Motherhood is...

Motherhood is middle of the night wake up calls for a glass of water or a fan or a light or a blanket or a bear or a kiss or a band-aid.

Motherhood is making lunch after lunch after lunch after lunch only to find the healthy contents stuffed behind a car-seat.

Motherhood is all of your spending money.

Motherhood is not remembering what it’s like to get a full night’s sleep.

Motherhood is siblings bickering over who can look out of which window and who started it and who you love the most even though you love all of them the same but at the moment you don’t like any of them in the least.

Motherhood is wiping more poop than you ever thought you’d see in your life.

Motherhood is a car so filthy that you are embarrassed to let your own husband see it.

Motherhood is hearing the word “why” at least a hundred times a day and most of the time, not having an answer.

Motherhood is knowing, just from the touch of a forehead, almost exactly what your child’s temperature is.

Motherhood is stretch marks dominating your belly and feet a full size larger than before and sad, deflated boobs.

Motherhood is finally appreciating your own mother.

Motherhood is fantasizing over reaching the bottom of the laundry pile, knowing full well that it’s never going to happen.

Motherhood is singing all the words to your kids favorite songs even though they annoy the hell out of you.

Motherhood is never feeling at peace unless all of your children are with you, under your own roof.

Motherhood is always feeling mildly sick but never being able to wallow in your own misery.

Motherhood is never peeing or showering in peace.

Motherhood is using your sleeves to wipe runny noses and your spit to clean dirty faces.

Motherhood is being able to identify just who is coming down the stairs based solely on the thudding of their feet above you.

Motherhood is not even wanting to say “I told you so” even though you did, countless times.

Motherhood is when, just as you want to curl up into a ball of pure exhaustion and desperation, one of your children suddenly farts or burps or does something spontaneously funny. It’s the moment when you dissolve into a hysterical fit of laughter; the kind that you haven’t had since you and your seventh grade BFF were caught passing notes about which boy in your class you’d most want to be stuck in a closet with. It’s the moment you pause and look at your children, all piled on your bed, breathless and rosy cheeked, and think that the only things that really matter in the world are right there in front of you. They are yours, and they are worth every sacrifice and sleepless night.

And then, it’s the moment, two seconds later, when one of them will accidentally kick the other one on the arm and the other will bite in retaliation and you will wish, for the hundredth time that day, that you could just rewind time and savor that peace and joy for more than an instant.

Rinse and repeat a million times. That’s what motherhood is to me.