Thursday, May 22, 2014

A Human. A Mum.

In the last two years and eight months, I've been puked on, sneezed at, had my hair smeared with gooey baby food, even had the occasional poop explosion all over my clothes! Find it disgusting, do ya? Well, me too. After all, I'm human. BUT I'm also a mum. Quite a conflicting combination that. As any other person, I have all these naturally strong feelings about not wanting to have another (little) person's snot all over me, or wanting to be able to wee in peace, and you know, just being me. As a mum though, I need to be okay with anything, everything. Okay, wait, I think I'm turning this into a sorrowful rant and I don't want it to sound like that. So I'm quickly going to tell you that that's just one side of the story. The slightly challenging, testing my nerves, make-me-want-to-scream-like-mad side. There's also another side to it. The beautiful, dreamy side where I've been hugged by tiny warm hands, smiled at like a gazillion times, been kissed by Nutella-smeared lips and been showered with the happiest giggles. The joys and woes of being a mother! The happy things far outweigh all the small inconveniences. Yes, there are times when I secretly wish someone would take them for a day, a few hours, a few minutes so I could actually finish my cup of coffee while it's still hot. But that isn't a real wish, no. It's just some weird chemical reaction in my mad-mommy brain sometimes.

I know I want their playful presence, their squeals of delight, the constant babbling and chattering, the prancing about, all the crawling and tugging and exploring. I want my little man to pull my hair with his chubby little (very strong) fist, I want him to use my nose as his teething toy, I want him to demonstrate his limited skills (waving and clapping) over and over again and I want to laugh and say 'Good boy!' every single time. I want my little missy to force feed me pretend toast by the dozen and make me drink 12 cups of pretend tea from her pretty pink teacup, I want her to make me read her favourite book for the twenty-second time in a day, I want her to point her little finger at the pantry and ask for jelly beans and I want her to drag me to her room to play dress-ups when I'm in the middle of cooking. I want it all. I want all of it, I want every bit of being a mum :-)

The difficult bits, the happy bits, the challenging bits, the fun bits; the love, the laughter, the tears, the frustration; the quiet times, the noisy times, the hunger tantrums, the nap times - I love them all. Because I'm a human. Because I'm a mum!