautiful quilt and your gorgeous windows. Maybe I'm just used to looking past the orange peels on the floor, myself. Ha.
    My prayers are with you for your health!! God bless...

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    1. wow, thanks Sarah! That's good to know, that the prettiness is still visible under the clutter. (But the orange peels were in the photo I DIDN'T include, haha!)

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  2. Oh, Amelia Bedelia! Now that you mention it, I kind of see myself in her too. I have a really hard time following written directions - how is it that they NEVER make sense. I need to see things - preferably a million times. I got a sewing machine last year (2012) for Christmas and it's still in the sealed box. I wanted it and I want to learn to sew but it scares me. Plus, my house is usually much, much worst than yours, so how will I find the time?

    I love your home altar. Beautiful!

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    1. Oh! I hope you get out your sewing machine. Remember Chesterton's quote, "Something worth doing is worth doing badly"!

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  3. Thank you for sharing! No judgement here--I do not have a toddler and while I don't grind my food into the carpets, the clutter isn't much better on my end. I think a balance is good. I enjoy taking and seeing photos of nice areas, but I know that's not my reality so it probably isn't for others, either. As long as we occasionally pull back the curtain and share our realities, I don't think it hurts to emphasize the parts we love. I see it as akin to being grateful for and enjoying what we have, rather than focus on what we would like to have.

    I love SouleMama's blog (soulemama.com), and while her writing is lovely and her pictures beautiful, she does admit that she doesn't "do it all" and sometimes her family has popcorn for dinner because she is caught up in a craft project or just ran out of time. And she too has piles of laundry :)

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    1. I like SouleMama, too, and Small Things (gsheller.com)--Ginny Sheller has seven, I think, and she admits to sometimes only getting one tiny thing done each day, which is comforting. :P

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  4. having a young child means what you have the home you are picturing. and it is still quite beautiful.

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    1. Yes, he's a particularly, um _challenging_ small child, though. I am relieved when people acknowledge and reassure me of that; but then, every mother-child relationship has its own challenges which people outside it can't judge! Thanks, Elizabeth! xx

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  5. I have 2 kids, 3 and 20-months, and especially if my house looked like the second picture, it would be almost clean! And that quilt is beautiful!

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    1. It's my favorite bedspread, and I left out the worst picture, haha!

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