I can’t believe a year has gone by since last Mother’s Day.  So much has changed between then and now, it’s incredible.  I remember finding out that I was pregnant two days after Mother’s Day last year.  We weren’t expecting the news and it was quite a shock.

Tonight, when I was thinking about that and about how much has changed in the last year, I decided to go back and read what I wrote in my post last Mother’s Day.

What I found was the words that a different woman in a different place, wrote about her life and family.

Last year at this time, I was exiting a phase of motherhood and grieving the loss of it.  I didn’t think there would be any more babies in our life and my girls were growing up.  Well, tonight, just about a year later, we have a beautiful, giggling chubba muffin in our lives that brings each and every one of us extra smiles and loads of joy everyday.

She is such a blessing.  All of the girls are, and I’m so grateful that I get to be their momma and guide them as they navigate their way through life.

But let me tell you, Friends.  At this point in my life, I’m exhausted and I’m grateful for the words that I wrote last year because I needed to hear them tonight.

So much has changed in the last year.  The girls have changed in ways I honestly couldn’t have imagined they would.  Jenna no longer likes to play in the living room just to be close to us.  Aubrey really hasn’t crawled into our bed in the middle of the night once in the last year.  So many of the things that I knew would come to an end, actually came to an end this last year, and I really didn’t expect so much to change quite that fast.

 

So, I’m going to repost last year’s post because it was a reminder to me of how fleeting this whole experience of mothering young children really is, and they were words that I needed to hear tonight….

 

Words From Mother’s Day 2016

My kids are only going to be young once, and these moments are so fleeting.  While the go-getter, chronically ambitious woman inside of me seems to always be yelling at me to do more, the last three years have taught me to ignore her as much as I can.

So much has changed in three years.  Our family of four became a family of five, {and now, a family of SIX!} two of my children started school, I started working again, we redid a bathroom, and a kitchen, and now a living room, and the list goes on and on…

I wish I had realized how fleeting these years were when Jenna, my oldest, was a baby.  I’m not sure why, but I honestly think that I believed that she’d always be a baby back then.  All of those consecutive nights that she crawled into our bed and woke us up at 2 AM, they were fleeting.  I wish I had known what fleeting actually meant.  I think I did know, logically, of course.  I knew time would pass.  I knew my girls would grow up.  But I didn’t know how that would feel.  I didn’t fully grasp that everything, good and bad, would soon be a memory.

There was a last night that Jenna crawled into our bed.  There will be a last night that Aubrey does too.  Actually, it may have already happened, in all honesty {it officially has happened}, because she hasn’t woken us up in the wee hours of the night in a long time.

These are the things that have been on my heart these last few days, as I felt the stress of another missed goal wanting to creep its way into my life.  I guess I’ve been thinking about all of this for a long time.  The kids growing up, the passing of time.  You look back and think, where did these last years go?  How have they grown so much?

And we all realize that there’s absolutely nothing that we can do about it.  It’s going to go.  Time is going to slip through our hands like sand, no matter how hard we try to clench our fingers together.  But what we can do, is change how we react to things.  Things like missed deadlines, and getting woken up four hours too early night after night.

There’s going to come a day when my girls won’t want to help me paint anymore.  They won’t track painty footprints all over the kitchen in the middle of projects.  They won’t crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night, because they just won’t need the reassurance that we’re close to them anymore.  They won’t want to hang out in the living room because that’s where Mommy and Daddy are.  They’ll be embarrassed to call us Mommy and Daddy.

I’m learning not to wish any of this away, and this week has been a great lesson in that.  The painty footprints, the missed hours of sleep, the missed deadlines. I’m learning to just be ok with things not going entirely as planned.  I’m learning to enjoy the journey, and accept situations for what they are because I think when we really stop and zoom out on our lives, what really matters more than being fully present for our families?

Well, Friends, I found last year’s post to be even more relevant to me this year.  I’m still working on changing the way I react to things, to not sleeping, to the messy house and never ending pile of laundry, and trying to remember that this too shall pass.  And you know what, I have a feeling I’m going to be terribly sad when it does.

Wishing all of you Momma’s out there a restful and well deserved day to celebrate YOU.

Here are the sources for this table, if you’re interested!

 

Table Sources

Water Goblets

Striped Plates

Floral Plates (Target’s Dollar Section.  I couldn’t find them online)

Floral Napkins

Gold Flatware

Table

Rattan Chairs

Wooden Chairs

Brass Candle Holders – Thrift