So You Think You Can Mother?!

Motherhood is so peculiar.

Yesterday was a day of mothering. Of appreciating mothers, and realizing the great gift of being a mother. In addition to Chris leaving on a work-related trip for a few days, leaving me a single-mom, I was engulfed in children yesterday. Today looks the same. (the next indefinite period of time looks eerily similar too!) Him leaving, and me being faced with the thought that I'm 'alone', really made me think about being a mom and what that is to me.

Pooh-bear, March 2004 (age 7 months)

I had 10 kids in my house yesterday, all under the age of 5. My kids not included, I had a 5 yr old boy, a 4 year old boy AND girl, a two year old boy AND girl, and an 8 month old baby. Wait-- that's nine. Okay, well, nevermind. Still, it was a LOT of kids! I had never watched 4 of them, so in addition to having a bunch of new kids, I had no idea what the kids were like or how they would respond to me. And they didn't know me and had their own adjusting to do.

In particular, the baby. Babies can't tell you what they want. While this child cried and cried, I tried relentlessly to figure out what it wanted-- food? Diaper? sleep? Soother? To be held? I know it's a baby, so it's easy to go crazy with a crying child. But on the same hand, I know that baby was so sad and my heart was sad that I couldn't make it better.

I realized, that as mothers, we're given a little 6th sence the MOMENT that baby enters our lives. We can start to figure out their cries, we know them and their schedules, and usually without even thinking about it, we are attending to their needs from the start.


My neighbour and her 2-yr old daughter came over and jumped on the trampoline with the rest of the brood. I sat there (getting some more sun on this pastey-ness of mine) chatting with my neighbour. We have a lot in common in regards to our marriages and lives, so it's nice to sit and 'gripe' with someone who mostly understands. We spoke of how men don't have what WE have. From the moment we find out we're pregnant, our lives are INSTANTLY changed. We grow up in that minisecond. We are responsible for another human's life, and we know that our lives have changed forever-- although, until you ARE a mother, you have no idea how much change that really is!


Men, they don't have that. They have 9 months to wrap their heads around the thought of being responsible for a baby. But their bodies don't change on them. They don't have to feed the baby or carry it. They don't love it as quickly because they haven't nurtured it since conception. They don't 'grow up' like we do.

Chris and Little Lyssie, August 2001 (age 3 months)

Not everyone can be a mom. But I think there's something uniquely God-given to mothers that I am really grateful for. God didn't make Moms the way he made other women-- With Moms, he put eyes on the back of our heads, an internal 'rocker' when we stand with a baby on our (MUCH LARGER NOW) hips, ears that can hear 'dangerous' silence ('What are you doing?" "I'm NOT being bad!!!"), a nose that can differentiate between your child's dirty butt and the way-more-stinky neighbour's kid's butt, tastebuds that don't mind testing babyfood jars of pureed stringbeans, and, most special of all: a heart that has no out-of-bounds or time-outs.

Mimi and I, April 2006 (age 4 months)