The truth is this scene would normally make me a little twitchy.
You know the twitch... The kind you get when you round the corner and there's been an explosion of Mr. Potato Head pieces, every play food item imaginable, and a myriad of plastic reptiles all topped precariously with the mini-trampoline (that hovers juuuuust over a brand new handmade pottery pasta bowl holding their snacks - cue extra twitching).
That kind of twitch.
Except when my eyes found this mess last night, they just lingered over it. And in place of the twitch, there was a knowing gratitude.
Because these messes happen a lot less often these days. My youngest is now 6. We're slowly (more like light-speed) moving out of these living room play sessions and toy dumps, as sports equipment and dance routines in the yard take rank.
Yesterday though. Yesterday it rained. Poured. And the kids stayed in the house all day. They pulled out the toy bins. They imagined. They played together. They argued over who had which toy. They made a wild mess. They almost broke my new bowl (not cool kids, really not cool)!
And I wasn't one bit twitchy. I was all bits 'soak it in mama, soak it in.'
That's what the middle is bringing me in motherhood.
I'm far enough along this mom path to know how fast it's all moving. How fleeting even the looooooongest hardest seasons truly are. But I'm not quite fully out of the land of little just yet.
Less twitch, more gratitude.
More deep inhales trying to breathe in the moments and sights that I know too soon will leave my home.
The mess will get picked up. And ya know what? That's just it now, now that I'm in the middle. I know that these kind of messes and the littlehood that make them, it's like a fog rolling out of the house a bit more each day.
And well... that makes me a little twitchy.
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