I never imagined this.

These days are hard. School seems to drag on forever, co-op has become a stress like no other and keeps me awake at night, it’s all I can do to keep up with the house somewhat and laundry, Pierce is tearing the house apart as fast as I can put it back together and refusing to take naps many days, and my belly is bigger and causing me more pain than it’s ever been at just shy of 23 weeks.

It’s funny, as a kid, picturing motherhood didn’t include absolute exhaustion. It didn’t include frustration or anger or sticking to the floor when I stumble into the kitchen after consoling a child with growing pains at 3am. It didn’t include repeating myself over and over and over or searching for lost objects that I didn’t lose or potty training a single child for six months with limited success.

Strangely enough, I pictured lovely children, well-behaved, without all the work. I imagined clean, pressed (HA!) and smiling children. This just wasn’t what I imagined.

Messes. Oh, the messes. The laundry, the mountains of work without the energy to climb anything more than the path to the couch. The pure exhaustion and achiness that pregnancy brings. The unending meal preparation and the inability to feed my children one helping of anything that fills them up.

But.

I didn’t picture the discussions either. The talks of sin and Christ’s love. The discussions of those painful growing up moments that are inevitable.

The laughs. Oh, the laughs. The hilarious things that a child comes up with. The heart stopping moment when you find your two year old standing high in the air, perched on a tiny patch of instability. The baby kissing “his baby” in Momma’s belly, loving someone so unconditionally that they’ve never met, don’t fully understand, and who is taking up more and more of “their” lap space.

The different personalities. The ones I see myself in clearly, and the ones I don’t understand in the slightest because they are so unlike me. The ones who are word oriented and the ones who crunch numbers like nobody’s business. Outgoing. Shy. Energetic. Quiet.

If I had to describe them each in a word…

Liberty… perfectionist

Eden… scattered

Sterling… mathematical

Ruby… passionate

Charlotte… imaginative

Pierce… hungry

Yeah. I never pictured any of this. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The hardest thing I’ve done, and the only thing I can’t quit. Day after day, new struggles face me in the lives of these children. I never imagined this. But I’m having the time of my life – on the good days and the bad.

Smelly tales.

Yesterday, after a great morning at home, I decided Pierce was ready to go to the store without a diaper. It was his first outing, so we packed lots of extra clothes and headed out, hoping for the best.

He did great. He used the bathrooms in Walmart and Dillons, keeping his pants dry like a pro.

Then we got to the eye doctor’s. He’d gone just minutes before at Dillon’s, so I was feeling pretty confident.

Mistake. The smell that suddenly permeated the waiting area meant only one thing. Turns out, Pierce’s new boxers are not all-containing. The rug was littered with the source of that smell.

Oh. My.

I sent Liberty to the van for the diaper bag, I begged for paper towels from the receptionist, and looked for an outside trash (There wasn’t one.) Declining the receptionists offer to just empty the garbage once I’d used it, I stuffed the paper towels in the wet bag and watch my pride go in there with them.

I couldn’t believe that had just happened. While the receptionist is the doctor’s daughter and the oldest of eight and had experienced similar humiliation (or witnessed it in her own family at the very least) and couldn’t have been any nicer, it was one of the most embarrassing motherhood moments to date. Next week, when we visit the same doctor for two more appointments, I’m thinking a diaper is in order.

My pride can’t take it.

Pierce isn’t going to live this down. It’ll be told and retold, I’m afraid. All five of his older siblings watched their frazzled mother cleaning up poop off the carpet at the eye doctor’s, all the while praying no one walked in the doors until it was all contained. It’ll go down in infamy.

Tales from the back of a very large van. Part 2.

On the way home, Ruby asked if we were in Africa. We were in Sioux City, IA. Strange, those Africans looked remarkably Dutch. Detour?

I bought bananas and peanuts for snacks on the way home. They were buried under three feet of luggage. We found them when we unloaded the van.

A box of Kix spilled in the van. Kix on vinyl van floors are something akin to marbles on ceramic tile. I had to catch more than on kid as I opened the doors when we stopped to use bathrooms along the way.

Kix and shop vacs don’t work well together. I simply vacuumed them up, moved to a different area, shut the vacuum off, and had Kix roll back out. The hose was plugged solid with them.

I’m hoping birds like Kix.

We were 52 minutes into our drive that averages 10.5 hours when I banned the question, or anything remotely similar to, “Are we almost there?”

We were 46 minutes down the road when I got the first “I need to go potty” from the backseat.

Despite using many, many toilets along the way, one dear fairly recently potty trained child didn’t make it. Many times. Her car seat had to be poured out and thoroughly scrubbed when we got there. She wore a diaper on the way home. Blessed invention.

A can of pink paint from my childhood bedroom came home with us. Some of it didn’t make it. My van was sporting pink stripes when we pulled in the driveway. Clorox wipes saved us from wearing them permanently. If you drive a really nice car and found yourself wearing pink polka dots after driving anywhere near a very large white van somewhere in Missouri on Monday… that’ll be $200 for a custom paint job, drive through style.

It was a really nice thought.

But when I get woke up, not once but twice, by Sterling somewhere in the wee hours because he needs to pee, I start to wish he wasn't potty trained. Or that he'd just pee in the diaper he's wearing. Nope, take him potty. Then feed Ruby, because he woke her up and she couldn't possibly go back to sleep without nursing.

And when he goes down for a nap - in his undies this time, since he stays dry anyhow - and I lay down for a nap too, only to be awakened by him holding the monitor against his mouth hollering "Ma-MA!" I start to wonder if this was really what we were after.

But what takes the cake is going up in my too-short nap stupor to find out he didn't get me woke up in time. But at least he was kind enough to remove said undies and poop on the floor instead. He's just thoughtful like that.