“Oh no, I really have to pee,” I thought to myself as I strapped the baby into the Ergo carrier and headed into the gym. My 2 and 4-year-olds were in tow and we started to cross the parking lot. “Hold hands and watch for cars!” I yelled after them as I scanned the parking lot to double check that there weren’t in fact, any cars coming to potentially take out my little ones. I tried to pick a speck of glitter from baby’s forehead that she inherited from our super cute, crazy art class earlier this morning.
We walked through the door and I awkwardly reached around to the side pocket of the backpack on my back to find our gym ID cards. We checked in and I realized it has been a while since my middle love had a diaper change. They run down the hallway to the child watch room and I help shimmy off jackets, put on their ID bracelets, and grab a diaper and wipes to change middle little. I’m still wearing my baby on my front side and have to awkwardly bend over to grab the diaper little has accidentally kicked off of the changing table. And man, the glitter is still on baby’s head.
Diaper is changed. Snacks are set. I head up the stairs to the track. “Oh right, I still really have to pee,” I remember. I have found out the hard way that there are no bathrooms in this facility with a changing table that I can strap my babe onto. And even if there were, she is so big and strong now that she would likely wiggle out and crawl right off the thing. And I am far from a germaphobe, but I am not about to put her down on the bathroom floor. So I head into the bathroom, get her out of the carrier, take the carrier off, pull my pants down, sit her on my lap while I pee, struggle for a solid 60 seconds to pull my pants up and then by some miracle, get the Ergo strapped back on all without putting the precious cargo down.
Then I head to the track, patting her bum with one hand to help her fall asleep, doing work on my phone with the other while wracking my brain about what I will make for dinner this Friday when we have guests over.
I walk and work and the babe sleeps for a while, then we head to get the “big kids” from child watch. They ask if we can play in the Kids Gym and we head in for a bit. They play and have a blast and make some new friends. My baby falls and cuts her lip. I nurse her and she’s just fine. Two minutes later my toddler says, “Mom, look!” goes to do some cool move on the slide and smashes her face on it instead. Another lip bleeding. Another nursing session, more tears wiped, and all is well.
I will spare you the rest of the step by step details and half a million little things that happened in between that moment and this one, two hours later as I sit to write this. My girls are asleep and my little guy is enjoying quiet time. And I… I am taking a moment to marvel at us mamas. To marvel at all of us who are fumbling through our days, looking awkward, showing up to playgroup with a stained shirt, dropping our kids off with our hair undone, dropping hats and gloves and scarves as we try to literally hold it all together.
There were no tantrums today during our trip to the Y. There were no serious struggles, my children are healthy, nobody got really hurt. And still, with everything being “well” and everyone having a lot of fun, it was a lot of work! There are so many things for us to orchestrate on a day to day basis as moms. Whether we are full-time stay at home moms, full-time working moms or we fall somewhere in the middle; there is a LOT of stuff going on!
So even if you are reading this and feel like you’re floundering, feel like you’re not getting anything right, look around and make a quick mental list of all of the things, no matter how small, that you orchestrated today and just… marvel.
