This week on Facebook, I have had a lot of friends sharing a link to a beautifully written article by Sarah Bessey. The blog post details the feelings of a mother who is at the point in her life where she will not be having any additional children. Merely reading the article gives you what she calls “the ache,” the feeling you have in the pit of your stomach as you realize you will never experience “baby things” again.

As I was reading her article, I found my throat tightening and my eyes welling with tears, but for a different reason. I will be 30 years old in about six months. My husband and I have two beautiful girls, and we very much hope and plan to expand our family in the near future. It is what we pray for, what we dream of, and what we desire– more chairs around our table.

I was feeling a different sort of ache, however. The ache you feel when you realize that by bringing another child into this world, the one who has been your baby for, in our case, 15 months, will no longer be “the baby.” She will be the big sister. Life as she knows it will be over.

As a mother of two who hopes to be a mother of three (maybe four, but I don’t want to be greedy), I wonder if I have enough arms to hold them all at once. If I have enough hands to guide them safely all at once. If I have enough patience, enough energy, enough time.

If I will be enough, for all of them, all at once.

While my heart is starting to ache for that new baby smell, that sack-of-potatoes snuggle, that smile-in-their-sleep thing they do so well, my gut is aching for her new baby smell, her sack-of-potatoes snuggle, her smile-in-her-sleep thing she did so well.

These days, she grows more by the minute. She learns more by the hour. She wakes up a new clothing size. She looks more like a kid and less like a baby. That’s precisely the trouble with babies– we can’t figure out how to keep them little forever.

“Time for another one!” people like to say.

But I can’t replace this baby with a new baby. I can’t recreate her or find a replacement. As much as I yearn for a new baby, I yearn for my old baby, too.

I know I felt this way before we welcomed Charlotte as the new baby and said goodbye to Noelle as the old baby. I know I had reservations and worries. Somewhere, deep down, I’m still feeling that ache, too. There’s no medicine, no cure, no remedy.

God-willing, this chapter as a family of four will begin to close, and I pray we are blessed with more children.

But I predict that as I’m holding a new, beautiful, third baby in my arms, I will feel the ache as my old babies, both of them, wear their big sister shirts and walk away.

Right now, my oldest daughter is three years old, but really she’s more like three & three-fourths, which really means she is about thirteen. Not a day goes by (it seems) that I don’t hear “You’re the meanest mom ever!”

The first time she said it, it hurt. I cried. I thought, “What am I doing wrong?” “Why would she say that?” “Look at all I do to love her and help her grow, and that is what I get?”

The second time she said it, I found it annoying.

The third time she said it, I wore a smirk on my face.

Now, since I have stopped counting how many times she has said it, I simply fist pump the air and adjust my mom jeans because yes, I have arrived.

I am now the meanest mom in the world.

By simply asking her to put away her toys when she is done with them, to brush her teeth, to eat vegetables, to, you know, get dressed, I have earned the highly coveted title.

It was just that easy.

But, I know it is only a matter of time before she will be thanking me. Thanking me for all of the chores I made her do against her will. Thanking me for teaching her manners and respect. Thanking me for not letting her wear Crocs with socks (my gawd).

When she wants to be “cool” and hang out with the girls who party and drink underage and dress like rejected Bratz dolls…and I say absofreakinglutely not…she’ll thank me later.

When she tries to wear a shirt to school that is too short, too tight, too see-through, too profane, too adult, too juvenile, too wrong…and I pull out my Ugly Christmas Sweater party attire for her to wear instead…she’ll thank me later.

When she thinks that the only things that define beauty are make-up and her bra size (sorry, Child, but you’re doomed)…and I tell her that beauty is defined by the image of her soul…she’ll thank me later.

When she thinks she has done the best she can do…and I push her to run just a little further, to work just a little harder, to dream just a little crazier…she’ll thank me later.

When she falls in love with the bad boy, the rude boy, the loser boy, the apathetic boy…and I tell her to wait for the man who treats her like his equal and not his princess, like his gift and not his prize, like her father has treated me…she’ll thank me later.

When she calls me in tears, stressed out because of money, because of work, because of life…and I tell her this, too, shall pass…she’ll thank me later.

When she has a daughter of her own who gives her grief over the smallest little request, who challenges her like she never thought possible, who calls her the meanest mom in the world (!!)…and I try my hardest not to tell her “I told you so”…she’ll thank me later.

For now, I’m the meanest mom in the world, and I plan to stay that way…

until she thanks me later.

Since starting this blog and advertising my posts on Facebook, I have received a lot of positive feedback, a lot of virtual fist pumps from other young moms who can relate to what I write about, and I have also received a few questions.

One question I have received more than once is “How do you do it?”

This, in and of itself, is a loaded question with a lot of possible responses. Elaborate.

“How do you do it all?”

Clearly this question comes from complete strangers, because anyone who knows me personally knows that I do not, in fact, do it all. If you’ve been to my house, you have seen piles of laundry waiting to be folded and put away. You have seen dishes from yesterday’s dinner just waiting for “the maid” to do them. You have seen unfinished projects and unfinished rooms, leftovers from my last “cleaning & organizing spree” that I was never able to complete.

If you were here right now, you would see me ignoring my 3 year old as she jumps from the armrest of the couch to the cushions, yelling “Cannon ball!”

That’s what this blog is all about. I don’t do it all. I can’t do it all. We can’t, as women, do it all…as much as we like to believe we can.

I shouldn’t say can’t. We are so powerful that we can do anything we put our minds to doing, but if you have ever found yourself doing it all, you probably have found that you can’t do it all very well. Something suffers. Something doesn’t get as much attention as it should. Something turns out poorly because you were rushing around like a crazy person.

And it sucks if that “something” is a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

But it really sucks if that “something” is your child.

(Note: I just told the 3 year old to stop cannon balling on the couch)

So, let’s stop, take a breath, and focus on what we can do.

We can answer the door to the UPS guy in a bath towel while holding one child on the hip and keeping the other one from yanking the towel off from the floor.

We can manage to stir something hot on the stove while singing Disney songs to the banging of plastic bowls and mixing spoons.

We can buy a cart full of groceries and smush them around a cart full of children like some sort of human Tetris game.

We can change a diaper with one hand and hold a cell phone to our ear with the other and restrain a wild, nakey-butt baby with our legs.

We can kiss their boo-boos, hold their hands, and dry their tears.

We can read the stories, find the blankies, and scare the monsters away.

We are the mamas.

There’s so much we can do when we think we can’t do anything.

Another night alone with the girls, thanks to an overworking husband.

The spur of the moment “I won’t be home for dinner” overwhelmed me, and I felt the tears pooling beneath my eyes.

It had been a long day for the 3rd day in a row. Household chores had piled up, toys were scattered across the floor, and I had no motivation to start dinner. My toddler wanted me to play a game. My baby wanted me to pick her up. My body wanted to sit down and rest.

I felt my frustrations, on the verge of erupting, start to burn in my chest and on my face. I needed a break, and I wasn’t going to get one for several more hours.

And then I saw five sparkly polished finger tips resting gently on my knee. Noelle’s perfectly dimpled hand had landed on me like an unintentional feather or stray eyelash. Afraid of startling it away, I didn’t move. I just looked down and attempted to memorize everything about it. The remnants of yesterday’s marker project staining the valley between her thumb and index finger. Her wrist stacked with plastic bracelets in neon colors. The back of her hand smeared with strawberry chapstick.

It’s so easy to say, “I don’t care if my house is messy as long as my kids are having fun!” I tell myself that, too, but then it gets the best of me, and I’m ready to scream and cry and hire a maid. It is no coincidence that the plastic toy graveyard on my rug makes my skin crawl particularly on nights when my husband gets home much later than anticipated. I’m a mom. I am human. I lose it sometimes.

But looking at her hand reminded me of her innocence. It reminded me that her sweet hands placed those toys on my floor. They colored with those crayons under my kitchen table. They flipped through the pages of those books, scattered and tattered and upside down.

Her three year old hands, with no signs of aging or weathering or stress, were the culprits– the reasons for my near-breakdown over a messy floor. And when I think of it like that, it sounds really, really silly.

I collected myself and decided to play along while Noelle gave me a check-up with her new doctor kit. She took my blood pressure, listened to my heart, took my temperature, and gave me a shot with the “shotter.”

I felt much better.

And when an evening car ride yielded two sleeping beauties in the backseat, I took notice of Charlotte’s precious hands as I carried her to bed.

Sticky from her strawberries at dinner, one hand rested on my arm as the other dangled limply at her side. Her sweet fingers, perfectly dimpled like her sister’s, with little tufts of fuzz hooked deep in their crevices. Just enough dirt under a few of her fingernails– enough to make a note that it would be bath time tomorrow. Buttery smooth skin. Hands too young for nail polish and too young for bracelets. Soon enough, for sure.

As I walked blindly into her dark room, I stumbled and slipped over a small plastic ball and a rogue electric toothbrush– dropped a few hours before by those delicate hands I was just admiring.

The irony.

Their hands.
Soft and strong.
Smooth and sticky.
Destructive and healing.

All the most perfect paradoxes.