The Secret to Having a Good Mom-Day

Note: I actually wrote this in October when I started preparing to launch the blog.  I hope you enjoy, and that you’re having a good Mom-Day today!  …If you’re a Mom  🙂

Some days are good Mom-Days.  Other days are just not so good.

This afternoon as I was folding some clothes, I found myself thinking.  It was naptime, of course, because we all know that this kind of thinking doesn’t occur outside of naptime.

So anyway, I found myself thinking that this had been a good Mom-Day.  And I smiled.  And then my mind began to scroll through the events of the day:

To when I was trying to unload the dishwasher and clear the sink of yesterday’s dishes, and Joshua used that time to climb up on the kitchen table and destroy half a box of baby wipes and shred the paper mail that was probably important.

To a few minutes later when, after I had gotten him off the table and sternly told him “We do NOT get on the table”, he and his big brother were BOTH on the table!  This time they were throwing my pumpkins on the floor.  The fall pumpkins I bought to replace our pumpkin patch ones that the neighborhood dog dragged away 2 weeks ago.  Yes.  Those pumpkins.  They’re still sitting on my kitchen table.  We’ve been eating around them for 2 weeks now.  Only now they’re in the floor and being treated like balls.  And that was time for a double-time-out.

As I continue folding laundry I’m already starting to laugh at the events that made up my good Mom-Day.  But just for the purpose of reflecting, I keep scrolling through the events in my mind.

There was also that moment where my oldest pooped in his underwear.  Did I mention we’re potty-training and my days are spent running to the potty every 15 minutes?  I got all of that cleaned up and some fresh underwear on my boy, and went back to my housework.

Twenty minutes later he came running into the kitchen and said “Uh-oh, guck!”  To my delight I discovered he had pooped in his fresh undies.  This time it was full and falling down his leg.  Sorry for the TMI, but I’m keeping it real.  I sat him on his potty and carefully wiggled his feet out of his underwear.  I threw them on the back porch to clean them up later, because I needed something to look forward to.  Then it was back inside to my son sitting on his potty, still covered in poop.  I grabbed the wipes and began wiping him off before I realized that this job was just way too big for baby wipes.

So we slowly headed to the bathtub, being super careful not to touch ANYTHING on the way.  Then I made the super-mom decision that I couldn’t reward my son for pooping in his underwear, so a bath was out of the question.  Baths are his favorite, after all.  So instead I chose to torture him with a shower.  I got to hear a few new levels of screaming come from his little body.

Meanwhile in the other room, my other son has filled his diaper and decides to go for a ride on his brother’s bat-mobile.  No sooner have I cleaned up one boy than I look to see the other one gleefully riding down the hallway on a poop-covered car, and the car is leaving “residue” everywhere it drives.  Oh the joy!

I clean all of that mess up, get the boys settled and head outside to the back porch to take care of those dirty undies.  I super-carefully turn them inside-out, lay them on the concrete at the end of the stairs, and grab the water hose.  I got them all clean, draped them over the porch rail, and was about to head inside when I realized there was a remnant of that lovely surprise right outside the back door where I had first thrown them out.

I re-grab the water hose and spray the porch off as well.  Finally finished, I put the hose away and head inside.  My two boys are sitting at the door watching Mommy play with the water hose. As I open the door, I remembered that the seal at the bottom of the door was broken.  The poopy water had been pushed—by MY water hose—under the door, into my kitchen, and all over my boys’ legs, who thought it was awesome that Mommy had sprayed water under the door at them.

Yes.  It has definitely been a good Mom-day.

And as I sit here folding laundry, I’m thankful.

I’m thankful that I chose to spend time with God this morning.

I’m thankful that we’ve been teaching our son to pray, and that I was able to hold his little hand this morning and pray with him.

I’m thankful for the online class I listened to while I was cleaning this morning.  The one about keeping the gospel as the focus and purpose of everything you do as a homemaker.

I’m thankful for the Bible Storybook I read to the boys over lunch, and I’m thankful that they love our daily Bible story & memory verse time.

I’m thankful for those things, because without those things I would have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  In the throes of TWO boys in toddlerhood, I NEEDED God to get me through my morning.  And He not only got me through the morning; He got me through it with a smile on my face.  He got me through it, and then gave me a rare instance of two boys napping at the same time so that I’d have a moment to appreciate it.

The Joy of the Lord is TRULY my strength.

He gave me a TRULY good Mom-day.  Not by changing the events and making my boys the most perfect, obedient children ever.  Not by miraculously giving me a spotless house.  Not by sending an angel to fold my laundry.

No.  He gave me a good Mom-day just by being present in my day.  By reminding me He has a plan for all the chaos.  By showing me that He is LORD, even over the mundane and messy things.

He is Lord over the pumpkins on my table.  Over the mounds of laundry.  Over potty-training and poop explosions.  He is LORD.  He is Lord while I’m refereeing toddler boy fights, and He is Lord when I am hosing off a poopy porch.

HE IS LORD, and I’m thankful.  Because without Him, I would have had a very bad Mom-day.  But with Him, I soaked in the quiet of naptime as I reflected on a day that really was a GOOD Mom-Day.