Thoughts on Mother's Day

I think this was my best Mother's Day yet. Its not so much what we did (enjoy the company of three generations of family) or what I ate (yummy omelet for breakfast and salmon on the grill for lunch) or what I got (an awesome mug featuring Owen's artwork) as it is where I am these days.

I am really loving being a mother, and as it crazy as it might sound to some, I swear its getting easier.

Before I had my third baby, I asked a friend with three kids how she did it. How she could manage any one-on-one time with her kids and whether she and her husband found any time alone. She told me it was actually easier with three than with two because it became even more important with a bigger family.

I totally did not believe her.

But now that I'm here, now that my third baby is over five months old and we are well into our groove, I have to say she was right.

When I had my first baby, I had to become a mother. I remember staring at my new baby boy when he was only a day old, trying to memorize his face. I stared at this little stranger in my arms, staring back at me with eyes too wise for a newborn. I confessed to my husband that I wasn't sure I could pick him out of a room full of babies.

He looked over and sized up his new son. "I think I could pick him out of a lineup," he said.

As a new mother, I had to try on some shoes that didn't fit quite right and then I had to run in them. I had to learn how to walk with my husband in his new shoes, too; and we weren't always keeping the same pace.

But time passed and we figured it out. And when the earth stopped quaking beneath our feet and the aftershocks subsided, we found our footing and looked each other in the eye and we saw that we had made it through. We were parents.

And when we had our second baby, motherhood was easier from the first moment I held him in my arms. When he cried his first little bleating cry, I held him close and comforted him with the confidence of a mother. The struggles of learning how to care for an infant were drastically easier, and gone was the challenge of stepping into the role of Parent. All we really had to learn was how to split our attention.

We came to balance our little family of four quite comfortably. But in those moments around the kitchen table when we were all joking and laughing and having a good time, I found myself thinking, I love these guys! Won't it be great when everyone's here? And so that third little being stopped floating around as an idea and he entered our family five months ago.

Caring for a baby the third time around is such a joy. There is no worry, no second-guessing, no checking the books for the right way to do things. I know how fast it goes, so I'm soaking in every second of tiny-ness. And since I don't have to waste any time or energy trying to figure out how to take care of the baby, it frees up all my time and energy for just loving him.

The big brothers have adjusted wonderfully, and I honestly feel like we all love each other just a little bit more than we did before. The transition from a family of four to five was seamless. My husband and I look at each other in amazement that we have been so lucky.

I think it took until our third baby to realize how important it is to take care of ourselves, too. With three kids and a marriage we'd like to keep happy, we can't afford any meltdowns. So I'm practicing yoga, I'm making time for girls nights, and I'm writing and reading on a regular basis. My husband gets out to play cards a little more than he used to, and we're getting better at making time for him to fish and paddle and play in the great outdoors that recharge him so well.

Sure we're busy. But I really feel like everyone is getting what they need. Somehow each child manages to get one-on-one time with a parent or two daily. Miraculously, all three kids get to bed at an early enough hour that my hubby and I get quality couple-time on a nightly basis. And we've even gone on more dates in the last five months than we had in the last couple of years.

So I'm very happy these days. But I'm not naive. I realize that as a couple and as a family, we will weather more storms. But right now it really is smooth sailing. And I'm grateful for it.

Happy Mother's Day.