reality

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The air was thick with dirty diaper stink.  I still have yet to figure out how such a small little body can produce such a stench, but now was the time for action and not thought.  I dried my hands and turned to the little lady.  Smiling she gazed up at me and for a split second, until I had to breathe again I forgot the reason for my pause in cleaning.  I picked her up and proceeded to change her diaper stopping at the appropriate times to giggle, blow kisses on her soft belly, and tickle her delicious toes.  After reassembling the layers of diapers, onesies, and pants I made my way back to the kitchen and found this...

for those of you who want to know
it is baking powder

I grab the camera and take a few shots trying to maintain my composure as I determine where to even begin cleaning up a mess like this.  I take Ana off the counter and start to clean while she is in the other room trying to make another mess.

It's quite easy for a blogger to put on a "happy" voice on their blog instead of portraying reality.  Of course, I'm not going to be so real that I tell you every sordid detail of my overly dramatic life, but I want to share with you the reality of life as a mom and a single one at that.  

One very big reality is that most days I cannot handle being a mom.  

After this incident with the baking powder there was the toothpaste graffiti incident in the bathroom and at least once a day I have a bodily fluid incident with at least one of my children...I guess that's what you get when you have three children who are/were recently in diapers.  I struggle with keeping my cool and not just throwing goldfish on the floor and saying "Go for it."  Even as I write this (at 9 pm) two of my "helpers" are awake and quite frankly, I just want to be alone.  I want to stop worrying about who is where and doing what and I just want to do my own thing.

After the surviving the baking soda I was at my wit's end, a fact that seven hours of sleep would not cure and I awakened the next morning to the same children (funny how they don't change overnight) and the same situation, except I actually had to go somewhere that morning.  I did what any crazed mom does and I called my mom.

"I can't do this anymore.  You won't believe what they did?!?  I have to go to a training and they're not behaving and I have four loads of unfolded laundry on my table and I just can't!"  I vented into the phone word after word, sentence upon sentence for at least a full five minutes.  I only stopped to breathe and even that was not as often as medically indicated for life on this earth.

Like any good mom, she praised me for what I was doing right and reminded me that I tend to, ahem, bite off more than I can chew.  Then, instead of telling me what I had to or should cut out, she encouraged me to examine my life, my schedule and my children's needs and go from there.  I need a mom talk every once in a while.  The most important thing she said was, "You're right, Kristina.  You aren't enough, but God is.  So you need to do what He wants you to do and forget the rest--whatever that may look like for you."

So here's to not being enough and letting Him fill in the gaps.

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