Happy Mother's Day?

Before Larkin was born, I made a promise - a promise to never discuss any baby bodily functions on Facebook. And I am proud to say that I have never faulted from that promise. My blog, however, is obviously not heldto such a high standard. So, for any of my readers who do not have children (and if you are squeamish about bodily fluids, you MUST not have children) and do not wish to read of such details, go ahead and check back tomorrow.

You may wonder why I am writing about Mother’s Day now, three days after the event. I seriously considered just not addressing it here at all, but I figured that a blog chronicling my experiences as a new mother would not be complete without recapping my first Mother’s Day.

We had no major plans for Sunday. We were going to attend Sunday services at our church, then have a nice lunch out. Afterwards, Jonathan was going to bake me a gluten free lemon drizzle cake that I’ve been craving for a couple of weeks now. That was as far as our plans went because we knew there was still some work to be done to my parent’s house (as it was going on the market Monday).

Sunday morning dawned to a fussier than usual baby. He woke up early, and we played for awhile. We attend the late service at church, so he has time to take his morning nap before service. He started crying and rubbing his eyes, so I laid him down to nurse and hoped he’d nap. Instead, he began screaming, shoving me away, and throwing a fit. I checked his diaper, and saw he needed a change.

I laid him down on the changing table, and pulled off his diaper. I looked up as Jonathan walked in the room, and mentioned that it looked like Larkin might have a bit of diarrhea. Just then, disaster. Larkin let out a pained cry, and baby poop went *everywhere*. Jonathan and I went into overdrive - me cleaning the baby while he grabbed the cover off the changing pad, me throwing a fresh diaper on as fast as possible while he handled the soiled one.

The rest of the morning involved a poor baby crying with stomach cramps and diaper changes about every ten minutes. I’m still uncertain whether it was a stomach bug or if another tooth is trying to make its way out, but it was a very unpleasant situation regardless of the cause.(I would, however, like to mention that our cloth diapers held up BEAUTIFULLY.)

Larkin finally started feeling a bit better, although he refused to be more than an inch away from me all day. We, of course, scrapped our plans for a steak lunch, and Jonathan went to bring home some Jason’s Deli. After we ate, we got to work cleaning the house.

Then we decided we might as well go to the grocery store and get food for the next week or two as well as the makings of the lemon cake. We picked up stuff for lunches and dinners, some GF all purpose flour, and all the other makings of the cake. Except, of course, for the lemons. This seems tobe a consistent in all my grocery shopping trips.

So, in other words, my first Mother’s Day involved baby diarrhea, scrubbing the grout on the tile between the refrigerator and the cabinet, and not getting lemon cake. No cards, no breakfast in bed, no smiles and well wishes at church, no fancy lunch, no yummy cake, no quiet “me” time.

The funny thing is, my Mother’s Day was such a perfect example of what motherhood is really about. It’s dirty and fussy and hectic. It’s unpredictable, unplannable and unexpected. It’s tears and laughter and time together, and the realization that I would rather be together anyway – despite the circumstances.

It amazes me that family can be both the dark cloud and the silver lining, the storm and the rainbow, the tunnel and the light at the end – ALL AT THE SAME TIME. I never really expected to be a mother, never expected to have my own “day”. So I don’t mind at all sharing my day with the little one who made me a mother – and who is making me the woman I was meant to become.