Seamless

Don't you love those seamless zippers? They just seem to disappear and do their job.

I have been thinking about the word seamless lately, as it relates to zippers but mostly to everyday child-rearing.

You see once upon a time before I had children I imagined myself seamlessly going from one thing to another with grace and ease. As if effortlessly gliding along, dishing out applesauce, changing a diaper, washing dishes, teaching Bible stories with a song in my heart and making a call to some utility company whilst my children played quietly and looked at books on weather patterns. (Whilst and Seamless are 2 words that should go together. Right?!) You know like Mary Poppins.

 Maybe working with school aged kids I got the wrong idea. Sure things moved fast, you had to keep going at their speed or they would walk all over you and leave you in the chalk dust. However, most of them were potty trained, not peeing on your rug or waking you up in the middle of the night for milk or refusing to eat fruit. The reality is teaching didn't really prepare me for how unseamless mothering would be for me. Others may have it down, I haven't gotten it yet. This is still surprising me because I thought for sure I could do it seamlessly.

The reality is I am putting out fires all day long and barely catching a breath before the next tantrum, feeding, burned something because we are running to the potty catastrophe. Anything but seamless. Its gaping, tiring, inconsistent, convicting... My baby is eating crumbs off the floor faster than I can sweep the floor but that's partly because I keep running the boy to the bathroom every time the timer goes off. Actually, kicking and screaming would more aptly describe what's happening. Instead of it being seamless its a continuous series of stitches going in all directions sometimes at the same time. Its all very obvious and all over the floor - the kitchen floor.

At the end of the day, where I feel like I have yelled more than loved on I want to be reminded that no one else does motherhood seamlessly either. Everyone else is tired with tousled hair, peanut butter still lingering on their kid's face and probably a little bit of pee on their shirt from helping their kid put on his pants after using the toilet - but not yet washed his hands.

Maybe someday I will recover from the shock that I can't do this seamlessly. Meanwhile I stumble through trying to figure out how to get everyone fed when they are all clamoring for something to eat. Or trying to convince them how nice a nap would be - for mom. Or how to change a 7 month old "ocotpus" who thinks she can fly off the changing table.

Hopefully stumbling and bumbling and unseamlessly going along won't screw them up too much. After all, they are just kids they need to see the zipper to learn how to zip it up right?