Good mom moments

Yesterday was a good day. One of those days in which you think: wow... I'm doing something important, and I am doing it well! There was not really something special going on, but the house was clean and I managed to keep it up during the day. I decluttered one cabinet, and took plenty of time to play with Joseph. We played with the puzzles and it hit me, wow... I'm doing well.
I am pretty uncertain about my mothering skills due to the difficult first months. These last four months now, there are more and more moments when I just look at him and see what a happy, healthy, loving little boy he is, and I realize that out of the depths of exhaustion, something beautiful must have happened. That by the grace of God, I did well.
Those moments are quite often ordinary, like the quick glimps of success in which I made my fifteen year old todler put all his blocks away before playing with the puzzle and mommy and little boy played a game of who could put the blocks away quicket. When my little boy grabs a book out of the book basket and comes with it to me to wiggle himself on my lap awaiting a story and a cuddle at times it takes my breath away. Of course there are also moments that I just wish I could get on for a few undisturbed moments with the laundry, or an email, but such is life.
When I looked around me yesterday, I felt so content and on top of things. A clean house, a happy husband, and a nice looking healthy meal for our boy. When I brought out the nice little plate with homemade chili with lots of vegetables, lean beef, beans, a little bit of salad on the side and nice strips of wholewheat tortilla, I felt SO good as a mother. I was on top of the world, just because the meal I prepared was healthy and pretty enough to put a picture on my blog.
After such a high comes reality of course in which Joseph dumped his bowl over the carpet next to his little table half an hour later in the thirty seconds it took me to go to the kitchen for a new portion of the chile for myself. After the great mom moment in all it's award show glory, there I was on my knees, scrubbing the carpet before the spots set, telling my todler 'no' in my sternest voice as he tried to smear whatever chili he managed to get on himself on me, while my husband was on the phone with my beloved mother in law.

Ah... mom moments. They come in all shapes and sizes!