Welcome to my 100th blog post!!!! Typing that feels crazy. I’ve been writing extra since the twins were born as a way to heal and stay grounded through postpartum, and as a way to document an overall chaotic phase of life. It has been so unbelievably beneficial for my mental health, and I can’t believe I started blogging nine years ago as of this September! Here’s to the first one hundred blog posts, and here’s to a few hundred more!
I’m ashamed to admit that when three of my kids rushed to me as soon as I got home from work today, the first thing I did was throw my hands up and ask for space.
I leave the office at three o’clock, and my husband needs to be clocking in to his job by four o’clock, so I don’t have the luxury of decompressing much before entering the circus that is my household with five kids and a puppy. I’m usually rushing out of the office when the rest of the team is in the middle of something, and I spend my ten minute drive home attempting to switch from “I deal with people at their lowest moments in the depths of their trauma” mode to “whimsical 90s mom” mode.
When I get home, I try and soak up the fifteen to twenty minutes I have with my husband before he leaves for work, knowing he won’t be back until close to midnight. If I’m lucky, one of the twins is asleep, and if I’m really lucky, they’re both asleep. But that rarely happens.
Sometimes, in my rush to say goodbye to my husband and immediately tend to whichever twin needs me and start dinner and take the dog out, I brush the older three kids off temporarily. Why don’t you guys go outside to play, or Pick out a book and let’s do quiet time. I try not to be harsh about it, but let’s just say the cortisol doesn’t make it super warm and fuzzy, either.
Today, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt as my three older kids shuffled up the stairs, off to read “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” for what must be the two hundredth time this summer. It hit me then that having kids who run to the door because they’re so excited to see you, with eyes lit up and smiles on their face, is such a gift. In that moment, it felt like a gift that I was squandering.
The rest of the night, my guilt followed me like a shadow. While I was fixing plates of tacos for dinner, I laid out a big bowl of tortilla chips and salsa on the table, and told my kids that our house was a Mexican restaurant tonight, just like I kept promising them I’d do all week. They squealed with delight and happily began cramming chips into their mouth, while my bachata playlist ran in the background.
I hope they remember moments like this, I thought to myself, and not the moments I yell or am overwhelmed.
I hope they remember the joy.
I hope they remember the night we stayed up with flashlights all the way until my husband came home from work, telling ghost stories around the coffee table as if it was a campfire.
I hope they remember the time we all piled into my bed to watch cartoons after I got the twins to sleep, and I introduced them to the wonderful combination of popcorn and M&Ms.
I hope they remember all the times I blasted ABBA or Noah Kahan and danced around the house singing at the top of my lungs after dinner, and not the times I cried because the twins crying and the dog barking and their five million questions just caught up to me.
I hope they remember when we snuck out of the house when dad was washing dishes to buy matching onesies at Target, and we surprised him with Sonic and Stitch in the place of his children when we came home. They giggled endlessly when they realized we had successfully caught him off guard.
I hope they remember all of the evenings spent with sidewalk chalk and ice cream sandwiches and bubble baths, and not the evenings where every tiny noise made me go, “Shh!” before I could even stop myself.
I hope they remember the mom that was happy, and not the mom that was at her breaking point. Or at the very least, I hope they remember both.
And I hope on those hard nights, those burnt-out afternoons, that I remember the mom that is happy, that I remember that joy is a choice, and that I can find a way to turn up the music and dance through the tears.
Twenty years from now, when my kids look back on their childhood, I hope they remember the joy.
Step by Step Parenting 