I get this question often.
I'm a little over five weeks into this new gig, and I still don't know how to answer it.
Let me keep it real.
My BRAIN.IS.MUSH.
You've heard of pregnancy brain, right? Well a friend once told me that pregnancy brain never goes away even after you have kids. She was right. But what she failed to tell me is that with each kid, I would get dumber. Not dumber in the IQ sense but dumber in the "oh my gosh, I'm going to forget one of my kids at the grocery store" sense. And no, I haven't done that.
Yet.
Here are a just a few examples of the effect my mushy brain has had on my still living and breathing family.
During my first week home with Miss Greta I left the house without the diaper bag. Twice. Two nights in a row. You'd think I would have learned the first time I left the house without the necessities of traveling with a child who poops through clothes, spits up constantly and requires an endless supply of baby wipes. Not to mention, this nursing mom doesn't go anywhere without her nursing cover. Unless I want to get my Mardi Gras on.
And just today I thought I was getting ahead of the game when I sprayed down the entire bathtub with bleach-infused 409 cleanser. I insisted that my husband bathe the kids this evening as our early summer has taken a toll under their fingernails and on the bottoms of their pigs. As I could hear my children splashing in the bathtub, it hit me. I never rinsed out the bathtub. It was still caked with bleach-infused 409. And now my precious little minis were swimming in it. Of course at the time of this realization I was nursing. So I took my baby-latched-to-boob and bolted up the stairs screaming, "Get the kids out of the bathtub!" The look my husband gave me said it all. I had lost my ever loving mind. I was showerless, spit-up stained, droopy eyed, and now running up the stairs topless while screaming. And you thought Kony 2012s Jason Russell went off the deep? He ain't got nothin' on this crazy lady.
But my husband is a gracious man. As he stared at me and all my lunacy, he knew his best bet was to scoop the kids out of the tub and not say another word.
Oh, and have you heard about the cake incident?
My dear cousin baked me a scrumptious chocolate cake for my 32nd birthday (love ya, Lis). She generously gave me the leftover cake contained perfectly in a plastic cake caddy. Finding no room to store it in my kitchen, I thoughtlessly threw it in the oven knowing I'd pull it out the next morning for breakfast (I'm 32. I can eat whatever I darn well please for breakfast, thankyouverymuch).
But I didn't. Breakfast turned into lunch and realizing my children might starve if I didn't feed them fast, I turned on the oven so that I could serve them an overwhelmed mother's dream meal: frozen pizza.
And then it happened.
You know when people ask you how you are doing after having a baby, and the cliche answer is something like, "If everybody is alive by the end of the day, then we succeeded," well those words have never rung so true as the day that I almost burned down the house because of my birthday cake.
But we are all alive and still in one piece. And no thanks to me.
Because being a mother of three ain't always pretty. In fact, it's usually very very messy. And it requires a heck of a lot more brain cells than I have left (no thanks to my early 20s).
Seriously and truly all thanks be to God. He is the only reason we are surviving. And as evidenced by these pictures, these precious little lives are worth every humbling lunatic moment I've endured and will endure.
Bring.
It.
On.
