Mother's Day 2016

Mother's Day, at 3:00 in the morning, I heard the familiar shuffling of feet entering our bedroom. Small hands grabbed at the comforter over top my legs as Jace climbed into his now designated spot in the middle of the bed and promptly fell back to sleep sandwiched between us.

I woke up suddenly four hours later. The daylight was trickling in through the cracks in the blinds. It took me a second to figure out what woke me, when I realized Jace was beside me huffing jaggedly as he cried, "Mooooom! I'm bleeding!"

I sat up and saw that he was on his knees and facing down, allowing the gravity of his position to let the blood rush out of his nose like an angry river. I scooped him up and flipped him onto his back in my arms where we ran into the bathroom.

It was a massacre. There was blood stained from the top of his forehead to the toes on his feet. I heard Dan cursing in the bedroom and while the bath water was running, I peeked in to see the massacre spread across all of our white bedding. There wasn't a place that the red puddles hadn't stained, starting with our down comforter and moving through the sheets, splattered on the pillowcases and soaking into the mattress beneath it, all white everything.

Needless to say, we spent Mother's Day morning at the laundry mat.

Happy Mother's Day to me!

Of course I do enjoy the subtle luxuries that Mother's Day brings, like eating brownies for breakfast and getting to open a present or two. But I am continually reminded that this is motherhood. Being a mother is making sacrifices. It is sacrificing sleep for my toddler with a double ear infection. It is sacrificing luxuries. It is slowing down. It is willing more patience when I think I have none left. It is superhuman. It is finding strength and fear. It is spending Mother's Day morning at the laundry mat washing blood out of our bedding.

I sure do love my sweet boys with all of my heart and I'm so terribly thankful for the lessons they teach me everyday, for the vast expansion of love they have rooted into my heart. Being a mother is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and also the most lovely, rewarding thing I have ever done in my life, all wrapped into one.

(The following pictures aren't actually from Mother's Day, these were from a rainy Sunday morning we spent in the mountains recently riding bikes, sipping coffee and jumping in puddles. But all the same! Here you go!)