While trying to bring some sort of order to my place, i.e. loading the dishwasher, I overheard the following…

Boston: “Pierce, do you want to go into my bedroom?”

Pierce: “Yeah!”

(Little feet running.)

Boston: “Pierce, do you want to sit on my bed and talk about it?!”

Pierce: “Yeah!”

Boston: “So, Pierce, do you like living in California?”

Pierce: “Yeah!”

Boston: “Yeah!!!” 

I then heard squeals and laughter and lots of cheering and my heart melted and spilled out into a pile of mush right there on my California kitchen floor. Not more than five minutes later though, I was scooping it back up and shoving it back in as I went to break up the sudden fight that had ensued over our new mop. Yes. A mop.

It was just one of the million fights and arguments of that day. In this moment alone I can remember hitting, scratching, biting, a slammed finger and a bloody nose. And yet, as I was putting the two of them down for the night, that sweet conversation on their little toddler bed was all that filled my mind.

I finally let it continue to wander and I recalled that morning, when I caught my daughter reading to her brother, their little legs too small to even dangle off the couch. And the moment when the two of them decided to rest together on this same couch with their milk, and I walked in and just about died of cuteness.

I fell asleep with my family beside me, and somehow forgot about one hundred thousand times I had prayed for patience that day. I slept in sweet peace, waking only to the quiet sound of my husband eventually picking them up to place in their own beds. The little toddler beds where my heart found itself complete.

I suppose I could choose to remember the screaming and crying, the terrible two’s my son has embraced with full force (particularly in public places), or the vicious cat fighting my daughter has recently decided to take on. I could almost cry as I think about the way my son has taken off his diaper and pooped directly on his crib each morning this week before announcing he was awake. I could think of my home, the one whose carpets they love to cover with the entire contents of everything we own.

For some reason, all I can remember in the stillness of the night, is the beauty.

And I think it is just another miracle of motherhood.

Our life is filled with an equal mixture of sweet moments and screaming faces, and some days the screams seem to have the upper hand. But not at the end of the day. At the end we are tired and we are spent, but we smile at those precious faces, and remember nothing more than all the day’s good.

For it really is a miracle all in itself that we are allowed the priceless priviledge to be their momma. And so we lay them down in those tiny little toddler beds, and we whisper our thanks to a God who gave us this life. A miraculous life filled with screaming and crying and scratching and pooping in cribs…

A miraculous life that only remembers one: “Pierce, do you want to come sit on my bed and talk about it?”