You must have your hands full. Better you than me. You know how that happens, right?
Just a small sample of the many comments I hear multiple times a week – since the twins were born in 2014 and our child count doubled from two to four – and still hear anytime we go out as a family. Except these days our family time outside the house always includes at least one additional child, making our family look even larger than a family of six.
What. A. Luxury.
There was a time in my life when I thought luxury meant a quiet home, an uninterrupted cup of coffee, and no one asking me for anything. Okay, actually, those things are still massive luxuries, but that’s not my point. My point is that I think I’ve had the concept of luxury all wrong.
Because, honestly, I think a house full of kids is the luxury.
It’s loud. It’s expensive. It sometimes smells a little bit like a locker room (the perks of being a pre-teen football mom). We own 400 Stanley cups, there are 500 pair of shoes lying around the front porch, the pool deck, the garage, the laundry room. There’s enough laundry that I’m trying to convince my husband we need to add another set of washer and dryers to our laundry room (the Good Lord knows that room is big enough for six sets, so why not have two?). Someone is always hungry. Someone is always talking to me. Someone always needs something signed, washed, found, or delivered.
Someone always needs a ride somewhere. Someone always needs something. Someone always leaves their dishes in the sink. And someone (Carter) has decided that he wants to be more helpful by unloading the dishwasher at 6 am as loudly as possible and putting dishes away…except he can’t reach the upper cabinets so half the dishes remain on the counter haphazardly piled up and waiting on my husband to finish his coffee and put them away.
And despite all of that, I wouldn’t trade this for anything.
There is something so wonderful about having a home people want to come home to. About hearing the garage door open, listening to conversations happening from multiple rooms, having everyone in the kitchen, and realizing that even when no one is helping with anything, they’re still here.
I know one day the house will be quieter. The grocery bill smaller. The bathrooms will all stay clean longer than 11 minutes. I’ll be able to sit down and read my books without anyone interrupting me every 6 minutes. And I’m sure I’ll find that lovely. But I will miss this noise. I’ll miss the ridiculous conversations. The kids making fun of one another. The incessant laughter, realizing there are more than a few extra kids in my house thanks to FaceTime conversations. I’ll miss the kids taking food that I’m not yet done preparing or stealing cookie dough from the bowl as I’m making dessert. I’ll miss the random stories, the funny videos, the dancing.
I’ll miss the schedules and the sports and the school stories and the last minute requests that make me want to scream because has no one ever heard of advance notice?
Motherhood is funny that way. I spend so much of my time wishing certain stages would slow down, others would hurry up, and wondering why my brain hurts all the time because there are so many things running through it every moment of every day. I’ll even miss feeding all of these people every single night of my life. Because this is the good stuff.
It’s not the perfect family photos, or the expensive family vacations, or the elaborate holidays. It’s the Friday nights we spend making homemade pizza and watching a movie together. The family game nights when Craig and Charlotte inevitably kick all of our asses over a game of rummy. It’s family dinners around the table when everyone is laughing and we are doing absolutely nothing important, but it’s really important because we are together and no one has anywhere to be.
Those are the things I want more of.
This is not the season of life that needs to be made harder. I’m not competing with anyone else’s version of motherhood. Or trying to keep up with anyone’s household. Or worrying about what my family looks like compared to someone else’s. I really, really love this version of life.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I finally understand just how fast it all goes, and my only goal is to try and slow down as much as possible so I can fully enjoy what’s left of this season. I want the full house, the calendar that’s filled with sports obligations and the kids’ plans, and I want to spend $1000 a week at the grocery store feeding the people I love the most around our table in our home I love while everyone asks me where to find the cheese that’s always in the cheese drawer that they haven’t even opened because they’ve yet to even make it to the fridge but God forbid they use their eyes for a half second because it’s easier to just ask mom.
One day, we’ll be sitting here and all four kids will be out on their own. One is already at college living in her dorm about to finish her second full semester at USF because why wait until fall when you can take a summer load of courses? We already only have three kids living at home with us, and soon it will be two. And then it will be none. And then I’m going to miss every second of this chaos.
Because having a house filled with kids…that’s the real luxury in life. And I am so lucky to have that.
