today

It's been a sanctifying kind of day.

First, I slept in. Sleeping in is beautiful in theory, but in reality, it means that I stumble out of my room, bleary-eyed, fumbling into the kitchen for coffee, while my little charges are already screeching down the hallway, finished with breakfast and ready to play, and Emmy is inch-worming her way toward me, wailing each time I step over her rather than pick her up, ready for morning cereal and clean clothes.

Nothing like being catapulted out of bed and into the middle of the day.

Then I had to wake the baby up to get to her check-up on time. I hate waking babies from a perfectly good nap.Silas had to go with me anyway, so I decided to just take all three to the pediatrician's office. For the life of me I can't remember now why I thought this would be a good idea. It goes without saying that it's pouring down rain when we leave, and we're all soaked by the time we get inside. Silas wet his pants twice (twice!) and threw the kind of fit reserved only for spectators while the (very gracious) doctor was in the room. Then, on our way out, Silas ran away from me to gather rocks to throw at his brother, and Asher climbed out of his car seat and into the front of the van, the better to honk at his mother and brother as we acted out our very own roadrunner and coyote scene in the pediatrician's parking lot.

Ay-yi-yi.

We recovered during lunch, got Silas down for his nap, and moved on. Then, a few minutes ago, I was nursing Emmy before her nap while Asher was playing with the water hose in the back yard. I heard him open the back door and shoot the water hose through the screen, spraying the kitchen floor. If I jumped up, I would wake the baby, so I sat and listened as he came inside, surveyed the damage, then went back out to finish his task of hosing down the kitchen. Intentionally. On purpose. Because flooding the house seemed like the best use of his time in that moment.

I put Emmy to bed, picked up the mop, handed Asher a towel, and thanked God for my children.

Six years ago this week, I had a dead baby in my womb. I had waited a long time to have a baby, and now I was waiting to miscarry. It was the most miserable few weeks of my life.

If you had said to me back then - six years from this moment, your four-year-old son is going to flood the kitchen. Your three-year-old son will pee on the floor (twice!), then throw a fit in front of the pediatrician. And your baby girl will be the easiest, most content baby in the world, as long as you never attempt to leave her side. You'll be fretting over keeping a house clean enough to sell, the dog will develop an allergy to fleas, and you'll spend all day every day focused on the minutia of living with little kids.

If you had said to me back then, in six years this will be your life, it would have seemed too much to hope for.

On days like today, it's so easy to forget how rich my life is. How long I asked for the life I have now, how quiet my world was back then. It's easy to yell, harder to be grateful.

But today I am. Because six years ago right now, all that I wanted in the world was a loud, messy, full life.

And I needed to mop the kitchen anyway.