A post Mother's Day tribute to moms

Being a mom is hard.

There are no quarterly reviews where you can sit down with your boss and discuss your progress, your accomplishments, your struggles and strategies to improve.

It's more of the in-the-trenches-everyday type of job. It's the hit-or-miss, trial-by-error type of job. It's a pioneering type of venture, where you blaze the trail, hoping you're on the right path and heading somewhere.

Most days your up to your elbows in laundry, or dishes or tears or toys. Just to wake up the next day and do it all again.

Some days you'll have a clean house and grumpy kids. The next you may have happy kids, but a messy house. On the rare occasion, you know when the planets align, you might get both. But that is rare.

Most days you go to sleep bone tired, and wake up unrested.

You mend scraped knees, torn shirts and broken hearts.

And all while wondering, every day if you're doing the right thing.

"Did they get enough food? Was it all nutritious enough? Did they dress warm enough? Will they be too hot? Are they getting enough sleep?"

Or

"Am I teaching them how to be safe? How to think on their own? Do they know how to learn? Do they treat others with kindness? Do they know how much I love them?"

So many questions. So many worries. So many doubts.

And no quarterly review.

Being a mom is hard.

But we don't quit. We can't. Because being a mom is our life. It's our dream. It's our hope for the future.

So we rise with an aching tiredness day after day. Hoping that we are giving everything they need, so we give more than we have. Hoping we are teaching everything we should, so we teach more than we know.

And their success, becomes ours. Their happiness creates ours.

And maybe from time to time, they will curl up in our lap, like we did with our mothers, and whisper those words that make us melt and fuel us onward, "I love you mom."

30 is the new "something" (I hope)

Tomorrow I turn 30. 3. 0. 30! It's a big deal, for me anyway. It's momentous enough that I feel like I should say words about it.

I mean today is my last day in my 20s after all. When I wake up tomorrow they will be all gone. I can't even say I'm in my late 20s. It's 30s now.

It kinda makes me feel like this:








Okay, so maybe that's a touch dramatic.

I remember thinking as a kid that 30 was soooo old. And then I hit my "late" teens, and I thought, by 30 I'll have everything figured out and I'll be amazing.

I'd be like this:







But, it just feels like this:







Death. 30. They are one and the same.

And I don't have everything figured out.

But I do have a few things figured. For fun, let's say I have 30 things figured out. (Gosh I hope by now I do!)

So in no particular order, here are 30 things that I have figured out, by the ripe OLD age of 30:

1. Walking. I have successfully untangled that mess.

2. Sleeping in. I'm a master, I'm so good at it.





3. I know how to read music.

4. I have figured out the difference between your and you're. And its and it's. And I know how to use to, two and too. As well as their and they're and there.

5. I have learned that I never stop needing my mom.





6. Chocolate makes everything, everything, feel better.





7. No one is nice when they're hungry.

8. Babies are for snuggling and kissing and loving.

9. Creating magic for my kids is worth having glitter everywhere (for three months) and losing sleep.

10. Arizona is the best state in the nation.





11. Breakfast foods are acceptable, nay, amazing, at any time of the day (or night). Like chocolate, breakfast foods make everything better.





12. My house will never be super clean while my kids are young.





13. My teenage body is gone forever. I've got mom bod now. And while society would turn its nose up at it, it's the thing that brought me my babies, so I love it for that, because I love being a mom more than anything.





14. I'm not a morning person. At all.





15. I love my family more than anything in the world.

16. I miss my family every second we're apart.

17. I'm a strong, capable person.

18. I have figured out how to sew zippers and button holes. (I had to learn on my own after my mom died.)

19. I have learned to make killer enchiladas from scratch.

20. Country music is still good.

21. Netflix simultaneously saves and destroys the world, one TV series at a time.





22. Popular opinion is often wrong.

23. God is great. So so great.

24. Yoga pants (aka fancy sweat pants) should be considered okay for everyday use.

25. Perfect isn't real. Being better, trying to be better, definitely real.

26. It's never good to judge people.

27. Manners are worth having. Say please and thank you. Open the door for a stranger.





28. Eating food that's bad for you is easier than eating healthy food.

29. The Internet knows everything.





30. In everything you do, always do you best.







I always see magazine covers saying that say one thing, once perceived as old, is the new "it" thing. 50 is the new 40, 40 is the new 30. Hopefully 30 is the new 20. Or at the very least, the new me. And hopefully it'll be better than I could ever imagine. Well, I suppose it will be if I make it so.

So in my 30s, now, I'm going to figure out a few more things in life. Maybe by the time I'm 40 I'll have it all figured out. But if I don't...surely at the very least 40 will be the new 30.
It'll be the new "something" for sure. And I'm going to try to make that something, whatever it is, great.